Little Free Library Movement

This weekend's discovery, thanks to lovely wife, Amber, is the Little Free Library movement. The gist of this is that a family or community group puts a weather-proofed box (think of a mailbox, but bigger) on a post by the curb with a sign that invites people to "Take a book, leave a book." A typical Little Free Library holds about two shelves, each with about a dozen or so books on them, and it essentially operates on the honor system that for every book you take, you will drop off another book. And, naturally, each Little Free Library has a patron (usually the person that put it on their front lawn, but often a neighborhood home owner's association or some such group) that is responsible for ensuring that it stays stocked and in decent repair. Again it's all honor system, but the expectation is that patrons will drop the book off at the same (or another) Library when they have finished it.

The head organization that sets all this up sells ready-made boxes for anyone that just wants to put one up in their yard, but does nothing to require a group to use one of their boxes. And they are, I confess, a bit over-priced. They do ask for a $40 one-time fee in order to join the official list of Little Free Libraries and be placed on the map so that others can find your stop.

I would be lying if I didn't say we are tempted to put up one of our own. So far, there are only half a dozen or so in the Fort Worth area (with another dozen or so in the Dallas area). We visited the nearest one (which is only about two miles away), but it's actually in a poor location at the end of a cul-de-sac in a posh neighborhood. We, on the other hand, are directly across the street from an elementary school on a street that gets lots of foot and bicycle traffic.

On a blogging-related side note, I have finally figured out how to attach images to a post and still have the post behave in VimRepress (a plugin for the Vim text editor that integrates with WordPress blogs.)