Street Library (A–Z)

I started on the street but moved to the screen

Like social media free libraries are

Always open for browsing, day or night

In the angled light strewn by my phone I learn the street library on Oxford Street 

started w– an old bookcase & a bag of books

The photo shows a bookcase against a wall painted with a beam spreading from shelves to the stars – like a beacon; a siren call to

Come find your story

I sink into the pool of light and it holds me; a world of books and not a scrap of paper in my hand

 

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In Newtown, someone surveyed a street library and noticed

One of these books was about decluttering, very apt

In Marrickville, Petty Cash consider its collection

an extension of the cafe and we lovingly curate and stock it daily

In Amsterdam, a photographer documents

novel ways of storing books outside, ranging from an old Coca-Cola fridge to a retired phone kiosk

Boys hold books and stand tall outside a New Lambton home and I learn

Street Library is a great project to do with your family during a global pandemic

 

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a tiny vestibule of literary happiness

a symbol of trust and hope

 

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A street library can be built from a flat-pack but

It ain’t ikea

In a construction workshop someone’s congratulated for

most accurate joins and neat cuts on the day!

At school a year 11 class built

the kit version of The Shed

A pitched roof is retained in a new model for those who prefer

a more traditional look and a storybook feel

A cottage industry in several senses

Site in the structure

The mode of production within the build

 

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Little library | Bigger on the inside

More metonymy still

The pool of light within the book

 

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Street librarians may be reverent but also not:

You know your Street Library is getting well used when it gets MESSY!

An alphabet too can be

something of a mess...

Its elements are as found, and their use as plastic as may sustain the happy rivalry through which they define one another’s usefulness

An alphabet is not a logical system

And yet

The impulse to put things in order, as Immanuel Kant insists, is irrepressible

 

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One street library in the inner city is

set amongst an edible, organic garden

Of course! Because

Street Libraries are beautiful homes for books, planted in your front yard

(A book is like a little garden carried in your pocket)

(A real green thumb says they

always carry a box of great books with me to “pollinate” any little libraries I find)

Some street libraries are topiary with all the trimmings, but we’re drawn in too by what grows over:

Grab a book, find a quiet spot in the park, and have a read under a shady tree

 

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The impulse to repeat: 

irresistable, cannot be resisted when contemplating a site designed for flow

Some street libraries are

replenished regularly

Some custodians aim

to refresh the contents weekly

Elsewhere,

It doesn’t take long for a book share to become part of local’s routines

A street librarian sits on her porch to check out

our regulars

including

The runner who stops every time to check for new books

and

Little kids crowding around on their walk home from school

One structure is made

from second-hand and salvaged materials

and is accompanied by a box

stocked with fresh and dried herbs from the garden

 

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The street is the giver

 

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It was a passion for literacy that inspired one educator to establish a street library:

Helping children learn to read and enjoy books is one of the greatest moments for a teacher

It is axiomatic too that the teacher is the giver

 

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Use edges and value the marginal

is a permaculture principle, I learn; high words to shape worthy deeds

One person established their library guided by a declaration they recalled from a book:

You must do something to make your world more beautiful

A customised bicycle, the XYZ CARGO MOBILE LIBRARY, inspires the incredible Borgesian prospect of enabling access to

all the necessary books without limits

A coastal street library, decorated with writing, displays

a hundred titles that have given me great pleasure over the years

 

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Zero means none

reads the Macquarie Children’s Dictionary I picked up from the free library in a local bowling club. The dictionary is otherwise jauntily illustrated but the image for zero is a plump black “O”

A “Z” in a circle, in a square, in a far from elementary alphabet, traces

endless movement through a world that never moves...

circling through the same twenty-four hours or twenty-six letters again

Or through one trillion pixels

And papered dreams; the drowning scroll; or

The boxes that yield and receive

The loop of text and the pool of light