What is a Little Free Library?
It’s a “take a book, return a book” gathering place where neighbors share their favorite literature and stories. In its most basic form, a Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share. You can, too!
If you want to learn more about the movement or host your own Little Free Library, please visit their website.
Location
Little Free Library Charter #8424 is located at 1411 Dartmouth Drive, Glendale, CA 91205. It is located at the dog-leg on Dartmouth on the west side of the street. It is just west of S. Adams Street, roughly at the top of the hill.
A library with a view of the mountains
Our Library Philosophy
Though Chris built and hosts the library, he’s simply a steward or caretaker, of the branch. The library is free and open for the use of our friends and neighbors in Adams Hill and the surrounding neighborhoods. If you’ve stopped to check things out, you’re automatically an associate librarian. It is appreciated if everyone helps to care for and maintain the library.
General Suggestions
- The books in our library are always free and never for sale.
- Feel free to take a book.
- If you have a book you’d like to share, please feel free to donate it.
- When you’re done with your book: return it, pass it along to a friend, or release it back into the wild.
- You don’t need to “check the book out” or “check it in”, but we do encourage you to sign our guest book and participate via Book Crossing [see below].
Arrangement of Books
Since there isn’t a full time librarian and only so much space, there isn’t (usually) a set order to the arrangement of our books. Since it’s been a long trip up the hill, feel free to stop for a minute to cool off, consider yourself an associate librarian, and rearrange them to suit your whimsy – it is your library after all. We only ask that you try to keep any children’s books on the lower shelf for short legs and arms to be able to reach, and that your arrangement ensures all the books fit into the library just in case it rains.
Possible suggestions for arrangements might include:
- by size
- by color
- by the order in which you’ve read them
- by author’s first name
- by publication date
- by publisher or imprint
- by topic in reverse alphabetic order
- by best to worst (in your opinion or someone else’s)
- by those you’ve read and those you haven’t
The options are infinite, so be creative.
Book Crossing
All of our books in the Adams Hill Branch are “traveling” books. We try to register all of them on Book Crossing. This is a free web service for watching the journey of individual books as they meander about the world. If you’d like to, you can enter the BCID number inside the front of the book to see where it’s been and even where it goes after you’ve read it. You can also enter any data, thoughts, reviews, etc. for the book on your own, as well as create a note about where you re-released it. (Note that we don’t expect all of our books to necessarily come back to our branch, but we do ask that you pass them along when you’re done with them.)
Pending people updating the location of books removed, check availability at our Book Crossing Zone.
Donating Books
We gladly accept your donated books.
If you have more books than the little library will fit, please don’t simply dump them! You can leave them in a covered box preferably on our stairs/landing – this will keep our sprinklers and elements from ruining them or you can contact me through Nextdoor.com. If the library has more books than will fit, we’ll occasionally rotate them to help improve the diversity of the available collection over time.
If you’d like to, please write the titles of your donations into our guest book as this will help us to register them on Book Crossing. (You’re welcome to register them on book crossing yourself prior to donation as well.)
Guest Book
Our library has guest book and a pen. Feel free to write down any thoughts, comments, or suggestions you might have about the library and leave them in the library for the associate librarians who happen by. Or maybe you were waxing poetic when you stopped by and wanted to leave a short poem or haiku about our library? Really liked a book? Feel free to leave a short review for the next potential reader. Donating a book: feel free to include the title and your name so others can thank you later.
Wish List
Our wish list has two functions:
- Write down any books you’d love to see come to our library so you can borrow them in the future.
- Read the list to see if you have any of the books you might donate so that others can enjoy them.
Fliers
We’re happy to host fliers/notices only for local community events. The library is constructed of metal, so use a magnet (no tape, staples, glue, or permanent adhesives please) to attach your notice to the library. We ask that any fliers have a specific event date/time so that they may be easily removed once they’re over. We also recommend posting on the community site Nextdoor. If you’re visiting from outside Adams Hill, try this link for a $25 Amazon.com gift card.
Please don’t leave any promotional/advertising items, business cards, or proselytizing material here as they will be removed. There are more effective places you can place these items.
Webmentions
This Article was mentioned on lfl8424.boffosocko.com