We must have a library fairy godmother! Yet again, in the late afternoon yesterday, we got two more donations:
Our bookshelves are slowly filling up!
Reminder: Our Grand Opening is coming this weekend.
Today’s New Books: Fiction and a Thriller
Chris Aldrich
Little Free Library #8424 (Adams Hill Branch) Grand Opening
About two years ago while surfing online I came across the concept of the Little Free Library and instantly fell in love. It turned out I had been driving by one on my commute regularly and had always wondered what it was and what was going on. I immediately had big dreams for building my own. I surfed their website for ideas and building plans. I registered for my placard. I received my placard. I drew up elaborate plans for building my own. I debated buying new parts versus recycling or upcycling parts. [Trigger warning for bibliophiles: addictive material to follow] I spent hours surfing photos of Little Free Libraries on their Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Flickr pages. This is when Little Free Library Envy set in… for almost two years.
#LittleFreeLibraryEnvy: the paralizing feeling that YOUR @LtlFreeLibrary has to be better, more interesting, and unique than all the others
— ChrisAldrich (@ChrisAldrich) July 14, 2015
I’ve finally broken the spell! Supplies have been purchased. Work has commenced. Drilling and mounting have been completed.
The first branch of the Adams Hill Little Free Libraries is now open!
Little Free Library #8424 Grand Opening
You’re cordially invited to the grand opening of the first Little Free Library in Adams Hill (Charter #8424).
Date: Sunday, August 9th, 2015
Time: 4pm – 5pm
Location: 1411 Dartmouth Drive, Glendale
Lemonade and cookies will be served.
Come chat with your neighbors, say hello, and check out the library. If you’re so motivated, feel free to bring a book (or two) to help stock the library.
More information about the Adams Hill “branch” can be found at our library’s page Little Free Library #8424, but the scant basics are below:
- 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.
New Non-Fiction Arrived This Morning
Someone apparently knows my taste in non-fiction. An anonymous donor has brought us copies of:
- Thunder out of China by Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
Our First Native BookCrossing
Yesterday, we had someone donate our first natively registered Book Crossing release: Dean Koontz’s Life Expectancy. Thanks loveschocolate for visiting our library and making the donation!
Big Changes over the Weekend
I still have yet to do any kind of publicity for my newly launched Little Free Library, but while I was away at the beach for the weekend, there were some substantive changes.
Over the weekend we’ve loaned out
- The Russia House (our first checkout on 7/31/15!)
- The Crimson Petal and the White
- Envy
- Helen of Pasadena
- The Last Original Wife
And we’ve gotten three new donations overnight
- Sundays at Tiffany’s
- Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
- The Forgotten by David Baldacci
The updated list of our current stock can be found on our GoodReads shelf.
Guest Book
We’ve added a guest book for our visitors. You’ll find a red composition book (and pen) inside our library where you can leave your thoughts and comments. Kindly leave the guest book in the library – it’s the one book we have that doesn’t circulate!
In some part the guest book is meant to help catalog the progress of our library. Below are some suggestions for what you might write into our guest book when you visit:
- Patrons/Associate Librarians are encouraged to (optionally) write in the books they donate or check out.
- Say hello to your fellow neighbors! You can simply write down the day and time of your visit along with a note for future visitors.
- Bringing back a book? Feel free to write in a short review of the book you’re returning so others will know what they’re getting into. (If you give it a number of stars, be sure to indicate out of how many possible, so we know your scale.)
- Liked a book you borrowed? Flip back into the guest book to see who made the donation and write in a thank you to the donor.
- Have a book you’ve been longing for? Write it in and maybe a fellow neighbor has a copy they can donate on a future visit.
- Visiting our branch from far away? Be sure to write down your hometown and country so we know how far away our books travel.
Little Free Library Guest Book
Our First Outside Donation: The Last Original Wife
Sometime overnight, we received our first official outside book donation! (We’ve only been open for just a few days, and have done absolutely no publicity.) Come check out our most recent title:
The Last Original Wife: A Novel by Dorothea Benton Frank
Initial Stock of Books
Today, we added the initial stock of books to our new library. Planning has commenced for some type of grand opening. If you have any thoughts on grand opening ideas, please add them below.
Our first book added on 7/28/15 was The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.
Little Free Library #8424 is Open
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.