Spreading democracy

On the day that Chico got its first significant rainfall in quite some time—Friday, Feb. 7—another praiseworthy event occurred: A bright-green Little Library box containing two shelves packed with a variety of books was installed in the Chapmantown neighborhood.

Oliver Allen, Butte County Library outreach coordinator, and Chico State social work student (and Love Chapmantown Community Coalition intern) David Overton erected the cute, wooden box-on-a-pole in front of Subud Hall on East 12th Street—the second such Little Library box in the south Chico neighborhood; the two are the first ones in the larger project that Allen is shepherding. The guiding principle of the boxes is “take a book, return a book,” though Allen is quick to point out that “people are encouraged to take [a book] and not really worry about returning [one]. … We’re trying to get people to take [books], get involved with the material and don’t worry about the ‘back end.’ … Share the information and the experience of the box!”

Chapmantown’s first Little Library box—installed 2 1/2 months ago—is located just outside Has Beans Coffee & Tea Company at 1078 Humboldt Ave. And, Allen said, “a couple of individuals have them on their front lawns,” though those particular boxes are not part of Allen’s program—they are officially part of the national Little Free Library program (there are actually four official Little Free Library boxes altogether in Chico; go to map at www.littlefreelibrary.org to see locations).

The Little Libraries that Allen is creating—which contain both fiction and nonfiction books—are modeled on the larger Little Free Library program (which has spread worldwide). That program was started in Wisconsin in 2009 by a man named Todd Bol, who erected a little, red, schoolhouse-style free-library box full of books in his front yard as a tribute to his mother, a former schoolteacher who loved books.

Allen plans to register the local Little Library project with the bigger Little Free Library organization in the very near future, as soon as he raises the $39 fee to do so (his project, despite being under the umbrella of the Butte County Library, currently has no allocated budget).

“What we’re trying to do is spread literacy, and build community and the sharing economy of people and resources,” he offered.

The Love Chapmantown Community Coalition had originally conceived of the idea of the neighborhood library boxes, Allen said, and had built some boxes that were never installed. After he became the Butte County Library’s outreach coordinator six months ago, and after spending some vacation time in Portland, Ore.—where there are dozens of Little Free Libraries—Allen got the idea to start a similar program in Butte County. He mentioned his idea to a co-worker, who told him about the boxes that the Love Chapmantown coalition had built together with the local Mormon Helping Hands group. Allen contacted Love Chapmantown, and the rest is history. In addition to using books from the Butte County Library to stock the Little Libraries, Allen received donated inventory from local downtown bookseller Lyon Books.

The Little Library box outside of the Chapmantown Has Beans “has a pretty good turnover of books,” Allen said. “It’s created a point of interest in that area. The [volunteer] steward of that box said quite a few people are taking books. … And the owner of Has Beans is positive about it.”

Allen is hoping to install four more Little Libraries in the near future—in Chapmantown at the end of Cleveland Street near Chapman Elementary School, at the Dorothy Johnson Center and at the Second Baptist Church on Ohio Street, as well as in tiny Rotary Park, in the Barber neighborhood in south Chico. His goal is to get 30 to 40 Little Library boxes up and running around Butte County over the next two years. “There’s a lady in Bangor right now who is working on getting a box,” he added.

“I’m trying to bring a little more contact with and spreading of the word about our wonderful democratic institution, the library, you know,” Allen said of the project. “The library is one of the most democratic institutions in our country; it provides equal access for all. … It’s more of an apolitical institution that allows people to explore the various debates of society. There is information on all sides, access to information that you choose. And with these little boxes, who knows what you will get?”

Allen is clearly enamored of the potential for education, discussion and just plain pleasure that the Little Libraries can provide with their rotating inventory of books in both English and Spanish. He is convinced that reading—and access to books—is a good and necessary thing. As he put it, “Every book has a person, every person has a book.”