#LIBRARY IN A PHONEBOX FREE#

And there’s also trust the other way – because the coming generations have to trust us that we do these kinds of thing for them. As Anne Beate Hovind, curator of the world famous ‘Future Library’ project, told us in an interview: “It’s all about trust I have no choice other than believing in the project. This is a concept familiar to library curators across the globe. In some larger cities, however, the micro-libraries have on occasion had to rely on the local community to step in when the libraries have been vandalised. In local villages across England, where everybody knows everybody, this seems to have been a relatively simple sell.

The micro-library exchanges operate on a system of trust. “It’s definitely given people an excuse to stand around chatting,” Seb told Londonist magazine, “and in that sense, I suppose it’s really failed as a library.” The phone box now houses titles from cooking books to the classics and blockbusters to children’s booksĪ similar story can be found in South London, where a local man named Seb Handley purchased a run-down telephone box from BT for £1, then used his own money and handyman skills to renovate the box and turn it into one of London’s smallest libraries. The parish council purchased the box, a Giles Gilbert Scott K6 design, for £1, and residents in the Somerset village of Westbury-sub-Mendip put up wooden shelves inside and donated their own books.

The first such telephone box library was set up in Westbury-Sub-Mendip in Somerset was founded in 2009 after the local council cut funding for the area’s mobile library. It’s a novel, if simple idea, and one that has sprung up in response to a sustained threat facing the UK’s public libraries.

#LIBRARY IN A PHONEBOX FREE#

Anyone is free to take home a book, provided they bring it back or replace it with another.

Photo credit: Steve Muir via Flickr.Īcross the UK, people are turning famous British red telephone boxes into micro libraries – casual book exchanges where there is no registration, and no fines. We’re very excited about this project and we hope you are too, and please remember that any books you might have really would make a big difference.Books and bookshelves in a famous red British telephone box. We’ve put a special ‘Donations Box’ in the library itself where you can pop your books during our opening times. If you have any books you’d like to donate we’d be absolutely delighted to take them off your hands. We’re not expecting every donation to be a brand new bestseller, this is all about community upcycling and taking the opportunity to pass along a book you’ve loved onto someone else to enjoy. So it can be anything from fiction, non-fiction for all audiences.

We’re looking for adult and children’s fiction which will appeal to a wide range of readers. So if you have any books lying around at home that you’d love to donate we’ve got the perfect new home. Take a look at our gallery below, showcasing the all new Shenstone Phonebox Library.īecause our new phonebox library is stocked entirely by donated books, we’d love your help. There’s books for everyone in our new Phonebox library, from recent bestsellers to popular children’s books. This way we’re hoping to keep the selection rotating and ensure that every time you open up our new mini library there’ll be something new for you to take away and read. Instead each book will be available to borrow and can either be returned after you’ve read it, or if you love it so much you’d like to keep it we simply ask that you exchange it for a different book from your collection. This will be a slight departure for Shenstone Community Library because it will be solely stocked by donations from all of our wonderful members and supporters and the books won’t form part of the Staffordshire Libraries collection like the books you find inside the library itself. The idea originated from one of our fabulous library members, Katherine Ford, who had seen similarly abandoned phoneboxes converted into book libraries and swapping stations around the UK and thought it would be a fantastic idea to do the same in our village. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and the local council, we’ve turned the derelict phonebox on the Birmingham Road near to Tesco Express into a little Free Phonebox Library, or as it will be known: Shenstone Library: Birmingham Road Sub-Branch! We’re very excited to announce that our new scheme to bring more books to the village and encourage everyone young and old to get reading is now open.

Library in a phonebox