Little Free Libraries (Book Exchanges) ($13,000)

13 locations - 1 in each neighborhood. Focus on parks, community gardens, or dog parks.

Informal Book Exchanges are already popular in Cambridge on streets and at the DPW yard. This project would install 13 Little Free Libraries (Book Exchanges) to support literacy, community engagement, and fun throughout the streets of our city.

Details:

Have you seen the cardboard box on the sidewalk with a FREE sign? Somehow books placed in those boxes find good homes. Image a drier and more kempt way to exchange your books. Enter Little Free Libraries where you can take a book, leave a book, and share a book. Placing a well-designed, waterproof container in each of the neighborhoods of Cambridge will improve the friendliness of the streetscape or park and possibly lead to sharing and more interactions. There are currently four little free libraries on Cambridge streets and they are well used and loved by their neighbors. Each has a magically changing selection of books for all ages. Cambridge has a reputation as one of the most well-read cities in the United State so there will be no shortage of books to exchange.

This proposal is to site 13 “little free libraries” in each of the 13 Cambridge neighborhoods, ideally in a passive park or near a street with a lot of foot traffic. Each of the neighborhoods could choose their own location or a city-wide committee could choose locations. Dog parks and community gardens are also a good place to site a little library because of the constant activity. Attaching a smaller waterproof box alongside the post of the library could serve as a place for community announcements and information exchanges. This is a project which would support literacy, community engagement, and fun throughout the streets of our city.

The cost includes purchase of well-made ready to go libraries from the nonprofit Little Free Library in Hudson, WI and DPW installation on City property.