ASHLAND – At first glance, they might look a bit like colorful birdhouses.
But come closer to one of the wooden boxes that have been mounted on posts in several of Ashland’s public spaces, and you’ll see an array of books behind a glass door. A small plaque prompts, “Take a book. Return a book.”
The boxes are Little Free Libraries, designed to allow readers of all ages to share their favorite books, discover something new or maybe even develop a love of reading.
Hayley Tracy-Bursley, support services manager at Ashland Public Library, came up with the idea to bring the Little Free Libraries to Ashland.
“I had seen them before and thought they looked really neat, and I knew there were not any in Ashland,” Tracy-Bursley said. “It promotes community, it promotes reading and it’s a way for people to engage with each other with their love of reading.”
To achieve Tracy-Bursley’s vision, the library received a grant from the Ashland County Community Foundation’s Youth Impact Council and purchased kits to create the bookcases.
Jim Thomas from the library’s maintenance staff assembled the boxes, and kids from the community helped paint them as part of the library’s summer reading program in 2017.
“Then we spent the winter varnishing them … and building stands and doing all those necessary things so we were able to get them out this summer,” Tracy-Bursley said.
The six boxes have been up for about two weeks in location across town. Two are located at Brookside Park (one by the pool and playground and the other by the miniature golf course), and a third is at Brookside West. Another box is downtown at Kinnaman Park (on Center Street just south of Main Street). One box is a Cahn Grove Park, and the last is at Freer Field.
“We wanted to put them in pretty central locations everybody has access to,” Tracy-Bursley said.
The library stocked the boxes with some initial books, and members of the public have already started contributing books of their own.
Anyone may take a book, keep it as long as they would like and then either return the same book or leave a different book.
Adrienne Shores, community relations coordinator at Ashland Public Libary, said she hopes the Little Free Libraries will enable kids who may not be able to get the library to discover books.
The Little Free Libraries will be maintained by Ashland Public Library, and people may report any issues with the boxes to to the library, but the books are entirely separate from the library’s collections. The boxes may not be used as drop-off locations for regular library books, Shores noted.
“We don’t want anyone to be upset or have fines or be inconvenienced by thinking that they’re actually drop boxes when they’re not,” said Adrienne Shores, community relations coordinator at Ashland Public Libary.
