SEBS Little Free Library – Books We Read

Located in Foran Hall, the SEBS Little Free Library offers book swaps as part of the Little Free Library project.

After a hiatus, while online as Virtual SEBS Little Free Library, the Little Free Library in Foran Hall is open to the public again. (To tell the truth, it never shut down, thanks to anonymous volunteers with building access.)

A network of free and easily accessible book exchanges, the initiative was established in 2009 in Wisconsin, with the mission of promoting literacy and the love of reading, and building a sense of community. A world map of Little Free Libraries shows the locations pinned on a Google map.

SEBS Little Free Library during the lockdown – images
Video of the first month (25 sec)
SEBS Little Free Library Gallery – videos
Gallery of Little Free Libraries
Flickr collection of designs
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Questions? – Contact us or ask the staff in the Chang Science Library.

: Take a book, bring a book – as simple as that. Feel free to pick up any book you wish to read, then return it at your convenience. Bring books you want to share and leave them for the next person to read. Anyone can use the SEBS Little Free Library. Please be respectful when taking or leaving books.

Contact us or the visit the circulation desk at the Chang Science Library if you have questions.
: You can leave books on the shelf, if there is enough room. Please be considerate and don’t leave large book donations. Contact us or the visit the circulation desk at the Chang Science Library if you wish to leave more than 5 books.
: Please be considerate and take a book or two that you will read – but feel free to come back again any time! Return the ones you have read, bring your own to share, and take some more to read.
: Contact us or the visit the circulation desk at the Chang Science Library if you wish to donate more than 5 books.
: Yes! Thanks to the generous donors, all books on this shelf are free. Take it, read it, return it, or bring your own to share.
: Book donations may be tax-deductible. Please consult your tax specialist for a comprehensive answer.

A little history of Little Free Libraries

In 2009, as a tribute to his schoolteacher mother, Todd Bol built a model of a one-room schoolhouse, filled it with books, and set it up on a post in front of her house with a sign FREE BOOKS on it. After building and giving away several more, he teamed up with Rick Brooks of the University of Wisconsin to initiate a social enterprise to promote reading.

The original missions of Little Free Libraries are (1) to promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide and (2) to build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations.

Ideas that inspired the project

Andrew Carnegie’s support of 2,509 free public libraries around the turn of the 19th to 20th century;
The heroic achievements of Miss Lutie Stearns, a librarian who brought books to nearly 1400 locations in Wisconsin through “traveling little libraries” between 1895 and 1914;
“Take a book, leave a book” collections in coffee shops and public spaces;
Neighborhood kiosks, TimeBanking and community gift-sharing networks;
Grassroots empowerment movements in Sri Lanka, India and other countries worldwide.

A predecessor at Rutgers

Most Little Free Libraries are owned by public libraries or individual book lovers. This is our second Little Free Library at Rutgers, after the one we had set up in 2014 at the Center of Alcohol Studies. With a design based on Leon Greenberg’s Alcometer, the predecessor of the modern breathalyzer, developed at the Center, the library specialized on titles related to addiction.