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Another teeny-tiny library pops up in Jamaica Plain
By adamg on Thu, 07/10/2014 - 9:12am
Alex Markarian reports the neighborhood's latest library-in-a-box appeared yesterday on Chestnut Avenue, right between Chestnut Square and Chestnut Place - just a few blocks down from another Chestnut Street mini-library. That makes at least four of these tiny libraries in JP (there's also one at the St. Rose Street Community Garden).
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Comments
When will they start regulating these mini library
It's taking away from the other library's in the city....
Meh
The most recent free library additions in JP (this one and the one on Pond Street) are clearly kits that are put up by homeowners with too much disposable income and a burning desire to be hip. I looked up the kits online: http://littlefreelibrary.org/product-category/library/. Not cheap!
I prefer the home-made ones much better. Any time yuppies co-opt something that was started as a DIY creative idea it turns into cookie-cutter, see-how-cool-we-are lameness.
/rant
Yeah--what a**holes.
They should totally be spending their disposable income on larger cars or a marble soaking tub or Gucci loafers for their infants.
Honest to God--will nothing please you people enough that you don't have to start every sentence with "meh?" I don't care if these little libraries are put up by magical book unicorns or Henrietta Moneybags do-gooders--they're GREAT! And I'm assuming that the first post about them competing with libraries is a joke...?
I guess I should have been more specific
The "meh" refers to the overpriced prefab little libraries, not the concept of little libraries themselves. Perhaps I should have directed my ire towards the company that's capitalizing on the trend.
I'm curious who you had in mind when you said "you people." (A categorization that never fails to be inaccurate or to expose the prejudices of the speaker, IMO.) In fact I am what many would consider a yuppie with too much disposable income, too. And I also happen to be a librarian.
"You people"
would refer to posters (here and elsewhere) who can't wait three seconds before letting loose with a sour rant about something that many people would see as a positive or at least a benign and community-minded way to spend your disposable income. I just find it depressing when people's reaction is to crap on something for spurious reasons. Are creative, artist-made free libraries in JP being driven out by the book-loving yuppie hordes? No. Is a house-shaped box full of free paperbacks really an indicator of perilously twee hipness? I don't think so. And honestly, I don't think anyone's getting rich off this. Sounds like some guy in Wisconsin making them out of barn wood--it's not like a Williams-Sonoma chicken coop. All I'm saying is maybe don't be quite so quick to yuck someone's yum, unless you really want to go for that mean-library-lady stereotype.
I just find it depressing
And how are you enjoying your first five seconds on the Internet? 8-)
Kansas
I find it funny.
Some kid.. I think in Kansas.. tried to do this in front of his home. The city forced him to take it down. But that's Kansas for ya.
I just find it funny/neat that here in Boston, the city has virtually no issue with it. Its nice to the city isn't total dicks like they were to this kid.
http://boingboing.net/2014/06/19/boy-9-creates-library-in-his.html
Harvard has one too
Outside the Science Center near the spitting rocks
Great description: Spitting Rocks
This is off topic from the tiny libraries but I wanted to thank you for the best description of these rocks I have ever read. I see a potential motif: spitting rocks at Harvard, the steaming thingamajigs on the Greenway. But Millenial Park's spewing giant citizen's is still the biggest of things spewing, spitting or steaming.
As for the tiny libraries they are little caves full of potential treasures, assuming one sees books as treasures. Each tiny library is an opportunity to explore tiny book caves: a kind of literary spelunking.
Until the homeless/drug
Until the homeless/drug dealers start using them for storage/drop boxes like free newspaper boxes.
Yeah, because that will totally happen.
Eye roll...
Never underestimate the fiendish cleverness
..of the homeless...
Just kidding.
Here's a tiny library my friend Odette found in Bourgogne.
It's in France.
http://goo.gl/G8zUVO