PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Ever since the Presque Isle community received three Little Free Libraries as part of a grant from the Maine Humanities Council in 2014, the outdoor receptacles have played an important role in sharing the joy of reading with others.
Two of the three original Little Free Libraries — purchased with the $1,000 grant, in partnership with the Presque Isle Historical Society, Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library, Presque Isle Middle School and the Edmunds Library at Northern Maine Community College — still stand, one outside Presque Isle City Hall on Second Street and the other by The Gathering Place senior center on 33 Davis Street. A third stood outside the former William Haskell Recreation Center but was misplaced after the center was demolished in 2017.
Both Little Free Libraries are free-standing structures and have signs that say, “Take a Book, Leave a Book.” All books are free for anyone to take and enjoy. NMCC also has a Little Free Library, which was not installed through the original grant funding, at Edmunds Library.
“If people have books at home that they don’t know what to do with, they can bring them to one of the Little Free Libraries,” Gail Roy, assistant dean of learning resources at Edmunds Library, said. Roy was part of the original effort to write the Little Free Libraries grant to the Maine Humanities Council. “Our goal was to have these libraries available in high traffic areas so that people can drop off books and take some for themselves.”
The Little Free Libraries effort originated after the same group of community partners received a Maine in the Civil War grant from the Maine Humanities Council to hold reading groups and events to educate the public about Maine’s involvement in the historic war. The group realized that they had leftover books from the reading groups and decided to contribute those books as well as $1,000 worth of books from the Edmunds Library and the Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library to the Little Free Libraries.
Little Free Libraries were first developed by Todd Bol in Hudson, Wisconsin, in honor of his mother, a teacher and lifelong reader, as a way to “promote literacy and the love of reading.” According to https://littlefreelibrary.org/, there are over 60,000 Little Free Libraries in over 80 countries and millions of books are exchanged annually because of them. Any individual or community organization can build one and register on the site. The Presque Isle free libraries are not yet listed on the organization’s web site, however, because the locals involved have had technical difficulties registering, according to Roy, who said they would keep trying.
Roy said that although she and other community partners have not actively kept track of how many people use the Little Free Libraries in Presque Isle, she has heard many people speak enthusiastically about them.
“I’ve heard people say that they donate books to the libraries all the time and that they like seeing what books they can find,” Roy said. “The libraries build a sense of community because it allows us to share our love of reading.”
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- Northern Maine Community College’s Edmunds Library is one of several locations in Presque Isle that house Little Free Libraries, free-standing structures that allow community members to “Take a Book and Leave a Book” as part of an effort to promote literacy and the sharing of books. NMCC Assistant Dean of Learning Resources Gail Roy took part in writing an initial grant to the Maine Humanities Council, which provided $1,000 for the installation of three Little Free Libraries in Presque Isle. This one inside the NMCC library was added later. (Melissa Lizotte)
