A new alternative library grows in Brooklyn: the Branch Library in Clinton Hill is a project driven primarily by designers I believe, but they were respectful enough of the library profession to talk to some librarians, including the NYC Radical Reference collective. They'll be open the next 8 Sundays (and they hope beyond) from 1-5 in an unused parking lot on the corner of Myrtle and Clinton.
It may be some librarians' immediate reaction to be defensive, critical, or even angry at these amateur upstarts, but I think we'd be smarter to embrace, encourage, and advise them (when asked). I love their community centric approach. Jerome Chou, one of the group's core members, described how they're letting patrons design the library at our last Rad Ref meeting. Quoting my minutes:
"The concept is working with neighborhood residents to reclaim public space. This library will be community designed and programmed. e.g. Passersby were asked to write down the name of a favorite book."
and
"This Sunday's activities: informing passersby of the project and signing up patrons. At 2pm they will [have participants] arrange boxes as library furniture."
Check out the list of recommended books, by the way. There are some usual suspects like Harry Potter of course, and I'm glad to see Judy Blume still representing, too. The list as a whole is a satisfying mix of race, gender, age level, genre, and subject interests. I like it way better than that BBC list that was making the rounds on Facebook a while ago. And it's really interesting that this is a "give the people what they want" approach, but that the resultant list has very little duplication, even from a sample that has at least geography in common. Maybe we should all stand on a corner near our library and ask the first 150 passersby to recommend a favorite book and see what we come up with. I'd love to see how choices vary from corner to corner.
Pictures from opening day
They want to be clear that their project is not meant as competition of the Brooklyn Public Library.
If you'd like to volunteer or donate supplies (and books!), please contact Jerome at librarybranch@gmail.com.
If you can't volunteer, you can still donate money! PayPal your donation to the same address. Or go to their fundraiser on Wednesday, September 16 in DUMBO.
PS I love that they're starting with the concepts of books and space. Not digital collections. I don't have anything against digital collections; I even love them. I just think that libraries, especially public libraries, need to remember that a lot of people are in it for the books and I think also for the shared space.