Little Free Library, Ltd.

The People Who Started the Movement In the beginning—2009–Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin, built a model of a one room schoolhouse as a tribute to his mother, a former school teacher who loved reading. He filled it with books and put it on a post in his front yard. His neighbors and friends loved it. He built several more and gave them away. Each one had a sign that said FREE BOOKS. Rick Brooks, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, saw Bol’s do-it-yourself project while they were discussing potential social enterprises. Together, the two saw opportunities to achieve a wide variety of goals for the common good. Each brought different skills to the effort, Bol as a creative craftsman experienced with innovative enterprise models and Brooks as a youth and community development educator with a background in social marketing. They were inspired by many different ideas: 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.