In 1992, John Robbins wrote a groundbreaking book called May All Be Fed: A Diet for the New America. And while not everyone agrees with the author’s solution, it’s clear — even now, 23 years later — that food distribution could use a serious tweak if we are to feed a hungry planet.
The library’s not in the business of food distribution, but we are in the business of book distribution.
And I’m happy to report that, thanks to some new initiatives and partnerships, we’ve tweaked the distribution thing, the better to All Be Read.
The library is the original recycler of books, with almost half our collection circulating each month to nearly 13,000 members.
So your library card really is your key to the world.
But for various reasons, not everyone is a library member. So how to distribute books, so all may truly be read?
Luckily, there’s more than one way to find a great book.
Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy (CBAL) runs a program called “Books Everywhere!” Look for bins in 14 locations around town, where you can take a book and read it there, or keep it, or read it and return it, or you can return a different book—to the same bin, or a different one.
How multi-optional is that?
I’ve seen kids at Oso Negro happily reading the “Books Everywhere!” books while munching on muffins as parents chat — a happy outcome in which all are fed and read.
This past year the library’s outreach program began bringing free books to food banks, soup kitchens, and shelters — where they fly out the door almost as soon as they arrive. Huge thanks to the volunteers of both programs who make sure the bins are kept full.
Before Christmas the library, CBAL, and the Nelson Star collected donations of new and nearly-new kids’ books to go into Nelson Food Cupboard Christmas hampers in a project we called “A Book Under Every Tree.” More than 300 books were wrapped and delivered.
People have always swapped books. I’m pretty sure readers in 8th century BC were talking about this new, hot book called The Iliad, an absolute “must-read” for those looking for clever ways to sneak up on someone — whether in the belly of a horse or in the subversive (or not-so-subversive) distribution of books to unsuspecting readers.
There’s no conspiracy, of course: just an honest wish for folks to have unfettered access to books and reading and thereby learn things, embark on flights of imagination, be piqued, or enthralled, or touched.
My favourite tale of the season this year comes from my colleague Melodie Rae Storey, whose father gave her a “library” for Christmas. It’s a little house with a glass front, two shelves in a frame with a roof and a lovely sentiment towards community, books, and reading. Once installed at the bottom of the driveway, the “library” will be filled with books for people to take, read, keep, return, replace.
In its rural location I imagine it as a meeting place for neighbours to discuss the latest find, or pass on a tear-jerker or a thoughtful treatise. One might find a note left (“loved it!” or “don’t read chapter nine before bed.”)
One might drop off a whodunit and pick up a how-to. Anything is possible in the random and serendipitous distribution of books.
There can never be too many books in the world, or too many opportunities to find one. Just as we are hungry for food, we are hungry for knowledge. And so, for 2015, my wish to the world: may you be found by the book you didn’t know you needed to read.
And May All Be Read.
— Anne DeGrace is the Adult Services Coordinator at the Nelson Public Library. Check This Out runs every other week. For more information go to www.nelsonlibrary.ca.