Photo by Caia Reese | The Independent Florida Alligator
Source | The Independent Florida Alligator
by Gracey Davis
Free library boxes spring up in Gainesville
Little Free Library boxes run through international organization
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line the walls of Heather Ray’s at-home library, a point of pride for the 48-year-old UF physics professor. When she finds a title she hasn’t picked up in a while, she’ll place it in a local Little Free Library — one of several community book boxes that have popped up around Alachua County.
Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that works with local community members from over 100 countries to provide free and easy access to literature using sharing boxes. The program follows a “take a book, share a book” mentality, with individuals being expected to donate an item of their own in exchange for whatever they take.
Over a dozen Little Free Libraries are registered in the Gainesville area, according to the website’s virtual map.
Ray started out by donating books to two library boxes by her daughter's preschool, but she decided to open her own Little Free Library outside her office on UF’s campus three years ago.
“I was having just hordes of students in my office hours, and it was somewhere in that time period when I said, ‘Well, this is ridiculous, why don't I just start a free little library right outside of my office?’” Ray said. “I have enough foot traffic for there to be high turnover and then I'll just take my books into campus.”