Little Free Library boxes placed around town

The Whitefish Community Library is taking its books to the people. The library has set up mini library boxes around town that are meant to encourage reading.

“Little Free Library” boxes, also referred to as community book exchanges or book trading posts, are an offering of free books housed in small containers to members of a local community.

“This is an experiment that I am hoping will really take off,” Library Director Joey Kositzky says of Whitefish’s version.

Through the Friends of the Whitefish Community Library, the Little Free Libraries are now open in Whitefish. The book exchange boxes have been set up in Montana Coffee Traders downtown location, the Pine Lodge, Swift Creek Cafe, the Kiddie Park, Soroptimist Park and City Beach. The locations were selected for their high volume of visitors.

Kositzky said while the books in the free libraries are open to everyone, the library encourages locals to visit the Whitefish library and apply for a library card.

“Our real intent of the Little Free Libraries is to promote reading,” Kositzky says. “We want to reach those visitors in the area that don’t meet the requirement for a WCL library card because they are traveling through the area. Motel guests and campers often have down time and would enjoy a good book to read or take with them.”

The Whitefish library got its idea for the concept from an article on a man who mounted a wooden container designed to look like a school house on a post on his lawn as a tribute to his mother, who was a book lover and school teacher. The idea took off and 5,000 Little Free Libraries have been registered in all 50 states and 40 countries worldwide.

The Whitefish Little Free Library boxes were constructed by Whitefish Middle School’s seventh graders with the guidance of shop instructors Matt Beckwith and Aaron Phillip. The boxes are 22 by 11 inches in size.

Friends of the Whitefish Community Library will be checking the locations each Monday to see if they need to be replenished and to get feedback on how the system is working.

“For now, people are encouraged to enjoy a free book courtesy of the library, but as we reduce our inventory of donated books, we will ask that people exchange a title of their own for each copy they borrow,” Kositzky said. “The libraries operate on the honor system.”

For more information on the Little Free Libraries, visit www.whitefishlibrary.org.