A book-exchange box at the foot of the Centennial Nature Trail receives such heavy use that the two Durango women who installed it are preparing a second tiny library to be placed along the Animas River Trail.
Barbara Balaguer and Charlotte Overby have taken part in the barely 4-year-old Little Free Library movement that is spreading across the country and around the globe.
It’s a simple concept. A box, a bin or a bucket is afixed in an open, well-traveled spot and primed with a few books for the taking.
The hope is that borrowers will leave an unwanted tome in exchange for one taken, but it’s not necessary.
Todd Bol started it all in 2009.
Bol, from Hudson, Wis., built a little library in the form of a one-room schoolhouse to honor his mother, a former school teacher, who loved to read.
He placed the structure on a post in his front yard, where it captured the attention and approval of his neighbors. The idea took off, leading to a board of directors and, in September 2012, Internal Revenue Service recognition as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
The goal of building more little libraries than the 2,509 regular-sized libraries established by philanthropist-industrialist Andrew Carnegie was reached in August 2012. The worldwide total today is estimated at around 10,000.
Libraries have rules, but there’s no charge to check out a book, Balaguer said. The books themselves are free, she said.
“This is just a different kind of free library,” she said.
Astrid Oliver, director of Reed Library at Fort Lewis College is of like mind.
“It’s a great idea,” Oliver said. “Any way to promote or exchange information is good.
“It shows that it’s not necessary to go to a building to exchange ideas. A natural place is just as good.”
Balaguer and Overby converted an old kitchen cupboard into their first little library. But containers can be built from scratch.
Their friend, Renelle Stewart, is doing just that – fashioning a box from wood taken from an old barn she is dismantling on her property in Bayfield.
“We were thinking about using old pallets,” Balaguer said as she watched Stewart measure and cut wood last week in Stewart’s Bayfield studio. “But Renelle just took another idea and ran with it.”
Stewart, an accomplished artist who has commissioned pieces in stained glass, also works in metal with her business RKSO Structure & Design. She has a degree in interior design, with an emphasis on metal sculpture, and a minor in architecture from the University of North Texas.
When the little library is finished, Stewart will install it along the Animas River Trail behind the Riverfront Center at Camino del Rio and 14th Street.
Stewart – also a personal trainer and ozone-therapy practitioner – has two businesses, Riverfront Fitness and Oxygen Fitness O3, in the center. She has the owner’s permission to place the box beneath a roof overhang there.
The little library at the Centennial Nature Trail sits on a lot near where Balaguer and Overby live. The pair named their creation the ADU Library, a sly poke at the controversy over accessory dwelling units, or granny quarters, that kept their neighborhood aboil for months and only recently was resolved by the Durango City Council.
The Animas River Trail library will be Riverside R.E.D. for “read, explore, discover.” The name also plays on the word “read.”
daler@duragoherald.com
