In a world of digital media (including this good old Website), I can’t help but be filled with joy (and nostalgia) when I see a place where proper paper books are still cherished. When that place is a tiny little library set up inside one of those red English phone booths on a town’s street corner, my happy-meter jumps into the red.
Check this puppy out. It’s a former BT phone kiosk that the villagers of Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset transformed into a book-exchange operation, according to 24Dash.com. The mini-library is open 24/7/365 and even has a light for middle-of-the-night insomniac borrowing.
Resident Janet Fisher got the idea for the library when the village lost its red telephone booth and its mobile library one right after the other. The town bought the kiosk from BT for £1 as part of the company’s “adopt a kiosk” program. Villagers installed the bookshelves to hold whatever books, CDs and DVDs people are done with and want to exchange for something else. The library works on the book-swap model, not a formal lending plan.
BT awarded the Westbury book exchange £500 in a national competition seeking the most innovative use of one of the red phone boxes.
My question is: Does the library have a phone?
Photo courtesy of ell brown via flickr