Tom Henihan
Express Staff
The printed book, whether paperback or hardcover has a life that carries on beyond its original reader. Books are a form of currency to exchanged, put away for another time, give as gifts or to loaned and borrow.
Printed volumes are tactile and have their own esthetic charm, unlike e-books, which are virtual entities that we can behold but never truly possess.
Like well played musical instruments, books absorb the patina of use from kindred spirits who have previously read them.
Not that the printed book has been totally eclipsed by the e-book, but book stores and especially used bookstores are a rare species, and libraries also have to assert the relevance they once possessed by default.
But libraries will always be indispensible, they are democratic, communal institutions, places of independent enquiry and mutual endeavor, they are beacons of civility that function largely on trust.
All libraries have the same objectives, and function largely on the same principals regardless of their size or stature.
Whether a library is an imposing edifice in a large city, or affiliated with a famous university, whether it is a modest municipal library, or a “Little Free Library” placed on a corner of a residential street in Donnelly Alberta, they all offer an open and enthusiastic accommodation to reading, to constructive curiosity and enquiry.
Author and psychologist Annette Erickson established The Little Free Library in her front yard in Donnelly, which operates on the concept of “take a book, leave a book.”
Erickson has registered the library with Little Free Library.org, an organization that supplies and facilitates small, individual libraries around the world and through those libraries millions of books are exchanged each year.
The Little Free Library in Donnelly was setup and stocked on August 28 and Erickson is hoping that other people in the area will follow suite and create more little libraries in the area and increase everyone’s access to books.
Annette Erickson is the author of memoir “In Search of Oneness,” (A Memoir of Hope and Healing.) and runs “Inner Pathways Counselling.”