Alumni Medical Library’s Little Free Library Provides Access to Leisure Reading
The Alumni Medical Library is a modern medical library. Library holdings include extensive electronic collections comprising 3,600+ current journals, 20,000+ e-books, hundreds of databases and 50+ quality-filtered subject guides. Additionally, library users have access to the University Libraries’ collections of more than 2.4 million physical volumes, over 45,000 current unique serials titles, and 77,000 media titles.
“As a health sciences library, most of our books and journals are electronic,” said Director of Library Services Kate Flewelling MLIS, AHIP. “They’re not something you would necessarily read for pleasure, and so we’ve wanted at the library to promote access to leisure reading.”
Flewelling sees how hard Medical Campus students work, and she wants her library to provide the services they need like study space, access to technology, books and journals.
“But you can see in public libraries, they’re offering so much more,” she said.
Unfortunately, flooding shuttered the South End branch of the Boston Public Library (BPL), and it’s closed indefinitely. The Alumni Medical Library partnered with the Boston Public Library to do signups for digital library cards, and collaborated with BPL, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and Massachusetts Library System, to place stickers at nearby transit stops so that students and other commuters could scan and gain access to digital audiobooks, eBooks, newspapers and magazines through a BPL program called “Browse, Borrow, Board.”
Still, Flewelling thought students needed more immediate access to leisure reading. She applied for and received a $1,000 Inclusion Catalyst Grant from Boston University Diversity & Inclusion to open a Little Free Library. The grants support “collaborative and creative programs and initiatives that generate learning and stimulate efforts that foster inclusive and equitable communities at Boston University.”
Based in St. Paul, Minn., the Little Free Library is a non-profit with nearly 200,000 library boxes distributed across the country—their response to a literacy crisis in the U.S.
Most days, the bright red glass-fronted cabinet stuffed with books is located at the Alumni Medical Library, but it also travels the campus on a cart that has a beverage station. Anyone can borrow a book, leave (or not leave) a book behind in exchange, and return it when they’re finished reading, or they can hold onto it, said Flewelling.
“We want to have really good current and classic books,” said Flewelling. Young adult books, graphic novels, romance literature, best sellers, and books by indigenous authors, people of color and LGBTQ authors as well. Flewelling noted two trends in student requests – nostalgic books from their youth, like “The Hunger Games,” and requests for nonfiction narrative public health books like Tracy Kidder’s “Rough Sleepers.”
“It’s a way to increase outreach for the library and give students an opportunity to focus on something other than work while also increasing access to diverse voices,” Flewelling said. “Medical Campus students study for hours and hours,” Flewelling said. “Maybe they can take five minutes and just have a cup of tea and read a novel.”
Library staff have donated some books and students can suggest titles to be purchased. The library has committed to buying books for the Little Free Library from More Than Words and two Black-owned bookstores. More Than Words employs youth ages 16-24 who are in foster-care, homeless, out-of-school or in the court system. They are taught to run an online and retail bookstore while receiving both personal and career support.