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This article was published 26/08/2016 (2799 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When a For Sale sign went up at 273 Mandeville St., in May, the accompanying real estate ad listed some of the property’s amenities: 1,300 square feet of living space, a detached garage and central air conditioning.

The blurb failed to mention the two-storey abode also boasts Winnipeg’s first officially registered Little Free Library.

Original homeowner Charlene Roziere erected the birdhouse-size cabinet in her front yard in June 2012. Since then, thousands of Winnipeggers — and, according to an attached guest book, two travellers from New Zealand — have delved through its mix of adult and children’s reading material.

“It was definitely hard,” Roziere said, when she was asked how tough it was to leave her library behind, when she and her family started a new chapter in their lives, and moved to Mitchell, three kilometres west of Steinbach, earlier this month.

“It was something we definitely put a lot of love into and though we knew the adults in the neighbourhood would understand if it wasn’t up and running after we left, there are lots of little kids who use that library — five- and six-year-olds who would walk over after supper to pick up something to read at bedtime — who would miss it.

“Luckily the people who bought our house are enthusiastic about the idea, too, and have told us the library isn’t going anywhere.”

Little Free Libraries is a Wisconsin-based non-profit organization founded by Tod Bol. In 2009, Bol placed a wooden contraption, built to resemble a red, one-room schoolhouse, in his front yard in Hudson, Wis., which he subsequently filled with books that were free for the taking. Word got around… and around; to the degree there are now 25,000-plus registered LFLs, as they’re lovingly referred to by their stewards, in some 40 countries, including (at last count) 99 in Manitoba.

The rules are fairly straightforward. The libraries “operate” seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Better still, you don’t have to fumble through your wallet, looking for your card, and there are no late fees. One of the chief tenets of Little Free Libraries is “Take a book, leave a book.” But in many cases, users are overly generous, leaving a dozen or so books behind for each one they borrow.

Some libraries worth checking out

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The official title of the library at 503 Gilmore Ave. is Little Free Library No. 5593. It’s less formal tag: Ella’s Library.

In 2013, Maria Sanchez was surfing through her Facebook feed when she spotted a story about Little Free Libraries. She and her husband Rory McDonnell had already spoken to Ella, their eldest of two daughters, about thinning out her sizable collection of novels. But rather than drop them off at the nearest Salvation Army, everybody decided a better idea would be to make them available to their North Kildonan neighbours instead.

McConnell constructed his family’s library out of repurposed wood and Plexiglas. The waterproof unit has three shelves — one each for adult, teen and children’s tomes. Because there is an accompanying, vine-covered arbor bench for anybody who wants to take a load off while trying to decide between Stephen King and Danielle Steel, Sanchez says it’s not uncommon to peer out her bay window at midnight and spot a couple of starry-eyed teenagers on the bench, doing what starry-eyed teenagers do best.

Also, the library is adjacent to a five-metre-long raised garden, from which passers-by are encouraged to pluck tomatoes, cucumbers or whatever else is in season. There is even a pair of scissors tethered to a bamboo stake, if people want to snip basil or chives for their evening salad.

“It’s really been a great way to get involved in the community, too,” McConnell added. “One day last summer this guy brought his kids over to grab some books and while we were chit-chatting, we realized he’d been living in the house right behind us for seven years and we’d never met.”

Build it and they will come… and read. That’s the thinking behind Winnipeg Public Libraries’ inaugural Build Day, which is slated for sometime this fall.

Earlier this year, Winnipeg Public Library received funding from the Winnipeg Foundation to construct 12 Little Free Libraries in low-income areas of the city.

“We put out a call in the spring for stewards to step forward if they were interested,” said Kathleen Williams, the library’s administrative co-ordinator of community outreach and marketing.

“A number of people applied — people who’d always wanted to be stewards but either because they didn’t have the proper (building) materials, didn’t have any (carpentry) skills or simply because they couldn’t afford the (US$45) registration fee, hadn’t achieved their goal, yet.” (The Little Free Libraries organization has waived all fees associated with the 12 libraries that will be constructed through Build Day.)

“The next phase is to pull together some carpenters or carpentry shops and see what we can do. Hopefully we’ll have everything in place before the snow flies.”

Williams said besides donating building supplies, Winnipeg Public Library (she cheekily referred to her place of work as “the big free library”) will also provide books, if need be, from its ongoing sales of withdrawn and donated materials.

“No, we don’t really view the little libraries as competition,” she said with a laugh, seated in her third-floor office at 251 Donald St. “The idea of putting books in people’s hands is very much what we’re all about here and I think the two complement each other quite nicely. Plus, they’re works of art. There’s one five doors from where I live; the woman there does stained glass and her little library has stained-glass panels all around it. It’s beautiful.”

Williams said there are a number of things to consider if a person is thinking about installing a lending library on their property. First of all, it has to be a prescribed distance away from the sidewalk or road so it doesn’t impede traffic — pedestrian or otherwise. It has to be situated on private property and, in cold-climate cities such as Winnipeg, it should be high enough off the ground so that it doesn’t disappear when Jack Frost comes to town. (We spoke with five Little Free Library stewards in Winnipeg and they all said their individual libraries operate year-round, despite the wintry conditions.)

Proper signage is another factor to bear in mind, Williams cautioned.

“There was one instance in the States where a person saw the sign “Little Free Library,” and took it literally, walking off with the library, books and all. After a media outcry, he ended up bringing everything back and apologizing to the owner for his gaffe.”

For more information — and to see if there’s a Little Free Library near you — visit here.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca