Neighbourhood libraries popping up in town

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Published on Monday, June 18, 2018

photo By Ron Nordstrom

Murray Newton puts the finishing touches on an outdoor neighbourhood library at ArtsForward. This Rotary project encourages literacy and the joy of reading as anyone is welcome to leave a book or take a book free of charge.

By Cassandra Wehrhahn

Neepawa Banner & Press

The Neepawa Rotary Club and the Neepawa Public Library have teamed up in a project encouraging literacy.

Together, the two organizations are setting up what are known as neighbourhood libraries. It’s a “take a book, leave a book” concept, where people can take whatever book they are interested in, or put in a book that they do not want anymore. This popular idea is being used in various other communities, such as Brandon, to encourage people of all ages to read.

“Rotary is a huge promoter of literacy worldwide, and we thought this was a way of our club continuing to promote that in our community,” stated Rotary Club President, Don Schmall.

“The libraries were an idea I saw in Waterloo, Ontario,” Schmall continued, “I brought the concept to our club and we decided to give it a try.”

The idea was presented last year, but at the time the ground was too hard to set any posts up. Now that spring has come and the ground has thawed, the project is really getting started. The first post has been placed at ArtsForward, and we can expect to see more. Rrain Prior of ArtsForward, and Rotary Club member, disclosed that future locations include areas like the Riverbend campgrounds. The neighbourhood library that we can expect to see next will be at the Margaret Laurence Home.

“There’s really no big overarching goal,” Prior said. “It just gets books into people’s hands. It’s a really handy thing to have around.”

While the Neepawa Public Library is only open for set hours, these neighbourhood libraries allow books to be available at all hours for those who desire them.