Bookshelves to Appear At Bus Stops, Inside Metro

By Natalya Smolentseva

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: September 5, 2012 (Issue # 1725)

Free mini-libraries are set to open at public transport stops around the city and in the metro by the end of this month.

The idea is that travelers will be able to choose a book, read it during their journey and return it to any of the other borrowing points around the city.

“The first shelf will probably appear in the center, but we will not forget about the commuter belt — it is an opportunity to make all of the urban environment more civilized,” said Viktor Orlov, one of the project’s organizers.

Open libraries already exist in Austria, Germany and other countries. Free book borrowing points were set up in Graz in Austria in 1991, and a few years later open libraries appeared in Hamburg and Mainz and the idea spread throughout Germany. A year ago, a free book vending machine was set up in the Madrid metro.

In St. Petersburg, the Open Library project originated from a roundtable conference about the future of libraries that was held at St. Petersburg State University of Culture and Art, the only university that produces professional librarians.

“The main idea was to stop libraries being desolated, abandoned places,” said Orlov.

The “libraries at bus stops” program is currently under consideration at City Hall’s Culture Committee, but deputy city governor Vasily Kichedzhi has reportedly already promised to support the idea.

Books of various genres and languages will be provided on shelves at bus stops and in the metro. They will be donated by the EKSMO and Lenizdat publishing houses and other partners including the HeadHunter recruitment website. Existing libraries will not provide books, as it would be impossible for librarians to control them, but the organizers are not afraid of people taking books home.

“They’re better being read than standing idle on the shelves of libraries,” said Orlov.

The shelves are expected to be points of bookcrossing, a movement in which people leave books in a public place to be picked up and read by others, which has developed in recent years in St. Petersburg. An open library was in operation on New Holland island this summer.

The Open Library project also plans to launch a program called “Open Rule” in district libraries in cooperation with Kichedzhi. The idea is to invite representatives of local government, municipal deputies, and heads of districts to enter into a dialogue with local residents, converting libraries into a discussion ground for local problems.

Organizers also have plans for the city’s permanent libraries. The Mayakovsky Library, for example, has long hosted meetings and roundtables with leading Russian culture figures as part of a program called “Man As He Is,” at which there is no concrete topic of discussion. Invited speakers talk about whatever they would like. Previous meetings with film director Alexander Sokurov and others proved popular. Orlov said that the writer Zakhar Prilepin, writer and politician Eduard Limonov, screenwriter Avdotia Smirnova and TV host and journalist Leonid Parfyonov are tipped to be the next speakers.