Apply to participate in Natick Little Free Library Community Build

Have you ever admired those cute Little Free Libraries around town and thought about joining in the fun? You could be one of ten Natick families that will have the opportunity to participate in a free Natick Little Free Library Community Build workshop at the Morse Institute Library. Apply here by June 20.

Natick Little Free Library Community Build workshops will take place on July 7 & 9 as Natick families and neighbors come together during the summer reading season and go step-by-step through the process of building, completing, and installing their own Little Free Library.

Participants can expect a virtual orientation session on July 7, where they’ll learn safety tips for construction, how to use their library as a tool for neighborhood engagement, and hear from a library builder and elementary school teacher in Medellin, Colombia. Actual construction will take place on July 9 at the Morse Institute Library and will be facilitated by local carpenter, DIYer, and educator Farid Quraishi.

This workshop is family-friendly for anyone comfortable with using a hammer and screwdriver and requires no previous building experience. All Little Free Libraries will include registration on the official Little Free Libraries website.

This community volunteer-run workshop is being held with support from the Natick Center Cultural District and Morse Institute Library. Each Little Free Library has a value of $240, which is being made available free of charge to participants thanks to the sponsorship of Natick Cultural Council, Mathworks, and Eversource.

Little Free Libraries around Natick

Is it a phone booth? Is it a tiny house? Is it wonderful stained glass? Yes, yes, and yes, but it’s also a Little Free Library. Little Free Library is an organization dedicated to spreading accessibility to reading material all across the world. The main way they do this is by selling their Little Free Library kits, which are then put together and maintained by members of the community. Anyone can buy a Little Free Library, and Natick residents certainly seem to have an appetite for them. In my long search across Natick for every Little Free Library I could find, (with the help of the Little Free Library app) I discovered more than twenty in total.

Little Free Libraries are open to anyone, anytime. Books can be taken out of these libraries and returned at the reader’s leisure, or kept if they really loved their read. While looking at all these libraries I picked up a few books for myself (something from the Discworld series), but I could have taken enough Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy books to fill a warehouse. Those two guys are seriously inescapable.

On the whole the Little Free Libraries in Natick are very impressive. Many library owners, unwilling to allow themselves to be constrained by the base model that can be ordered, branch out and create unique places for people to come find books. With the sheer number of Little Free Libraries there are in town, chances are there’s one just five minutes away from you.

• Please send tips, photos, ideas to natickreport@gmail.com
• Learn about advertising on Natick Report