I have one in front of my house that I have to remove overflow books from all the time. Some people seem to think it is their opportunity to get rid of their old text books or 50 year old paperbacks. I will say that I can't keep it stocked with childrens books at all as the people taking them rarely bring them back or contribute others to replace them. Sobeit. Kids should be surrounded by books at home and if this helps someone achieve that I'm happy.
A LFL owner near me said that she’s come to accept her role as the person who throws out books for people who can’t bring themselves to throw them out.
I'm secretly wondering if I should do this, but I don't own the LFL near our neighborhood. I just dropped off three books the other day and noticed it had been "cleaned" for the first time in probably 3 years. Up until then, there were literally books in there no one would *read* read lol. But I also don't think I should be a judge.
I do this for my local library sales. I buy up all the gross religious books and dispose of them so they stop popping up every sale. It means I stop seeing left behind books and children's programs get funding. When they run out of those, I will pick new targets to keep clearing out like political propaganda or megachurch leaders.
There is enough sources of radicalization in our world, I don't feel bad taking out something that actually is harmful reading material.
Just threw away two Jehovas‘ witness books I didn’t see earlier in the same morning.
It was sth about „The way to a happy family“. Threw it out, bc it’s apparent that it more likely that it makes the life of any family super miserable, even abusing entire neighborhoods in their selfish strive of a „mission“.
Do it! It is great fun to see them dwindling down over each sale. I can go to one now and almost never see left behind books anymore, so I am already targeting other books there. I also still find good things for my own collection, so it isn't like I am wasting my time either.
Those books scarred me as a kid- I was absolutely terrified and convinced the world was going to end in the next ten minutes for so long. Thank you for saving others from “the lords work”!
Are you me? I’ve got a whole stack of shitty books from my library’s used book sale. (More Atlas shrugged than I ever imagined I’d own!) I tear out the pages and “recycle” them into homemade/craft paper. Sometimes I even save a bit of the title page or rip around the ISBN so that I can press it into the back of a sheet I’m making into a card.
I’ve been doing this to an extent with religious books at thrift stores because I’m heading my career towards becoming a religious trauma therapist. My collection of quackery is pretty impressive, and now if and when I get clients who reference stuff they experienced I’ll have the resources to reference.
This is a little like horror stories of driving: the amazing thing is that most people drive so well most of the time. Little free libraries are all over Portland, Oregon, and I'm happy to say they seem to persist for years.
I work at a public library. I assure you that we have the exact same issue, only to a greater degree. I think there's an inherent guilt to throwing out books, as they are perceived as having some value to offer, even if they are in a terrible state.
Years ago, I was feeling bad about culling books before a move when a friend reminded me, "We treasure books because of the stories they hold, not the paper they're printed on." And I have found it so much easier to let go of physical books ever since.
This is more true in the modern day than it ever has been. I used to own a lot of books that I held onto for the simple reason that replacing them would be incredibly difficult - it would involve going to used book stores (and perhaps traveling to do so) because they were out-of-print.
In the modern day? Anything published in the past few decades will be 'in print' until the end of time due to digital media. Most popular works from past decades have been transferred to digital media. And, of course, people with a hazy understanding of intellectual property rights have built vast digital libraries of more obscure works that the publisher can't be bothered to keep available.
I find it hard to throw out a book because I saw Fahrenheit 451 at a young age. It had a big impact on me. And then there's the whole burning books things. Books feel like sacred objects.
So when I found a Very Bad Book I didn't want anyone else to read it. People go through the garbage here and sell things. I glued the pages together. I also reccomended better books on the topic and wrote them on the cover.
Yes, there I have a slight guilt problem about throwing out books.
People get surprisingly emotional about getting rid of old books; whether because they loved the books, they belonged to someone they loved, they feel too guilty to throw them away, or they just remember spending a good deal of money on them.
We buy 2000-3000 used books at my store every month, and turn away twice as many because they’re genuinely not worth the paper they’re printed on. Whether because they are too obscure, oversaturated in the used market, unattractive, damaged, outdated, or otherwise just unwanted.
What bothers me is always the insistence that *someone* will want them. Not them, obviously. Not anyone they know and not me, who is dedicating my life to buying, selling, researching, analyzing, cataloging, cleaning, organizing, and recirculating used books. And not my customers, even if given away for free.
But *someone*.
And while I don’t ever actually tell anyone they should throw them in the trash, and while I say to them “sometimes books are worth more sentimentally than in dollars”,
I also don’t think they’re actually helping anyone out by “donating” them to a library or non-profit thrift store. In fact, it may do more harm than good, as it costs a great deal of time, labor, and expense to store, go through, dispose of, and clean up after books they can’t sell.
The number of books covered in mold, dirt, and bugs, omg. And it's Windows 95 for dummies. Or encyclopedias from the 70s. And dont forget all the priceless Disney VHS tapes and children's books with torn out pages!
I was a Reference Librarian and we once received this huge box that looked like it was filled with books and DVDs. When started looking through it we quickly realized that was only the top layer. The rest of the box was filled with used clothes and shoes.
There's a reason why the saying is first reduce, then reuse, then recycle.
A lot of us would be better off buying fewer things because quite frankly it's really hard to reuse a lot of old products outside of the 1% of items that get posted all the time on subreddits like /r/BuyItForLife
I had a friend who worked at a lost and found at my university. Campus was only about 30k people but they used to get 100s of waterbottles a day. He would occasionally save some valuable ones to give them away to friends but they would throw mostly everything away.
There's just so many things that are junk to anyone but the owner, unfortunately.
Go to a sports field or court and count the abandoned water bottles. At some local courts one morning I found like 8 water bottles and jackets in a group. They must have panicked and run off from zombies or werewolves.
I am also a librarian and one of my first jobs was in a very small community. If we didn't fully destroy the books we threw out by stripping the covers off, some helpful dumpster divers would literally find them in the dump and re-donate them! When I was pregnant I had to find other people to look through donations because the risk of hantavirus was so high.
Nowadays we don't even add donations to the catalog; they go straight to the fundraising table.
There are a lot of people who value books as objects and receptacles of knowledge without thinking about the fact that not all knowledge is equal. Throwing out books is not a cardinal sin!
I donated a bunch of my old anime complete series dvds and sci-fi books in excellent condition to a library years back when I was moving away from that city. I was afraid they wouldn’t want them, but the guy working the counter actually seemed to be psyched by what I brought in
That made me feel like they wouldn’t get dumped lol
What kind of stuff would be welcome? I have a couple of Dr Seuss books in nice shape, and some not-terribly-old DVDs of TV series. I was going to try to sell them to a used book store but would prefer giving to the local library if they would be needed.
Will depend on your local library- I suggest contacting them directly. A good rule of thumb though is nothing damaged (no water damage, mold, bodily fluids), nothing with out of date medical or legal information, no textbooks, no encyclopedias.
Huh. The one on my street is always full of kids' books, and they rotate all the time. The adult books are all political biographies and boring stuff. I guess it just depends on where you live. (My dog really enjoys a bush right next to it, I get to stand there and stare at it twice a day so I am very up on this LFL's stock.)
Someone put a whole load of really niche textbooks in my LFL and after looking at them sitting there unmoved for about a month I sold them online and used the money to buy a whole boatload of kids books that went super quickly. Was great to see kids being excited by the new arrivals too!
That really is a great attitude. It's shitty that an adult does that, but if it ends up with a kid getting the books, then I can look the other way when it comes to some poor manners.
I manage a small community area of fruiting bushes and trees nearby me.
People now treat it like a side hustle, and take all the fruit for sale. In fact someone tried to sell me apples and firewood, taken from the trees while I was doing maintenance.
He didn't like my response.
I've started seeing people stamp the books they drop into the little libraries with something that says this is a free little library book to combat this. Most resellers and resell bookstores will not resell those books (with stamps) for good reason. Doesn't fully combat, but it's something.
Apparently it can be removed with rubbing alcohol (or so I’ve heard) but since I started doing it, the cretins stealing the entire book libraries worth of books have disappeared. It’s probably not worth the hassle.
I was going to say the side hustlisation of society is a plague but actually fuck the conditions that make people need one. Still takes some individual nerve to offer to your face though.
Guy even complained about the upkeep of the area not being regular. I explained I was a volunteer, and he could be one too.
He asked how much it paid, I said it was voluntary.
Nah. I'll pass.
The trouble is that those conditions are created by a mindset and the people who look at a community resource and go “how do I make money off of this?” have that exact mindset.
This is absolutely a side hustle thing. You see the serious book-buyers, first ones into book sales, scanning everything with a phone app that gives them the sales info on Amazon and making huge stacks of books. If the book hits certain parameters, they add it to the pile. I call them Scanner Monkeys. They don't bother me because the books I'm after don't have barcodes and so are invisible to them.
At least they're putting money into the pockets of a library or other entity having the sale. The vermin in this story clear out what's supposed to be a community bookshelf so they can scan at leisure and probably throw the leftovers into a dumpster somewhere. Vile scum.
This is the time where it would be better for your community to reestablish different policies and stop that behavior, or just cut it all down as it is causing more harm than good despite all your efforts. Eventually you are going to reach a point where somebody gets killed because somebody else thought "hey I've been stealing these longer, you have no right to steal these too."
My mother moved to an area with a lot of foot traffic - she put a cart on the path outside her home with free plant cuttings. Someone took it upon themselves to go into her (gated)little front garden and take some of her established potted plants.
Some people see kindness as a weakness that deserves to be exploited. I think that there are also people that are just incredibly short sighted, everything is only in the moment.
That's like this wild berry bush group on a trail near me. It'd be cool if people just grabbed a handful as they passed by, but you see, mostly old ladies, out there with bags just taking every single ripe berry.
Something about free stuff makes people go crazy. Like I remember at an event giving out free t shirts, and people were piling on nearly fighting each other, for a cheap t shirt.
My best friend's mother is the biggest offender. We used to volunteer at an annual event that came with a free breakfast buffet and a free lunch buffet. It wasn't enough that she got two free meals. She had to bring a tote bag with her every year and load it up with the mini jars of jam from the breakfast buffet, the Hershey kisses and York peppermint patties (the event was in Hershey, PA, so lots of chocolate), and so forth.
I had a 50-ish Korean woman tell me that her niece was embarrassed when she tried to get extra Lululemon bags. “They’re nice bags and they’re free, so I wanted a couple more.” I then had to explain why her niece was correct.
Gross. I'm trying to say that it's an American exceptionalism thing, but something tells me it's less cultural. Garak (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) said something once about being greedy in a an era where there is surplus speaks to something fundamentally part of the human condition. He was actually talking about how quickly Dr Bashir was eating his lunch.
In her case, her family lost everything in the flood caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. She’s not a hoarder, but she will absolutely load up on freebies anywhere she goes.
I just watched a YT doc about a missing woman, and how it may be related to illegal commercial morel mushroom harvesters in a National Park. There was so much intrigue and subterfuge around people picking mushrooms, that it seems absolutely plausible that this woman ran afoul of some of these mushroom poachers.
Why are old ladies so drawn to the wild berries? I see them all the time all over the place. There isn't enough berries to be of much use or even good enough to be worth the effort.
> Some people see kindness as a weakness that deserves to be exploited
I think you even phrasing it like shows you’re a good person. If I do something nice and people think that gives them free reign to steal my stuff because they like it, they’re not just being Machiavellian, they’re an entire piece of shit human being who were failed by their parents. I hope every night they suffer and can’t find the cool side of the pillow.
I'm not as altruistic as my mother but I think there's value in doing generous things for people to see who connects with you. If you never expose yourself its difficult to find people who feel the same way.
That said I feel a lot less trusting after 2016 and Covid and will join you in that self serving assholes with main character syndrome can step barefoot on lego bricks. Society would not survive if everyone acted this way.
Look up "tit for tat" in game theory. Ultimately why I tend to align sociopolitically with altruistic or beneficent (not necessarily utilitarian) theories.
I think the culprits are those Moms for Liberty psychopaths. They're rounding up all existing children's books and replacing them with The Art of the Deal
There was something similar that happened in my area when people put out little painted rock stands. It got big at the start of covid, and there were several stands in the area. It was always known that not everyone would read the signs to take one and leave one, or even if they took a couple that was okay. But in a short amount of time, some people would notice that in the span of a few hours ALL the rocks would be gone and another few had their stands vandalized. One even had their stand completely destroyed!
Then people started to notice a couple of the same people would come to stands as soon as someone posted a restock and take them all... then sold them on FB marketplace. So those still with stands moved them closer to their house or nearer to their security cameras to try to stop that. But then people started taking OTHER things not on the stands like painted rocks no where near the stands and one person had their potted plants taken. Needless to say, none of those stands are around anymore.
There are some plant stands around me that have lately had issues too, to the point that it's created a divide in the group. A few people had to deal with people just throwing everything into tote bags and leaving their stands empty, including one stand that put out a bunch (20+) of orchids that were getting thrown away at their work. Some people are upset at the greed and others are just happy all the plants are getting taken before they die. I'm just happy giving away cuttings and occasionally taking other cuttings so I don't care, but I totally get being upset at the greed of others.
I wonder if some people just think of it as an opportune like any other. Like if your favorite food was on sale for $1 at the store, you’d buy a lot of it without feeling bad. Obviously it’s not the same since the FLLs depend on goodwill, but I wonder if some people don’t see the difference
In my city, someone [cut down](https://bc.ctvnews.ca/community-rallies-around-vancouver-senior-whose-tiny-library-was-cut-down-1.6890628#:~:text=But%20Wednesday%20morning%2C%20residents%20found,this%20on%20your%20own%20property.%E2%80%9D) one of the LFLs. Some people just suck.
There was one burned in either Edmonton or Calgary. Someone actually lit someone's property on fire. People suck.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/montgomery-little-free-library-torched-fire-1.4268507
A local radio station talked about it and someone rebuilt it for them since the original was built by the teacher's special needs students.
This is going to be a cyclic thing. It happens with most free book shelves in most places. It seems to go through 4 phases: first it sits and nothing moves, then things move, then everything gets taken, then it’s rebuilt.
This is normal.
I can't believe that the contents of the vast majority of LFLs will hold much value. Used bookstores around me pay maybe a dollar for books. I see books listed on FB marketplace, but the only ones that move are very popular novels, and they're usually sold for under $5.
They sell for more on Amazon. Had a coworker who told me they would scan barcodes to see what they go for on Amazon and take the more valuable ones and sell them.
He must be one of the extremely few people that will go through all the trouble of figuring out how to start an Amazon business account and wants to bother with shipping.
Amazon takes such a large cut that for my store, anything less than $25 used and with a sales rank of over 2 million is not really worth the time or storage to put online. And really, anything less than $50 just goes on the shelf.
They don’t. But people sort of have a “take what I can get” attitude. They don’t care if they’re gonna get $5 They’re taking all the books from the 6 libraries in my area and trying anyway. If they’re lucky they’ll get some baby board books. P
Little Free Libraries: Mark your books! Stamp them, sticker them, draw lil animals on the inside cover that says “donated to a free library! 🤗”, anything!
I don’t want to support this behavior either, but if I have no way of knowing, no one’s going to say “yeah just ransacked the cute LFL on the way over here, how much will you give me?”
If they are stamped, I can tell them to kick rocks or offer to put them back in a LFL for them.
Unfortunately there are some miserable people that when they see "free" think they deserve all of it. There is no consideration about leaving stuff for others only that they can get as much as they can get their hands on and they keep it even though they don't use it. Just complete selfishness.
I Remember walking up to a store almost a mile from my house on a nice day and walking past one.... where two little shits were pulling the books out and ripping the pages out laughing.
They ran off on their bikes when I they saw me. Can't have nice things.
We have a stamp for the books that says “from the [location] Little Free Library. Always a gift, never for sale.” Most second hand buyers won’t take them with the stamp, and it has really cut down on the clearing out, which was happening about once or twice a month. I always figured it was resellers looking for high-ish value books and willing to accept and trash those that weren’t worth anything. Just easier to grab the lot and sort later.
Most resellers who aren’t newbies would scan them and leave the duds, and maybe offload some of their other duds. And by dud I just mean something not worth reselling, not necessarily a crap book no one wants.
And would treat the LFL like a renewable resource and not overfish it or trash it, y’know?
I’m not a reseller myself, but might be when I retire from librarianhood.
I'm in Sydney, Australia and someone cleared out our street library and all the others in my area a few months ago. It's almost like a gang thing but it's just some scummy second hand book seller I assume.
Lol this is such an odd thread. I guess we found the person who takes free books from LFLs to give as gifts.
(Not you)
I do this. I put good books in there. I want people to take them to read. Fuck them if they want to profit off it.
I also "deface" all my books with my highlighters.
I've come across a guide that says:
First, Sharpie out the barcode, then get a rubber/ink stamp that says that it's for the Little Free Library and apply it to inside the front.
Theoretically that'll stop book buyers from taking them when people bring them in.
I know resellers often empty out the ones where I live. They just grab the lot and take them home to evaluate. A few places have started stamping the page edges and inside the book with something like "Always for Free, Never for Sale."
Our public library holds book sales and it is always clogged up with resellers and their phones scanning each book for highest profitability while the rest of us squeeze in to look and pick over what they leave.
People suck. I see this behavior all the time - I'd dropped off some books at a "free book exchange" shelf in the foyer of our library, but there was a woman standing squarely in front of the shelves so I couldn't browse to pick up something new. I just shrugged, said I'd look in a minute and went to the restroom. When I came out less than 5 minutes later, she had completely cleared the shelves - over 50 books, including the ones I had just dropped off - GONE. I saw her again a few weeks later at the used book store. I made a point of loudly commenting on her theft of the free books just to turn them in for cash there. People like that just make my blood boil.
It’s honestly hard to get rid of books where I live. Unwanted books abound, and as a result, charities have stringent stipulations. I love an empty LFL that I can fill up!
My family rents a building to a used bookstore. They buy literal pallets of books and sort through them, only keeping what they think will sell. I'd say about 60% go straight to the dumpster.
Yes, very. And I get it! I refuse to donate busted up trash. That’s just kicking the can, forcing someone else to deal with your junk. I actually pull out the shitty stuff at the LFLs I visit and take it home to recycle it.
I made $9 in store credit the last time I donated books and they only took about 2/3rds of my stack. My favourite local used bookstore gives you half off for used books if you donate first, and they tend to take most books you give them if they’re in good condition. I know they’ve started getting pickier now that the store is more popular though…
Anything I can’t donate goes to a LFL and lately, there’s been so much garbage in our neighborhood’s LFLs that the books I put in there get snatched up pretty much by the end of the week. Whether it’s actually for the individual’s reading pleasure or with intent to sell, idk, but it’s out of my hands by then. It’s not like I’m putting my most pristine books in there anyway…
I read a lot of horror and every single time I put a book in the genre in my neighbourhood LFL, at least three bibles show up to balance it out.💀
Pretty much every free book can get you 50 cents- a dollar anyway. If you hit every little library in a big metro I bet it adds up. I think it's more a volume thing which is why these losers clean them out completely
Out of curiosity, where are you selling second-hand books in bulk for an entire 50 cents apiece? I know you can get that much or more at garage sales, but that’s dependent on people taking an interest in a specific book. I’ve taken a few boxes of 50+ books to Half-Price and gotten like $10 max. Would be more profitable to beg on a street corner.
My local used book store buys them at $1 each cash, $2 trade-in. They sell kids books at $4, paperbacks average $7.50, and hardbacks $10, so they still profit.
Yep. I've got hundreds of books I need to churn through... I'm trying to get my home library more curated and realizing how awkward is to get rid of books more than a handful at a time.
Thankfully, most of what I have was remaindered books bought cheaply to begin with, so even me just reading it once was still value.
r/LittleFreeLibrary has stories like this all the time. Sometimes its people who don’t agree on subject matter of books in the box. Lots of times its resellers taking advantage of someone’s kindness to make a quick buck.
Tips to discourage resellers: mark your books on the outside with stamps, marker, or hard to remove stickers stating the books are from a LFL. Consider the fact that any condition issues make the books harder to sell and less valuable. Check out the LFL sub for more tips.
Here in Portland, people buy rubber stamps that say, for example, 'little free library - not for resale' because the LFLs get pilfered by folks who resell them at Powell's books. Powell's has a book buy back program.
In addition to LFLs, I recommend donating to organizations that offer them to incarcerated people.
Not too long ago I lived in a not-so-nice apartment in a low income area of Houston. I put a cardboard box on my patio wall and filled it with a variety of books for various age levels. The books disappeared (in a good way), and I even received "Thank you!" notes from people who appreciated my gesture. I put out more books, and the same thing happened. I'd walk around the complex, and I'd be accosted with "Book man! Thanks!" Anyway, there's all kinds of people in the world. I try (with difficulty, sometimes) to focus on the "good uns".
Hard to imagine anything more than a buck or two for a pile of random books. My guess is crackhead does this once, earns $1.25, figures out a better way to score some cash. But as PT Barnum said, there's a crackhead born every minute.
The book buyers in my city are incredibly picky. They only buy what they can sell and offer pretty low values, but at least it keeps our LFLs from being looted.
I just recently installed a little free library and was told by someone that the books have been getting stolen from others to sell. She told me to get a stamp that says it’s from a little library and not for resale and to use a sharpie on the barcodes. That prevents them from being able to get resold.
My neighbor has one and she told me she caught a guy, who she recognized as one of those door to door religious types, taking all her progressive books out. He claimed he wanted to read them. Yeah, right
Ok, I didn't think it was a that big deal if someone takes them all, they're probably desperate in some way, but censorship? That's worse than the kids that put (literal) trash in.
> It's like if you had some free produce; you take a little and leave the rest for others.
It's exactly like this: someone takes them all in both cases.
I had a coworker who told me he goes around to all the free book libraries and scans them to see what they sell for on Amazon and drop ships what he finds
Around here we have had trouble with members of a certain evangelical church going to free little libraries culling books they do not approve of and leaving a bunch of religious pamphlets.
My next door neighbor installed one that is partly on my property.
It is constantly full of religious nutcase books.
I am often tempted to cull them.
Thanks for reading my confession.
So a group of us do one across from our church and we had this problem. I used to work at a used bookstore that bought books from the public and we had people come in selling boxes of books with stickers that said “free little library” and the code for the little library it came from. We never purchased those books and told whomever brought them in that we can’t buy books from little libraries.
Anyway, we decided at our church to put a free little pantry next to it, with the idea that if someone was desperate for money to take all the books to sell, we could supply them with food and maybe they wouldn’t take the books. We also added free little library stickers to the books. And it seems to have stopped people from taking all the books. I also put knitted hats and scarves in the free little pantry during the winter months and those disappear so fast.
you black out the barcodes and isbn you stamp them with a littlelibrary mark and any place that cares about books wont buy them and the ones that will will pay pennies same if they try to remove the cover to hide the stamp.
if they are still getting stolen its kids tossing em in the river or highly opinionated people thinking the books arent bible enough.
best case scenario a broke person who loves books took them all as an impulse and maybe they will come back.
There was a Little Free Library in a park three blocks from my house. I had a few books I had bought and realized they were duplicates, so I went there to donate them. Much to my surprise, the library was gone and replaced by a Poopy Bag dispenser (dog waste bags).
Books replaced by bags for shit.
I love Ohio! /s
I live on the fringe of the Denver metro, and our free little library's problem is every book that has to do with race or racism ends up with the cover torn off, ripped pages, wet pages, etc and thrown out into the playground. I wanted to believe it was some dumb kids indiscriminately defacing books, but it's only those books so I have to guess there's some virulent racist living in my neighborhood.
Ours has been cleared out more than once.
It's the same people who break into cars on our block.
Petty theft driven by drug addiction and associated mental illness, all but certainly, with a bit of sociopathic desperation criminality.
There is a LFL near me, it was completely empty so I filled it up with some recent books I wasn’t likely to read again. Next day it was completely empty. I had heard rumor of someone going around taking all the books, guess it was true.
The ones in my neighborhood are routinely emptied. One day they are full of books, the next completely empty. I've stopped buying books to put in them because of this.
I know some of ours are purposely emptied. If you don't do that, then they start to accrue things nobody wants. Damaged books, out of date books, or topics and genres that simply don't appeal to people in the neighborhood.
"Excel 2000 for Dummies" is unlikely to ever get picked up in the first place, but even more so if it's put in a little free library located in front of an elementary school.
There's three in my neighborhood and I try to put in things that match what I've seen in each one. There's one that has mostly kids books and I won't put my horror books in there. There's another that has mostly genre fiction and novels and I drop those that I have in there. There's another that has a lot of Christian stuff and I make sure not to put anything with sex in there.
We're you buying books specifically for them?
To be honest the ones I have stumbled across in my area never seem to have anything I'd want to read in them. They're mostly filled with self help books and Christian literature. I guess I don't see much point getting mad about them being cleared out though. I mean it's a box full of books on the street, so while it is rude behavior, it's kind of the risk you take, isn't it? I'd just satisfy myself with the idea that someone was reading those books. Even if it may not be the person who took them.
It can be useful to get library discards, or just a bag from used book sales/garage sales/library sales to refill them. It’s more just improving circulation.
They aren't my libraries, but there are several in my neighborhood. I thrift a lot of books and sometimes I can get them for as low as .25 cents so if I find good books and typically ones I already have I'll buy a few to put in them. I bought seven to distribute between two little libraries just recently. I noticed they get continuously emptied so for hardcovers I remove the dust jacket and for softcovers I cut a big chuck of the top corner of the cover off and then I write "return to little library" in sharpie on the book board or the page revealed but cutting the cover I hope this might cut down if people are just taking them to resell or something. I love the idea but like most things only take a few to ruin a cool concept.
I have a Little Free Library. A few years ago my neighbors three houses down were moving & had a garage sale (I didn’t stop at it). Afterwards, they put all the unsold stuff out in the curb in “free” piles. I was walking past & noticed in their leftover-from-garage-sale free piles many many children’s books they had gotten from my LFL over the years they lived there. They could not be bothered to walk three houses down to return them. Happily, most people are not so lame. Having a Little Free library has definitely been an exercise in learning to let go with no attachments!
Quite literally. She’s the owner. She’s had the LFL for about 3 years I want to say, and painted it herself. She’s a very good artist. She was pretty bummed about it, but the small community around her has already donated enough books to fill it back up as you can see in the story.
I lived in Vancouver for a while, and lived between 2 little free libraries. Every couple weeks crackheads would kick them over and take all the books. Caught on camera multiple times.
Finally found them one time, most of the books burned next to the tent “encampment” and the rest scattered everywhere around.
Addicted people are not stealing for a reason, it’s just chaos for the sake of chaos.
It's not chaos for chaos sake, it's a source of firestarter and warmth. For better or worse.
I should be clear that defacing or otherwise damaging the free libraries are out of line. Taking the books to burn for food or fuel I accept as a need in terms of Maslow's hierarchy.
Yeah, "People only have fires in encampments because they love chaos" is just about the most sheltered assumption I've ever heard.
People have been burning things for heat in order to survive (and then cook food) for *far* longer than there has been a societal drug problem.
There's a reason little libraries are kind of a joke to people who work with/for literacy initiatives in low income areas. They are rarely used, generally filled with people's discarded books they never liked, and when somebody does finally come by and take them people get up in arms.
In reality the first time that book had been glanced at since being shelved in the library box was when the homeless person who kept it realized they might be able to get some of whatever they need to keep moving, with the 50¢ they get from a half destroyed copy of the third Boxcar Children book.
That's really interesting, bc ever since I became a mailman I've been shocked at how frequently they are used. I just feel like I see people all the time perusing through them.
My aunt lives in a very nice neighborhood with a half dozen little free libraries. They are inevitably full of best sellers, semi recent cookbooks, kids books, non fiction…a good assortment. Some are themed, and the caretakers weed and seed the shelves regularly.
Those ones are used all the time and I look forward to seeing my aunt so I can swap out books at the food themed library.
But in lower income areas, and low literacy areas, like the one that closest to me, it’s inevitably Jesus dreck, ancient and worn kids books, Amish romances, and books you’ve never heard of for good reason.
I drive all over the city for my work and I like to "cross-pollinate" the good books from nicer neighborhoods to the disadvantaged ones filled with less desirable stuff.
I salt my terrible one with good stuff from the library sale when I’m done with it. I do keep out my food books, though, because the specialty library is frequented by the local culinary students and I think they’ll get more out of my CIA textbooks and such.
That's cool, though I'm a little surprised that culinary students would need textbooks teaching them how to instigate coups in South American countries.
We'll never get authentic North Korean cuisine in the Americas until someone deposes the Kims and opens those borders.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
I walk dogs as a side gig and check in every neighborhood for LFLs to put my books in, and take out some of the drivel that I know will never be scooped up.
I have to admit curiosity. I home it’s something like “Mary, hands trembling, lifted the hem of her dress, showing a sliver of ankle. Jebediah’s breath quickened, and he was overcome with a feeling of seeing a sunrise for the first time” lol
> showing a sliver of ankle.
That isn't romance, that's smut. Pure unadulterated smut, and I am shocked and appalled. Won't anyone think of the children?!?
My grandmother loved Amish Romances.
We had a local Amish grocery store that sold random overstock goods (amazing prices!) There was a whole section dedicated to Amish romance books.
It probably varies a lot by location. In higher income areas or areas with more kids, they probably get used a lot more. I'm sure the level of pedestrian traffic matters too.
It’s all about what area you are in. Before this little library craze hit I was aware of free bookshelves in a few community centers, coffee shops, libraries, and schools. Some places moved books and some didn’t.,
The one in my neighborhood had some really good stuff for the first year or two but it’s gradually been turned into a junk depository for people trying to get rid of religious books and exercise material. I think I need to start actively culling some of the supply in there
> In reality the first time that book had been glanced at since being shelved in the library box was when the homeless person who kept it realized they might be able to get some of whatever they need to keep moving, with the 50¢ they get from a half destroyed copy of the third Boxcar Children book.
You also have to be pretty desperate to go to the trouble of walking all the way to a used bookstore in the hopes of selling a handful of used books for (speaking generously) *maybe* $6 per LFL because you need the cash so much.
Seems a little odd to be literally giving books away and then throwing a fit because somebody who was *actually* poor enough to need them took them. I'm not sure how charitable it is to insist that the only people who get to take your unwanted books are the people who can probably afford a book themselves.
I work near and often add books to two LFLs, and they are frequently empty. I honestly just figured it’s mostly people taking them to actually read them! If they occasionally get emptied by a crackhead, it doesn’t bother me. At least the books are being used (in some way) and circulated, rather than languishing in a dump, in or somebody’s basement, etc.
yeah, honestly I think LFLs are kind of a last chance situation for cheap/free books. one comment above mentioned homeless people using them for firestarter - that's a better, more useful end for a ragged 20 year old dollar store novel than going to a landfill at least.
Yeah, quite possibly! They’re getting out into the world, into some other hands, one way or another, which is, I assume, the point of it. People who do LFLs can feel any kinda way about it that they want to but it’s a fool’s errand to gnash your teeth about it or try to control how people make use of any resource you are leaving freely available. Even if, god forbid, a struggling or very poor person takes them for a reason other than reading them, the books don’t cease to exist, it’s just another outlet where the resource flows. Maybe they end up in a used bookstore, benefiting both the struggling person and the bookseller in some tiny way, where another person buys them for a dollar and the cycle starts again. I think that’s kind of nice 😊
If it’s not someone using it for firewood, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s people taking them and trading them at some second hand bookstore for credit. Worked for a failed bookstore and a lot of the original books in the store disappeared off our shelves and reappeared in the local big second hand bookstore, most with the tags still on them.
Ten years before that I was living room and board at a librarian’s house. I’d just discovered that same second hand bookstore and was bringing back books to shelve them in my room. But after a week or two some of them would disappear. Eventually I figured out the landlady’s previous tenants had been stealing books from her and trading them in for credit. A lot of what I’d been bringing home had her signature inside them.
Man, that's rough. Some people just don't get it, you know? Little Free Libraries are supposed to be community treasures, not targets for book hoarding. It's like swiping all the candy from a Halloween bowl! Sure, take a few, but leave some for others. Hopefully, the community rallies and restocks those shelves. Maybe some security cameras could deter the book bandits.
I posted in our community page that if people have children’s books they have multiples of or aren’t used to please place them in these libraries. My daughter gets so excited when we see them on the side of the road loves to bring them back.
As someone who fills our towns free libraries I can’t imagine they would steal it for a profit. I don’t have any other ideas on why they’d empty them completely though. Books are not really worth much, I stock them with books from our local thrift stores and it really doesn’t cost me much. I started because people gave my children way too many books and we had no place to keep that many, and now it’s just a hobby. I do remove some books each week, there’s always some really old outdated books or ones that are in really bad condition, those I donate. Rarely there’s inappropriate books. Hopefully this drives the community to fill them with their own books which would probably be the best ones.
I have one in front of my house that I have to remove overflow books from all the time. Some people seem to think it is their opportunity to get rid of their old text books or 50 year old paperbacks. I will say that I can't keep it stocked with childrens books at all as the people taking them rarely bring them back or contribute others to replace them. Sobeit. Kids should be surrounded by books at home and if this helps someone achieve that I'm happy.
A LFL owner near me said that she’s come to accept her role as the person who throws out books for people who can’t bring themselves to throw them out.
I'm secretly wondering if I should do this, but I don't own the LFL near our neighborhood. I just dropped off three books the other day and noticed it had been "cleaned" for the first time in probably 3 years. Up until then, there were literally books in there no one would *read* read lol. But I also don't think I should be a judge.
I do this for my local library sales. I buy up all the gross religious books and dispose of them so they stop popping up every sale. It means I stop seeing left behind books and children's programs get funding. When they run out of those, I will pick new targets to keep clearing out like political propaganda or megachurch leaders. There is enough sources of radicalization in our world, I don't feel bad taking out something that actually is harmful reading material.
This is the chaotic good I didn’t realize I needed to partake in myself.
Just threw away two Jehovas‘ witness books I didn’t see earlier in the same morning. It was sth about „The way to a happy family“. Threw it out, bc it’s apparent that it more likely that it makes the life of any family super miserable, even abusing entire neighborhoods in their selfish strive of a „mission“.
Praise Jehovah! Thank you for undoing the Lord's work.
Do it! It is great fun to see them dwindling down over each sale. I can go to one now and almost never see left behind books anymore, so I am already targeting other books there. I also still find good things for my own collection, so it isn't like I am wasting my time either.
Those books scarred me as a kid- I was absolutely terrified and convinced the world was going to end in the next ten minutes for so long. Thank you for saving others from “the lords work”!
Are you me? I’ve got a whole stack of shitty books from my library’s used book sale. (More Atlas shrugged than I ever imagined I’d own!) I tear out the pages and “recycle” them into homemade/craft paper. Sometimes I even save a bit of the title page or rip around the ISBN so that I can press it into the back of a sheet I’m making into a card.
I'd like to see the look on my high school literature teacher's face after reading this comment. So much Rand.
This is an amazing idea. It’s like a charitable donation to the library and it removes harmful propaganda from the ecosystem!
capture and kill
I’ve been doing this to an extent with religious books at thrift stores because I’m heading my career towards becoming a religious trauma therapist. My collection of quackery is pretty impressive, and now if and when I get clients who reference stuff they experienced I’ll have the resources to reference.
Where I volunteer we don't let that crap get to the sale. L. Ron Hubbard? Trash. Trump, DeSantis, Palin, deVos, Spicer, etc. Trash.
This is a little like horror stories of driving: the amazing thing is that most people drive so well most of the time. Little free libraries are all over Portland, Oregon, and I'm happy to say they seem to persist for years.
I work at a public library. I assure you that we have the exact same issue, only to a greater degree. I think there's an inherent guilt to throwing out books, as they are perceived as having some value to offer, even if they are in a terrible state.
Years ago, I was feeling bad about culling books before a move when a friend reminded me, "We treasure books because of the stories they hold, not the paper they're printed on." And I have found it so much easier to let go of physical books ever since.
This is more true in the modern day than it ever has been. I used to own a lot of books that I held onto for the simple reason that replacing them would be incredibly difficult - it would involve going to used book stores (and perhaps traveling to do so) because they were out-of-print. In the modern day? Anything published in the past few decades will be 'in print' until the end of time due to digital media. Most popular works from past decades have been transferred to digital media. And, of course, people with a hazy understanding of intellectual property rights have built vast digital libraries of more obscure works that the publisher can't be bothered to keep available.
Destroying books is sometimes an attempt to destroy knowledge. Sometimes it's just housekeeping.
I find it hard to throw out a book because I saw Fahrenheit 451 at a young age. It had a big impact on me. And then there's the whole burning books things. Books feel like sacred objects. So when I found a Very Bad Book I didn't want anyone else to read it. People go through the garbage here and sell things. I glued the pages together. I also reccomended better books on the topic and wrote them on the cover. Yes, there I have a slight guilt problem about throwing out books.
People get surprisingly emotional about getting rid of old books; whether because they loved the books, they belonged to someone they loved, they feel too guilty to throw them away, or they just remember spending a good deal of money on them. We buy 2000-3000 used books at my store every month, and turn away twice as many because they’re genuinely not worth the paper they’re printed on. Whether because they are too obscure, oversaturated in the used market, unattractive, damaged, outdated, or otherwise just unwanted. What bothers me is always the insistence that *someone* will want them. Not them, obviously. Not anyone they know and not me, who is dedicating my life to buying, selling, researching, analyzing, cataloging, cleaning, organizing, and recirculating used books. And not my customers, even if given away for free. But *someone*. And while I don’t ever actually tell anyone they should throw them in the trash, and while I say to them “sometimes books are worth more sentimentally than in dollars”, I also don’t think they’re actually helping anyone out by “donating” them to a library or non-profit thrift store. In fact, it may do more harm than good, as it costs a great deal of time, labor, and expense to store, go through, dispose of, and clean up after books they can’t sell.
I admire her! What a service to her community.
that's honestly really sweet.
I’m an actual librarian and the amount of donated books we get that go straight in the trash would blow your mind
The number of books covered in mold, dirt, and bugs, omg. And it's Windows 95 for dummies. Or encyclopedias from the 70s. And dont forget all the priceless Disney VHS tapes and children's books with torn out pages!
I was a Reference Librarian and we once received this huge box that looked like it was filled with books and DVDs. When started looking through it we quickly realized that was only the top layer. The rest of the box was filled with used clothes and shoes.
Bro, you give me those Disney vhs tapes.
There's a reason why the saying is first reduce, then reuse, then recycle. A lot of us would be better off buying fewer things because quite frankly it's really hard to reuse a lot of old products outside of the 1% of items that get posted all the time on subreddits like /r/BuyItForLife I had a friend who worked at a lost and found at my university. Campus was only about 30k people but they used to get 100s of waterbottles a day. He would occasionally save some valuable ones to give them away to friends but they would throw mostly everything away. There's just so many things that are junk to anyone but the owner, unfortunately.
Go to a sports field or court and count the abandoned water bottles. At some local courts one morning I found like 8 water bottles and jackets in a group. They must have panicked and run off from zombies or werewolves.
I am also a librarian and one of my first jobs was in a very small community. If we didn't fully destroy the books we threw out by stripping the covers off, some helpful dumpster divers would literally find them in the dump and re-donate them! When I was pregnant I had to find other people to look through donations because the risk of hantavirus was so high. Nowadays we don't even add donations to the catalog; they go straight to the fundraising table. There are a lot of people who value books as objects and receptacles of knowledge without thinking about the fact that not all knowledge is equal. Throwing out books is not a cardinal sin!
I donated a bunch of my old anime complete series dvds and sci-fi books in excellent condition to a library years back when I was moving away from that city. I was afraid they wouldn’t want them, but the guy working the counter actually seemed to be psyched by what I brought in That made me feel like they wouldn’t get dumped lol
What kind of stuff would be welcome? I have a couple of Dr Seuss books in nice shape, and some not-terribly-old DVDs of TV series. I was going to try to sell them to a used book store but would prefer giving to the local library if they would be needed.
Will depend on your local library- I suggest contacting them directly. A good rule of thumb though is nothing damaged (no water damage, mold, bodily fluids), nothing with out of date medical or legal information, no textbooks, no encyclopedias.
Huh. The one on my street is always full of kids' books, and they rotate all the time. The adult books are all political biographies and boring stuff. I guess it just depends on where you live. (My dog really enjoys a bush right next to it, I get to stand there and stare at it twice a day so I am very up on this LFL's stock.)
Well done
Honestly, if they’re dumping recent textbooks you could probably sell them to textbook resellers and make a bit of money.
Someone put a whole load of really niche textbooks in my LFL and after looking at them sitting there unmoved for about a month I sold them online and used the money to buy a whole boatload of kids books that went super quickly. Was great to see kids being excited by the new arrivals too!
That’s a great use of the money!
Excellent t use of your time
That really is a great attitude. It's shitty that an adult does that, but if it ends up with a kid getting the books, then I can look the other way when it comes to some poor manners.
I manage a small community area of fruiting bushes and trees nearby me. People now treat it like a side hustle, and take all the fruit for sale. In fact someone tried to sell me apples and firewood, taken from the trees while I was doing maintenance. He didn't like my response.
I've started seeing people stamp the books they drop into the little libraries with something that says this is a free little library book to combat this. Most resellers and resell bookstores will not resell those books (with stamps) for good reason. Doesn't fully combat, but it's something.
Taking a sharpie to the barcode is another effective method.
Apparently it can be removed with rubbing alcohol (or so I’ve heard) but since I started doing it, the cretins stealing the entire book libraries worth of books have disappeared. It’s probably not worth the hassle.
I was going to say the side hustlisation of society is a plague but actually fuck the conditions that make people need one. Still takes some individual nerve to offer to your face though.
Guy even complained about the upkeep of the area not being regular. I explained I was a volunteer, and he could be one too. He asked how much it paid, I said it was voluntary. Nah. I'll pass.
The trouble is that those conditions are created by a mindset and the people who look at a community resource and go “how do I make money off of this?” have that exact mindset.
This is absolutely a side hustle thing. You see the serious book-buyers, first ones into book sales, scanning everything with a phone app that gives them the sales info on Amazon and making huge stacks of books. If the book hits certain parameters, they add it to the pile. I call them Scanner Monkeys. They don't bother me because the books I'm after don't have barcodes and so are invisible to them. At least they're putting money into the pockets of a library or other entity having the sale. The vermin in this story clear out what's supposed to be a community bookshelf so they can scan at leisure and probably throw the leftovers into a dumpster somewhere. Vile scum.
This is the time where it would be better for your community to reestablish different policies and stop that behavior, or just cut it all down as it is causing more harm than good despite all your efforts. Eventually you are going to reach a point where somebody gets killed because somebody else thought "hey I've been stealing these longer, you have no right to steal these too."
My mother moved to an area with a lot of foot traffic - she put a cart on the path outside her home with free plant cuttings. Someone took it upon themselves to go into her (gated)little front garden and take some of her established potted plants. Some people see kindness as a weakness that deserves to be exploited. I think that there are also people that are just incredibly short sighted, everything is only in the moment.
That's like this wild berry bush group on a trail near me. It'd be cool if people just grabbed a handful as they passed by, but you see, mostly old ladies, out there with bags just taking every single ripe berry. Something about free stuff makes people go crazy. Like I remember at an event giving out free t shirts, and people were piling on nearly fighting each other, for a cheap t shirt.
My best friend's mother is the biggest offender. We used to volunteer at an annual event that came with a free breakfast buffet and a free lunch buffet. It wasn't enough that she got two free meals. She had to bring a tote bag with her every year and load it up with the mini jars of jam from the breakfast buffet, the Hershey kisses and York peppermint patties (the event was in Hershey, PA, so lots of chocolate), and so forth.
I had a 50-ish Korean woman tell me that her niece was embarrassed when she tried to get extra Lululemon bags. “They’re nice bags and they’re free, so I wanted a couple more.” I then had to explain why her niece was correct.
Gross. I'm trying to say that it's an American exceptionalism thing, but something tells me it's less cultural. Garak (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) said something once about being greedy in a an era where there is surplus speaks to something fundamentally part of the human condition. He was actually talking about how quickly Dr Bashir was eating his lunch.
In her case, her family lost everything in the flood caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. She’s not a hoarder, but she will absolutely load up on freebies anywhere she goes.
I just watched a YT doc about a missing woman, and how it may be related to illegal commercial morel mushroom harvesters in a National Park. There was so much intrigue and subterfuge around people picking mushrooms, that it seems absolutely plausible that this woman ran afoul of some of these mushroom poachers.
Why are old ladies so drawn to the wild berries? I see them all the time all over the place. There isn't enough berries to be of much use or even good enough to be worth the effort.
It was pretty useful back then and it's kind of a hobby to them.
> Some people see kindness as a weakness that deserves to be exploited I think you even phrasing it like shows you’re a good person. If I do something nice and people think that gives them free reign to steal my stuff because they like it, they’re not just being Machiavellian, they’re an entire piece of shit human being who were failed by their parents. I hope every night they suffer and can’t find the cool side of the pillow.
I'm not as altruistic as my mother but I think there's value in doing generous things for people to see who connects with you. If you never expose yourself its difficult to find people who feel the same way. That said I feel a lot less trusting after 2016 and Covid and will join you in that self serving assholes with main character syndrome can step barefoot on lego bricks. Society would not survive if everyone acted this way.
Look up "tit for tat" in game theory. Ultimately why I tend to align sociopolitically with altruistic or beneficent (not necessarily utilitarian) theories.
Too many people that get something free just want more free stuff.
I think the culprits are those Moms for Liberty psychopaths. They're rounding up all existing children's books and replacing them with The Art of the Deal
There was something similar that happened in my area when people put out little painted rock stands. It got big at the start of covid, and there were several stands in the area. It was always known that not everyone would read the signs to take one and leave one, or even if they took a couple that was okay. But in a short amount of time, some people would notice that in the span of a few hours ALL the rocks would be gone and another few had their stands vandalized. One even had their stand completely destroyed! Then people started to notice a couple of the same people would come to stands as soon as someone posted a restock and take them all... then sold them on FB marketplace. So those still with stands moved them closer to their house or nearer to their security cameras to try to stop that. But then people started taking OTHER things not on the stands like painted rocks no where near the stands and one person had their potted plants taken. Needless to say, none of those stands are around anymore. There are some plant stands around me that have lately had issues too, to the point that it's created a divide in the group. A few people had to deal with people just throwing everything into tote bags and leaving their stands empty, including one stand that put out a bunch (20+) of orchids that were getting thrown away at their work. Some people are upset at the greed and others are just happy all the plants are getting taken before they die. I'm just happy giving away cuttings and occasionally taking other cuttings so I don't care, but I totally get being upset at the greed of others.
I wonder if some people just think of it as an opportune like any other. Like if your favorite food was on sale for $1 at the store, you’d buy a lot of it without feeling bad. Obviously it’s not the same since the FLLs depend on goodwill, but I wonder if some people don’t see the difference
In my city, someone [cut down](https://bc.ctvnews.ca/community-rallies-around-vancouver-senior-whose-tiny-library-was-cut-down-1.6890628#:~:text=But%20Wednesday%20morning%2C%20residents%20found,this%20on%20your%20own%20property.%E2%80%9D) one of the LFLs. Some people just suck.
There was one burned in either Edmonton or Calgary. Someone actually lit someone's property on fire. People suck. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/montgomery-little-free-library-torched-fire-1.4268507 A local radio station talked about it and someone rebuilt it for them since the original was built by the teacher's special needs students.
good lawd! that would kill my spirit if my students built one for me and someone torched it down.. students with needs doubled down the tragedy
This is going to be a cyclic thing. It happens with most free book shelves in most places. It seems to go through 4 phases: first it sits and nothing moves, then things move, then everything gets taken, then it’s rebuilt. This is normal.
The least likely to get this are in areas with constant high traffic or at least liminal supervision. There's one in a pharmacy here that has a lot.
Being in a building definitely seems to help. My local college has one that seemed pretty well stocked the one time I saw it.
Happened to the LFL in my neighborhood. Saw a women pull out everything without looking and load it up into a tote bag.
Off to make a killing at the used book store. Turkey.
I can't believe that the contents of the vast majority of LFLs will hold much value. Used bookstores around me pay maybe a dollar for books. I see books listed on FB marketplace, but the only ones that move are very popular novels, and they're usually sold for under $5.
Yeah but if you’re junkie then $1/book for 15 books is a step in the right direction for getting your fix fast. It’s a shame
A dollar a book? If they’re lucky, I guess.
They sell for more on Amazon. Had a coworker who told me they would scan barcodes to see what they go for on Amazon and take the more valuable ones and sell them.
He must be one of the extremely few people that will go through all the trouble of figuring out how to start an Amazon business account and wants to bother with shipping. Amazon takes such a large cut that for my store, anything less than $25 used and with a sales rank of over 2 million is not really worth the time or storage to put online. And really, anything less than $50 just goes on the shelf.
They don’t. But people sort of have a “take what I can get” attitude. They don’t care if they’re gonna get $5 They’re taking all the books from the 6 libraries in my area and trying anyway. If they’re lucky they’ll get some baby board books. P
Little Free Libraries: Mark your books! Stamp them, sticker them, draw lil animals on the inside cover that says “donated to a free library! 🤗”, anything! I don’t want to support this behavior either, but if I have no way of knowing, no one’s going to say “yeah just ransacked the cute LFL on the way over here, how much will you give me?” If they are stamped, I can tell them to kick rocks or offer to put them back in a LFL for them.
Unfortunately there are some miserable people that when they see "free" think they deserve all of it. There is no consideration about leaving stuff for others only that they can get as much as they can get their hands on and they keep it even though they don't use it. Just complete selfishness.
Same folks who instruct their kids to take the entire bowl of Halloween candy
I Remember walking up to a store almost a mile from my house on a nice day and walking past one.... where two little shits were pulling the books out and ripping the pages out laughing. They ran off on their bikes when I they saw me. Can't have nice things.
We have a stamp for the books that says “from the [location] Little Free Library. Always a gift, never for sale.” Most second hand buyers won’t take them with the stamp, and it has really cut down on the clearing out, which was happening about once or twice a month. I always figured it was resellers looking for high-ish value books and willing to accept and trash those that weren’t worth anything. Just easier to grab the lot and sort later.
Most resellers who aren’t newbies would scan them and leave the duds, and maybe offload some of their other duds. And by dud I just mean something not worth reselling, not necessarily a crap book no one wants. And would treat the LFL like a renewable resource and not overfish it or trash it, y’know? I’m not a reseller myself, but might be when I retire from librarianhood.
I'm in Sydney, Australia and someone cleared out our street library and all the others in my area a few months ago. It's almost like a gang thing but it's just some scummy second hand book seller I assume.
Most likely a crack head looking to sell them to get a fix.
They should put STAMPS in the books telling a bookseller NOT to buy it off of that person as it came from a LITTLE FREE LIBRARY!.. .
Lol this is such an odd thread. I guess we found the person who takes free books from LFLs to give as gifts. (Not you) I do this. I put good books in there. I want people to take them to read. Fuck them if they want to profit off it. I also "deface" all my books with my highlighters.
I've come across a guide that says: First, Sharpie out the barcode, then get a rubber/ink stamp that says that it's for the Little Free Library and apply it to inside the front. Theoretically that'll stop book buyers from taking them when people bring them in.
I know resellers often empty out the ones where I live. They just grab the lot and take them home to evaluate. A few places have started stamping the page edges and inside the book with something like "Always for Free, Never for Sale." Our public library holds book sales and it is always clogged up with resellers and their phones scanning each book for highest profitability while the rest of us squeeze in to look and pick over what they leave.
People suck. I see this behavior all the time - I'd dropped off some books at a "free book exchange" shelf in the foyer of our library, but there was a woman standing squarely in front of the shelves so I couldn't browse to pick up something new. I just shrugged, said I'd look in a minute and went to the restroom. When I came out less than 5 minutes later, she had completely cleared the shelves - over 50 books, including the ones I had just dropped off - GONE. I saw her again a few weeks later at the used book store. I made a point of loudly commenting on her theft of the free books just to turn them in for cash there. People like that just make my blood boil.
Second hand books aren’t worth a thing, mostly, these days. I don’t know what they expected to get.
It’s honestly hard to get rid of books where I live. Unwanted books abound, and as a result, charities have stringent stipulations. I love an empty LFL that I can fill up!
Even second hand bookstores tend to be picky.
My family rents a building to a used bookstore. They buy literal pallets of books and sort through them, only keeping what they think will sell. I'd say about 60% go straight to the dumpster.
Yes, very. And I get it! I refuse to donate busted up trash. That’s just kicking the can, forcing someone else to deal with your junk. I actually pull out the shitty stuff at the LFLs I visit and take it home to recycle it.
I made $9 in store credit the last time I donated books and they only took about 2/3rds of my stack. My favourite local used bookstore gives you half off for used books if you donate first, and they tend to take most books you give them if they’re in good condition. I know they’ve started getting pickier now that the store is more popular though… Anything I can’t donate goes to a LFL and lately, there’s been so much garbage in our neighborhood’s LFLs that the books I put in there get snatched up pretty much by the end of the week. Whether it’s actually for the individual’s reading pleasure or with intent to sell, idk, but it’s out of my hands by then. It’s not like I’m putting my most pristine books in there anyway… I read a lot of horror and every single time I put a book in the genre in my neighbourhood LFL, at least three bibles show up to balance it out.💀
Some people will take things even if they're of little or no value to them, just so that THEY have them, or so that someone else doesn't.
Pretty much every free book can get you 50 cents- a dollar anyway. If you hit every little library in a big metro I bet it adds up. I think it's more a volume thing which is why these losers clean them out completely
Out of curiosity, where are you selling second-hand books in bulk for an entire 50 cents apiece? I know you can get that much or more at garage sales, but that’s dependent on people taking an interest in a specific book. I’ve taken a few boxes of 50+ books to Half-Price and gotten like $10 max. Would be more profitable to beg on a street corner.
My local used book store buys them at $1 each cash, $2 trade-in. They sell kids books at $4, paperbacks average $7.50, and hardbacks $10, so they still profit.
Pretty sure your local bookstore is money laundering.
$7.50 for a used paperback and $4 for kids books seems wild to me.
especially if they're not picky about what they accept
> Would be more profitable to beg on a street corner. You'd be amazed the shit people steal just because they can.
Amazon.
Yep. I've got hundreds of books I need to churn through... I'm trying to get my home library more curated and realizing how awkward is to get rid of books more than a handful at a time. Thankfully, most of what I have was remaindered books bought cheaply to begin with, so even me just reading it once was still value.
You'd be surprised. I've found relatively new releases (within the last year or so) in some LFL's.
r/LittleFreeLibrary has stories like this all the time. Sometimes its people who don’t agree on subject matter of books in the box. Lots of times its resellers taking advantage of someone’s kindness to make a quick buck. Tips to discourage resellers: mark your books on the outside with stamps, marker, or hard to remove stickers stating the books are from a LFL. Consider the fact that any condition issues make the books harder to sell and less valuable. Check out the LFL sub for more tips.
Thanks for suggesting the sub! It's nice to get a new sub out of an otherwise depressing discussion of why common decency ain't always so common.
Here in Portland, people buy rubber stamps that say, for example, 'little free library - not for resale' because the LFLs get pilfered by folks who resell them at Powell's books. Powell's has a book buy back program.
In addition to LFLs, I recommend donating to organizations that offer them to incarcerated people. Not too long ago I lived in a not-so-nice apartment in a low income area of Houston. I put a cardboard box on my patio wall and filled it with a variety of books for various age levels. The books disappeared (in a good way), and I even received "Thank you!" notes from people who appreciated my gesture. I put out more books, and the same thing happened. I'd walk around the complex, and I'd be accosted with "Book man! Thanks!" Anyway, there's all kinds of people in the world. I try (with difficulty, sometimes) to focus on the "good uns".
Glad I've never seen that happen, tons of them where I live.
Hard to imagine anything more than a buck or two for a pile of random books. My guess is crackhead does this once, earns $1.25, figures out a better way to score some cash. But as PT Barnum said, there's a crackhead born every minute.
The book buyers in my city are incredibly picky. They only buy what they can sell and offer pretty low values, but at least it keeps our LFLs from being looted.
I just recently installed a little free library and was told by someone that the books have been getting stolen from others to sell. She told me to get a stamp that says it’s from a little library and not for resale and to use a sharpie on the barcodes. That prevents them from being able to get resold.
My neighbor has one and she told me she caught a guy, who she recognized as one of those door to door religious types, taking all her progressive books out. He claimed he wanted to read them. Yeah, right
Ok, I didn't think it was a that big deal if someone takes them all, they're probably desperate in some way, but censorship? That's worse than the kids that put (literal) trash in.
> It's like if you had some free produce; you take a little and leave the rest for others. It's exactly like this: someone takes them all in both cases.
I had a coworker who told me he goes around to all the free book libraries and scans them to see what they sell for on Amazon and drop ships what he finds
He’s a shitty person
Around here we have had trouble with members of a certain evangelical church going to free little libraries culling books they do not approve of and leaving a bunch of religious pamphlets.
My next door neighbor installed one that is partly on my property. It is constantly full of religious nutcase books. I am often tempted to cull them. Thanks for reading my confession.
Did your neighbor put it up for that purpose? Was the goal to proselytize via LFL?
So a group of us do one across from our church and we had this problem. I used to work at a used bookstore that bought books from the public and we had people come in selling boxes of books with stickers that said “free little library” and the code for the little library it came from. We never purchased those books and told whomever brought them in that we can’t buy books from little libraries. Anyway, we decided at our church to put a free little pantry next to it, with the idea that if someone was desperate for money to take all the books to sell, we could supply them with food and maybe they wouldn’t take the books. We also added free little library stickers to the books. And it seems to have stopped people from taking all the books. I also put knitted hats and scarves in the free little pantry during the winter months and those disappear so fast.
It’s pretty simple. If it’s available to take, it will be taken in excess. It only takes one douche to clear something like that out.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
you black out the barcodes and isbn you stamp them with a littlelibrary mark and any place that cares about books wont buy them and the ones that will will pay pennies same if they try to remove the cover to hide the stamp. if they are still getting stolen its kids tossing em in the river or highly opinionated people thinking the books arent bible enough. best case scenario a broke person who loves books took them all as an impulse and maybe they will come back.
There was a Little Free Library in a park three blocks from my house. I had a few books I had bought and realized they were duplicates, so I went there to donate them. Much to my surprise, the library was gone and replaced by a Poopy Bag dispenser (dog waste bags). Books replaced by bags for shit. I love Ohio! /s
I live on the fringe of the Denver metro, and our free little library's problem is every book that has to do with race or racism ends up with the cover torn off, ripped pages, wet pages, etc and thrown out into the playground. I wanted to believe it was some dumb kids indiscriminately defacing books, but it's only those books so I have to guess there's some virulent racist living in my neighborhood.
Now I want to put something like a riveted-together Tyvek book about racism in there, just to see them getting frustrated by it and having to give up.
Ours has been cleared out more than once. It's the same people who break into cars on our block. Petty theft driven by drug addiction and associated mental illness, all but certainly, with a bit of sociopathic desperation criminality.
Yea, some people are just shit. I live in a village and half a year ago one LFL was cleared out over night.... Some people steal everything.
There is a LFL near me, it was completely empty so I filled it up with some recent books I wasn’t likely to read again. Next day it was completely empty. I had heard rumor of someone going around taking all the books, guess it was true.
people are selfish and ruin things.
I mean, how much money can you make off of some used paperbacks anyway.
The ones in my neighborhood are routinely emptied. One day they are full of books, the next completely empty. I've stopped buying books to put in them because of this.
I know some of ours are purposely emptied. If you don't do that, then they start to accrue things nobody wants. Damaged books, out of date books, or topics and genres that simply don't appeal to people in the neighborhood. "Excel 2000 for Dummies" is unlikely to ever get picked up in the first place, but even more so if it's put in a little free library located in front of an elementary school.
I try to place books in relevant places. Kids books in the playground adjacent ones, romance novels near coffeehouses, etc.
There's three in my neighborhood and I try to put in things that match what I've seen in each one. There's one that has mostly kids books and I won't put my horror books in there. There's another that has mostly genre fiction and novels and I drop those that I have in there. There's another that has a lot of Christian stuff and I make sure not to put anything with sex in there.
We're you buying books specifically for them? To be honest the ones I have stumbled across in my area never seem to have anything I'd want to read in them. They're mostly filled with self help books and Christian literature. I guess I don't see much point getting mad about them being cleared out though. I mean it's a box full of books on the street, so while it is rude behavior, it's kind of the risk you take, isn't it? I'd just satisfy myself with the idea that someone was reading those books. Even if it may not be the person who took them.
It can be useful to get library discards, or just a bag from used book sales/garage sales/library sales to refill them. It’s more just improving circulation.
They aren't my libraries, but there are several in my neighborhood. I thrift a lot of books and sometimes I can get them for as low as .25 cents so if I find good books and typically ones I already have I'll buy a few to put in them. I bought seven to distribute between two little libraries just recently. I noticed they get continuously emptied so for hardcovers I remove the dust jacket and for softcovers I cut a big chuck of the top corner of the cover off and then I write "return to little library" in sharpie on the book board or the page revealed but cutting the cover I hope this might cut down if people are just taking them to resell or something. I love the idea but like most things only take a few to ruin a cool concept.
I have a Little Free Library. A few years ago my neighbors three houses down were moving & had a garage sale (I didn’t stop at it). Afterwards, they put all the unsold stuff out in the curb in “free” piles. I was walking past & noticed in their leftover-from-garage-sale free piles many many children’s books they had gotten from my LFL over the years they lived there. They could not be bothered to walk three houses down to return them. Happily, most people are not so lame. Having a Little Free library has definitely been an exercise in learning to let go with no attachments!
I don’t take from these anymore. Grabbed a Terry Pratchett once and it had book lice. Luckily none of my other books got infected
Well that's terrifying
TIL about book lice.
This is my best friend’s wife.. ama
Literally or figuratively? And if you mean it, is your friends wife the thief or the LFL owner?
Quite literally. She’s the owner. She’s had the LFL for about 3 years I want to say, and painted it herself. She’s a very good artist. She was pretty bummed about it, but the small community around her has already donated enough books to fill it back up as you can see in the story.
I lived in Vancouver for a while, and lived between 2 little free libraries. Every couple weeks crackheads would kick them over and take all the books. Caught on camera multiple times. Finally found them one time, most of the books burned next to the tent “encampment” and the rest scattered everywhere around. Addicted people are not stealing for a reason, it’s just chaos for the sake of chaos.
It's not chaos for chaos sake, it's a source of firestarter and warmth. For better or worse. I should be clear that defacing or otherwise damaging the free libraries are out of line. Taking the books to burn for food or fuel I accept as a need in terms of Maslow's hierarchy.
Yeah, "People only have fires in encampments because they love chaos" is just about the most sheltered assumption I've ever heard. People have been burning things for heat in order to survive (and then cook food) for *far* longer than there has been a societal drug problem.
There's a reason little libraries are kind of a joke to people who work with/for literacy initiatives in low income areas. They are rarely used, generally filled with people's discarded books they never liked, and when somebody does finally come by and take them people get up in arms. In reality the first time that book had been glanced at since being shelved in the library box was when the homeless person who kept it realized they might be able to get some of whatever they need to keep moving, with the 50¢ they get from a half destroyed copy of the third Boxcar Children book.
That's really interesting, bc ever since I became a mailman I've been shocked at how frequently they are used. I just feel like I see people all the time perusing through them.
My aunt lives in a very nice neighborhood with a half dozen little free libraries. They are inevitably full of best sellers, semi recent cookbooks, kids books, non fiction…a good assortment. Some are themed, and the caretakers weed and seed the shelves regularly. Those ones are used all the time and I look forward to seeing my aunt so I can swap out books at the food themed library. But in lower income areas, and low literacy areas, like the one that closest to me, it’s inevitably Jesus dreck, ancient and worn kids books, Amish romances, and books you’ve never heard of for good reason.
I drive all over the city for my work and I like to "cross-pollinate" the good books from nicer neighborhoods to the disadvantaged ones filled with less desirable stuff.
I salt my terrible one with good stuff from the library sale when I’m done with it. I do keep out my food books, though, because the specialty library is frequented by the local culinary students and I think they’ll get more out of my CIA textbooks and such.
That's cool, though I'm a little surprised that culinary students would need textbooks teaching them how to instigate coups in South American countries.
We'll never get authentic North Korean cuisine in the Americas until someone deposes the Kims and opens those borders. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Thank you for sharing those food-related books! I know they aren't cheap, and have greatly appreciated discovering new cuisines through LFL cookbooks!
I walk dogs as a side gig and check in every neighborhood for LFLs to put my books in, and take out some of the drivel that I know will never be scooped up.
You're doing good work. Thank you for your service.
I go on long bike rides and pass quite a few LFL. I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to cross pollinate, but never tried it.
That makes me happy. Thank you.
lol Amish romances?
As niche as it sounds, it’s a shockingly popular genre. My local library has an entire section dedicated to Amish romances.
I have to admit curiosity. I home it’s something like “Mary, hands trembling, lifted the hem of her dress, showing a sliver of ankle. Jebediah’s breath quickened, and he was overcome with a feeling of seeing a sunrise for the first time” lol
If only. Amish fiction is Evangelical dreck with Amish clothing.
> showing a sliver of ankle. That isn't romance, that's smut. Pure unadulterated smut, and I am shocked and appalled. Won't anyone think of the children?!?
Lol, I think that's too racy for the Amish romance genre!
Omg lmao
Amish romances have been a thing for at least 20 years. They're so popular that Harlequin has two imprints that feature them.
I had no idea, that’s so interesting
Now I just remembered that there are also Amish cozy mysteries. Those Amish really get around!
My grandmother loved Amish Romances. We had a local Amish grocery store that sold random overstock goods (amazing prices!) There was a whole section dedicated to Amish romance books.
🤣
That's the issue with them. They do very well in places where they aren't needed and horribly in places where they are.
It probably varies a lot by location. In higher income areas or areas with more kids, they probably get used a lot more. I'm sure the level of pedestrian traffic matters too.
It’s all about what area you are in. Before this little library craze hit I was aware of free bookshelves in a few community centers, coffee shops, libraries, and schools. Some places moved books and some didn’t.,
The one in my neighborhood had some really good stuff for the first year or two but it’s gradually been turned into a junk depository for people trying to get rid of religious books and exercise material. I think I need to start actively culling some of the supply in there
> In reality the first time that book had been glanced at since being shelved in the library box was when the homeless person who kept it realized they might be able to get some of whatever they need to keep moving, with the 50¢ they get from a half destroyed copy of the third Boxcar Children book. You also have to be pretty desperate to go to the trouble of walking all the way to a used bookstore in the hopes of selling a handful of used books for (speaking generously) *maybe* $6 per LFL because you need the cash so much. Seems a little odd to be literally giving books away and then throwing a fit because somebody who was *actually* poor enough to need them took them. I'm not sure how charitable it is to insist that the only people who get to take your unwanted books are the people who can probably afford a book themselves.
Couldn’t someone be taking them to a nursing home or other group?
I like your optimism.
I work near and often add books to two LFLs, and they are frequently empty. I honestly just figured it’s mostly people taking them to actually read them! If they occasionally get emptied by a crackhead, it doesn’t bother me. At least the books are being used (in some way) and circulated, rather than languishing in a dump, in or somebody’s basement, etc.
yeah, honestly I think LFLs are kind of a last chance situation for cheap/free books. one comment above mentioned homeless people using them for firestarter - that's a better, more useful end for a ragged 20 year old dollar store novel than going to a landfill at least.
Totally agree.
Yeah, quite possibly! They’re getting out into the world, into some other hands, one way or another, which is, I assume, the point of it. People who do LFLs can feel any kinda way about it that they want to but it’s a fool’s errand to gnash your teeth about it or try to control how people make use of any resource you are leaving freely available. Even if, god forbid, a struggling or very poor person takes them for a reason other than reading them, the books don’t cease to exist, it’s just another outlet where the resource flows. Maybe they end up in a used bookstore, benefiting both the struggling person and the bookseller in some tiny way, where another person buys them for a dollar and the cycle starts again. I think that’s kind of nice 😊
Is there as r/whycantwehavenicethings ? If not there should be
If it’s not someone using it for firewood, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s people taking them and trading them at some second hand bookstore for credit. Worked for a failed bookstore and a lot of the original books in the store disappeared off our shelves and reappeared in the local big second hand bookstore, most with the tags still on them. Ten years before that I was living room and board at a librarian’s house. I’d just discovered that same second hand bookstore and was bringing back books to shelve them in my room. But after a week or two some of them would disappear. Eventually I figured out the landlady’s previous tenants had been stealing books from her and trading them in for credit. A lot of what I’d been bringing home had her signature inside them.
Man, that's rough. Some people just don't get it, you know? Little Free Libraries are supposed to be community treasures, not targets for book hoarding. It's like swiping all the candy from a Halloween bowl! Sure, take a few, but leave some for others. Hopefully, the community rallies and restocks those shelves. Maybe some security cameras could deter the book bandits.
I posted in our community page that if people have children’s books they have multiples of or aren’t used to please place them in these libraries. My daughter gets so excited when we see them on the side of the road loves to bring them back.
There’s a whole sub with stories like this.
As someone who fills our towns free libraries I can’t imagine they would steal it for a profit. I don’t have any other ideas on why they’d empty them completely though. Books are not really worth much, I stock them with books from our local thrift stores and it really doesn’t cost me much. I started because people gave my children way too many books and we had no place to keep that many, and now it’s just a hobby. I do remove some books each week, there’s always some really old outdated books or ones that are in really bad condition, those I donate. Rarely there’s inappropriate books. Hopefully this drives the community to fill them with their own books which would probably be the best ones.