Vandals not showing the love for Lethbridge Little Libraries
The first Little Lethbridge Library was installed in Kinsmen Park in June 2015. Since then they’ve appeared in areas throughout the city.
By the end of this week, there will be a total of 20 Lethbridge Little Libraries.
On Tuesday, libraries were installed in Copperwood, Indian Battle Heights and Heritage Heights and another two will be installed in Southgate and Lakeview by Thursday.
The libraries allow residents to take a book home to read and bring another one back to share.
The Ability Resource Centre builds and maintains the libraries for the community to use, unfortunately, many of these libraries have been targets of vandalism.
“They’re ripping off the doors,” said Chris Evetts from the Ability Resource Centre. “We even tried to change the hinges on them and put a bigger hinge and they’ve just started ripping the boxes and we’ve had to replace them.”
That’s why Jerry Firth, the Neighbourhood Support Co-ordinator with the City of Lethbridge, is trying to push the “Love my Little Library” campaign.
“At the root of it is to ensure that we don’t have vandalism, but also in general, we want to bring more awareness to the libraries so that people know that they’re there and exist for everyone,” said Firth.
“At the same time, if folks are accessing them for their own benefit, it’s going to create more traffic around the area which will detour vandalism from happening, or maybe the vandals themselves sort of see the value in the library for themselves and start to contribute in a way that they create a sense of ownership maybe themselves around it and don’t want to vandalize something that actually benefits them as much as anyone else in the community.”
To see a map of all the Little Free Libraries and other book exchanges in southern Alberta,