The Footpath Library

August 28 2009 — JA

Thanks to Zoe Dattner from SPUNC and Martin Hughes from Affirm Press for spreading the word about this – the Footpath Library is a great little project by Sarah Garnett, which, as the name suggests, operates as a kind of street library for the city’s homeless.

It began in 2003 when Garnett decided to begin volunteering after the death of a close friend: ‘I was working as a volunteer for Just Enough Faith a couple of nights a month when… I noticed a homeless man reading under a streetlight. We started chatting and I discovered that Joe read up to four books a week. I asked him where he got his books from and he said rubbish bins, bus stops, wherever people left them lying around.’ Garnett then started bringing a few books of her own for Joe, and then for others, and the Footpath Library evolved from there.

Now, not only do they have weekly libraries around the streets of Melbourne and Sydney, but also in over 18 urban hostels. Garnett hopes to have libraries in every capital city in Australia within the next few years, and expand the project’s focus to provide reading glasses and eco-friendly library bags.

This from one of the library’s regulars pretty much sums it up: ‘For those of us living in crappy little rooms, on the streets, isolated in public housing flats or in cars, it’s the fact that there’s other people around to talk and gossip with, and to be treated with a bit of dignity. They’re big things. And then at the end of the night, to go back to wherever you’re sleeping and have something to read; to forget about your worries before drifting off to sleep is wonderful.’

The Footpath Library is looking for quality second-hand or new books, as well as bookshelves and cash donations. You can find out more, or volunteer to help out, on the website.

Image courtesy of the Benjamin Andrews Footpath Library