Love the Little Free Library concept, but wanting to add a dash of urban and a good scoop of social activism and public service? Check out last week's Huffington Post Blog on 'The Pop-Up Library'.

The premise is straightforward and cheap to accomplish:

Gather as many donated books as possible (they got their original books from the Occupy Wall Street library), collect furniture from the street to paint in nice bright colors, get mugs of coffee and put it all out in urban locations throughout the community. They had carefully selected areas of the community that looked as though they could benefit from some brightening up ... not only with paint and bright colors but also with knowledge. There you have the "pop-up" library.

Image courtesy of theartdontstop.com Community art by Todd Berman

As Margaret, an unemployed librarian, points out in the video, this is an opportunity to "give back to the community" and make up for recent losses in public services.

It's exciting to see librarians finding innovative ways to reach out to their communities. Amazing projects like this are even happening right in Detroit, where a class of fourth graders and a UofM lecturer put together outdoor lending libraries outside of recently closed branches.

With budgets increasingly tighter, library branches closing, and staff size shrinking, efforts such as these are becoming vital alternatives to the traditional library. As we move forward and consider the future and goal of libraries, we should also take into account the possibilites of these outdoor community spaces.

Have you participated in a library like this? Have you considered creating your own? Tell us about it in the comments. Also, check out the SLIS Pinterest board with more examples of little free libraries, and recommend other examples to us!

Are you interested in the role of libraries in urban communities? Join the Urban Librarian Certificate cohort starting this fall - (function(){ var hsjs = document.createElement("script"); hsjs.type = "text/javascript"; hsjs.async = true; hsjs.src = "//cta-service.cms.hubspot.com/cta-service/loader.js?placement_guid=b249d45f-7e3a-4664-9fc3-e86b7031831e"; (document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]||document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0]).appendChild(hsjs); setTimeout(function() {document.getElementById("hs-cta-b249d45f-7e3a-4664-9fc3-e86b7031831e").style.visibility="hidden"}, 1); setTimeout(function() {document.getElementById("hs-cta-b249d45f-7e3a-4664-9fc3-e86b7031831e").style.visibility="visible"}, 2000); })();