The Little Free Library started as a tiny book box in Hudson, Wisconsin, and now brings joy to communities worldwide. Discover more about its story.
Whether we grew up surrounded by books or if literature was something we really only engaged with at school, we can’t take reading for granted. Across the world, there are individuals and communities who do not have access to the books they crave.
This has a significant impact on society. Literacy levels suffer, young people aren’t able to achieve the educational opportunities they need to thrive, and people of all ages miss out on the thrill and enjoyment of literature.
With this in mind, it’s heartening to see people really trying to make a change, opening up free libraries that anyone can access. Sometimes these libraries are vast structures with thousands of books, but often, they’re much smaller than this. And they still offer real advantages to the communities they serve.
The Little Free Library is in the latter category. Individually, these are tiny libraries, but collectively, they make a huge difference.
The Beginnings of the Little Free Library
It’s an image that many of us know well – the image of a quaint, old-timey schoolhouse, reminiscent of something from centuries gone by. Whether we’re from the United States and we’ve seen one of these structures ourselves, or we’ve just spotted one on TV or in a picture book, we know what this image symbolizes. It symbolizes learning, education, and close-knit community values.
This was the kind of feeling that Todd Bol was trying to tap into when, way back in 2009, he built the first of these miniature libraries. Todd’s mother had been a school teacher, and the structure was designed as a tribute to her. But more than this, it was a practical structure that could further the cause of education in the area – it could hold books, becoming a little library of its own.
Rick Brooks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison saw Todd’s handiwork, and he was impressed. He discussed the potential with Todd, and together they set about creating the first Little Free Library in Todd’s community of Hudson, Wisconsin.
A Growing Project
A big inspiration for the Little Free Library was the work of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had come up with the idea of creating shared community libraries under the “take a book, leave a book” philosophy.
Carnegie’s fund had provided the resources to create 2,508 of these free libraries, which spread far and wide in the early 20th century.
Todd and Rick wanted to build on this, and they decided they would exceed this number by the end of 2013.
In the end, they hit their target in double quick time.
August 2012 saw them launch their 2,508th Little Free Library – almost 18 months ahead of schedule.
By the end of the year, that number had skyrocketed. There were more than 4,000 libraries in existence by the end of 2012 – more than ten times the number there’d been at the end of 2011.
Bringing Little Free Libraries to the World
2019 was a bittersweet year for the Little Free Library project. The project’s co-founder, Todd Bol, unfortunately passed away in October 2018, and in his final weeks, he reasserted his aim to bring the Little Free Library to the world.
“I really believe in a Little Free Library on every block and a book in every hand,” Todd said. “I believe people can fix their neighborhoods, fix their communities, develop systems of sharing, learn from each other, and see that they have a better place on this planet to live.”
Although Todd was gone, there were certainly many people eager to continue his legacy. M. Greig Metzger took over as executive director in July 2019 and has spearheaded moves to expand the project ever further. The previous stewards of the project had taken Little Free Libraries to 90,000 different locations across 91 countries. And Metzger pledged to do even more than this.
As a veteran of emergency food shelf projects, Metzger knows all about providing valuable services to the community. The project has certainly been in safe hands.
Metzger retired in June 2025. He has succeeded in his role as Daniel Gumnit, who is ready to take the project even further during his tenure.
From Hudson, Wisconsin, to the World
Todd and Rick certainly had big plans when they began their project sixteen years ago. But even these two visionaries might not have realized just how big this thing was going to grow. As of 2025, more than 200,000 Little Free Libraries are registered around the world.
That’s a huge number of communities that have better access to books thanks to the project, and a countless collection of individuals whose lives have been enriched. The Little Free Library is really only “little” in name only – in terms of its impact, it’s off the scale.
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John Burns
John has been writing ever since he was small, and is delighted to be able to make his living as a writer now he’s not quite so small. Literature has always been a big part of John’s life, and he loves sharing this passion with readers from all over the world.
