Last week, we talked about the many ways you can access books, including visiting a Little Free Library. Little Free Libraries are a great way to access books for free and are, overall, just a great way to bring a community together, just as Dr. Sia and Dr. Briney did about six years ago here in Seguin when their Little Free Library made its grand opening.

I visited this little library myself for the first time in the Fall semester of 2021 and was very interested in the creation of this library as it was built by TLU students using water bottles. To understand more about this library’s creation, I spoke to one of the professors that lead the charge on this project: Dr. Briney.

The Little Free Library Made Out of Water Bottles

Before the construction came an idea, one that Dr. Briney was inspired to do from a video she had watched on YouTube.

“So this was a project that started almost as a much bigger thing. We wanted to build an actual house on campus, and this was based on a YouTube video I ran across about people building schools this way in Africa. Because they don’t really have building materials, [they used] water bottles and real fine sand. And they would fill the bottles with sand and build schools.”

Dr. Briney, Business & Economics Professor at Texas Lutheran University

However, due to safety concerns, plans to build a structure out of water bottles on the TLU campus fell apart. At this point, Dr. Briney had collected about 16,000 water bottles that were being stored behind the gym with no use to them. That’s when Dr. Sia, a Psychology professor here at TLU, asked Dr. Briney if they could use those water bottles to build a little free library in front of her house.

That’s how the Little Libraries with Wtr Bottles module was created by Dr. Briney and Dr. Hoffmann, a now retired TLU professor. This module was available for the Spring term of the 2015-2016 school year and hosted about 80 student participants who all worked to bring this library to life.

“We had one group that was designing the little free library. We had another group that was actually building it. There was another group that was publicizing it. So they were doing different things at different times.”

The little library was planned out and constructed by the module students, with the additional help of Dr. Hoffmann’s husband as well. The water bottles were filled with sand and used to build the base of the library, as seen in the image above. To create the effect of a Greek column, they used pipes that were tied together and then sealed with mortar to create the indentations seen around the column. Dr. Briney finished the look by painting it to give its cracked marble image.

“[Dr. Sia] is a fan of Greece. She’s taken students there several times. So she wanted it in the shape of a Greek column.”

Another important aspect of the library is the plaque that rests at the head of the build. Each Little Free Library has a charter sign with that library’s charter number (indicating that it is a registered Little Free Library), but this is the first sign I’ve seen that has this inscription in a different language. A quick answer from Dr. Briney confirmed that the inscription is a Greek translation of “Little Free Library.” Each registered plaque also has the Little Free Library motto inscribed, “Take a Book, Return a Book,” though the Little Free Library website has changed it to “Share a Book” instead (probably to insinuate that you don’t actually have to return the book you took from the library). Either way, both mottos encourage people to participate in the community’s library in some way or another.

So, with this insight, I decided it was time to participate in this exchange of books by visiting this Little Free Library myself.

Visiting a Little Free Library for the First Time

As preparation for this blog series, I decided to visit this Little Free Library I remembered Dr. Briney talking about when I was in her FREX class freshman year. I had never visited a Little Free Library before, but I’ve heard a lot about them. With two Young Adult books in tow, I decided to drive over to the little library and see it with my own eyes.

Going into this visit: I wanted to know two things: 1) What is the book selection like in this library? and, 2) How often does the library get used?

This library is located on Zunker Street in a little subdivision just a few streets away from Texas Lutheran University. My initial thoughts about this location is that some people might feel awkward book shopping on someone’s private property in a residential neighborhood (it’s me, I’m “some people”), but then I thought that this is actually the perfect location for kids in the neighborhood that bike or play outside. I think neighborhood libraries cater best to children and parents who want to encourage their kids to play outside and read.

“We thought it was a perfect place because it is in a part of town where there’s low literacy and there’s not a lot of transportation to the library. There’s a lot of non-English speaking parents in that neighborhood and there’s a lot of traffic of kids walking to and from school.”

Dr. Briney

When the library first opened in 2016, the little library was filled with children’s books, as was its intended demographic. Six years later, the library seems to be filled with more diverse books, in terms of genre. As expected, the books dropped off in the library seem to be older, second hand books that people didn’t want anymore and tried to get rid of. As a reader who likes to read YA or adult fiction, the selection in this library did not suit my personal reading tastes, but I did notice a copy of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona which may come in handy for an English college student. I think the most popular book in the selection was The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. Rick Riordan, the author of The Lightning Thief, is a popular Young Adult author of fantasy and adventure series. I knew that this book would be a great indicator of whether this library is being used by its intended audience or not when I revisit it in the future.

Before leaving, I left the two YA books I had brought with me for this little library. Eve by Anna Carey is the first book in a dystopian series about a girl trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world that is out to get her. The first book has some serious Handmaid’s Tale vibes. The second book I left in the box is Truly, Madly, Deadly by Hannah Jayne, a YA mystery-thriller novel. I hoped that, by the next time I visited the library, the books would have found a new home.

Revisiting the Library Two Months Later

As I entered my last semester as a college student, I found that it was time to revisit the Little Free Library after two months of anxiously waiting and see if the selection in the library had changed at all, or if my books were still sitting in that tiny box, without an owner. On a bright and sunny Tuesday afternoon, I took the 3 minute drive to the library to check it out.

The first thing I noticed was that, yes, the books I had dropped off were indeed taken by someone! I was immediately overjoyed at the thought of someone out there reading and enjoying the books that I had enjoyed reading when I was younger. I also noticed that the Rick Riordan I pointed out before was taken as well. Though many of the books were repeats from last time, I did see a few new titles in the mix like In His Arms and Kingdom Keepers II. So that means either Dr. Sia deposited new books in the library, or someone else took a trip to the little library and donated books. Either way, I’m glad to know that people are taking advantage of this Little Free Library in their community.

The first time I visited, I didn’t find any books that stood out to me as a reader, but this time around I was lucky enough to walk away with two nonfiction books: So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The only reading-resolution I set for myself this New Year’s was to read more nonfiction books, and I thought this was the perfect time to find my first nonfiction reads of the year and I’m excited to get started on them.

Take a Book, Share a Book: An Endless Cycle

“I still go by there. It’s a peaceful, kind of little park setting in her front yard. She’s got a lot of plants and it’s pretty cool.”

Dr. Briney

I absolutely loved my first experience visiting a Little Free Library. The concept of sharing books with your community is heartwarming to me and it’s just a great activity to encourage reading and improve literacy in your neighborhood overall. I also think that Little Free Libraries that are located in neighborhoods, like this one, is also a great way to get children to go outside more to explore and pick up a book along the way.

As I noticed from my visit to Dr. Sia’s library, young adult books are also in demand in this area and I have plenty of those, so I’ll be visiting this library as much as I can before I graduate at the end of this semester. One of the things I was disappointed about from my last visit was the lack of Spanish or bilingual books, considering some of the demographic in that area are children from Spanish-speaking households. I think it is important to keep the box stocked with a great selection of books that cater to a young adult or bilingual audience as much as we can, so as not to discourage a potential user from visiting the library when they can’t find a book that they like. Of course, this is a job for the whole community, so let’s put it in motion!

“I think it probably needs to come to our attention as a university to keep it stocked with those kind of books because… that’s what’s needed in that area, by far. It could be a project for someone to keep it stocked.”

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If you haven’t visited this Little Free Library yet, you can find its address, or any Little Free Library in Seguin, here on the LFL Map. I encourage you to visit and donate books if you can, or pick up a book you might like to start reading! The more we encourage our community to read, the more our community’s literacy increases! So share the love, and happy reading!