- I'm at the Living Books Library in Virginia
talking with Liz Cottrill and Emily Kiser.
We want to talk a little bit about their library
and how it works so maybe if you're interested
in starting one, you would have some ideas
of what you might be in for.
(Liz and Emily laughing)
- Right?
- Right.
- You have about 18,000 books here now
and how long did it take you to collect that many?
Any ideas?
- How long has it been?
- We started intensively collecting
about 13 years ago, I think.
- [Sonya] Okay, okay.
- It's had periods of exponential growth,
but we've kept it more to the trickle level in recent years
because we can't get a bigger house.
- Oh, yes, yes.
And you're using every square inch, just about here
that you have.
So, how does your living library work?
Can anybody just call you up and say, I want a book?
How does this work?
- No, that's a little too terrifying.
(laughing)
So, we are private lending library,
so you have to pay a membership fee for the year,
which we keep very affordable for homeschool families
who generally don't have a lot of extra money,
but you can use books for most of your subjects
and save a whole lot on curriculum.
So, we are open set days during the month and once
you're a member, you can come any day that we're open
during the hours that we're open and there's no limit
on how many books you can check out at a time,
which is good news for a lot of those young,
veracious readers that we have.
- [Sonya] Yes.
- We mostly serve people in the southwest Virginia,
northeast Tennessee region and we have about 50 families.
They do have to go through an application process.
We try to only loan to homeschooling families
and any other particulars?
- We do a background check, no (laughing).
- Security deposit, blood test.
- A little bit.
We do ask for references because--
- If it's not been somebody who's been recommended
by someone who's participated in our library before,
we will call those and make sure that, have they borrowed
anything from you, did you get it back?
- Well, it makes sense because some of these books
are irreplaceable.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, and it's scary to me to think of them going out
the door with anybody, so kudos to you for actually
trusting people to bring them back.
- Well, we had the same fears and I remember talking
to a librarian in Michigan who had started one.
She was also a daughter of the library we belonged to.
She started hers after belonging and we were telling her
our fears and she said, you know,
I just don't worry about that.
These ladies who come and check out books have become
my best friends and we just could not imagine
that we would get to that point.
But it is so true.
And we find that the paying a membership fee makes them
serious about using it, but also take value and ownership
and responsibility for what they are borrowing from us
and we have had very few problems and I don't think
we've ever had a problem with someone not replacing a book
that they lost.
- But it's a commitment that they make and, in addition
to that, after we've invited them to be in the library,
we give them a policy letter, which outlines all
the responsibilities they will have
and how we expect the books to be cared for and treated
while they're in their home and as they bring them
back and forth and because some of them
are a little more fragile and we want them
to last for many, many children,
so we do all we can to preserve and protect them.
- That's a wise idea.
What's the farthest a family drives, do you know,
to come to your library?
- About an hour each way.
We usually have one or two patrons every year
that are traveling that distance.
- Wow.
- We've had some travel further, but we have several
libraries in this area now that have sprung up,
kind of satellites to ours so that is making it better, yes.
Emily's goal from the beginning was that we would do work,
besides running our library, to see that there was a library
in every county in America, but we also know now of one
that has been started in Australia and a couple other
foreign countries.
- How exciting.
- And some are in Canada for sure.
- Okay, so people, you're in Virginia.
People who do not live near you, how can they find out
if there's a Living Books Library near them?
- Well, the ones that I know about, I have a list
on our website, LivingBooksLibrary.com
and so you can check and see, but I know there are others
that are in the works that maybe aren't fully operational
or don't even know we're not all connected and so I think
there are still more out there, so if any of your listeners
have a library or are willing to lend their books
in a more formal capacity, even if they're not all labeled
and barcoded like ours are, I'd be happy to put their names
on our website.
- That'd be great.
- Yeah, so all the books have a barcode in them
and they're all in a database in our computer
so that when people check in and check out books,
they're scanned so we know who has which books
and they get to have them for a month.
That's our policy, but different libraries have different
ways of operating and so they're about as unique as all
the different families that homeschool.
- [Sonya] That's wonderful.
- We also have a Yahoo! group of ladies that are interested
in building libraries, opening libraries
and we can discuss questions and worries
and concerns about books, about lending books
and all kinds of topics that are involved
in having a homeschool library there.
- So if people want to get in touch with you to learn more
about how to find a library or how to start their own
library, use the contact form on your website?
- Yes, and actually a lot of that information is on our page
called "The Library."
We have a little video that gives a tour and walks around
to the kinds of books we have.
I believe there is also the address for that Yahoo!
group Mom mentioned.
- Okay.
And that's at LivingBooksLibrary.org or .com?
- .Com.
- LivingBooksLibrary.com.
- We also have had a library conference.
It's been about six years now.
We had 25 ladies from all over the country,
Washington, California, Texas, Kansas and out here,
out East, and we recorded that conference and we
have a couple of videos about how to repair books
and about the library in general and it's history
and so on.
And that's a package that anyone can purchase
from our website as well.
- It's also at LivingBooksLibrary.com.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- That's great.
Thank you for making this service available
and for sharing with other people, so we can spread
these great living books.
We want to give the children the best and so let's make
these living books available.
Let's save them from being obliterated.
Let's try and rescue them and make them available
for the next generation.