If you’ve been in Dougherty Hall this semester, perhaps replacing a lost Wildcard at the Wildcard Office or resigning yourself to eat at Pit after realizing the wait time at Cova was too long, you may have noticed a wooden house filled with books. If your attention was piqued and you ventured to open the door and poke your head around the books inside, you may have also noticed a plaque that reads “LittleFreeLibrary.org.”

Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization focused on building community, inspiring readers and expanding book access through a network of volunteer-led Little Free Libraries. Started in 2009, there are now more than 150,000 registered Little Free Libraries around the world, facilitating the sharing of more than 300 million books. With the recent addition of campus’s Little Free Library, Villanova University can now count itself in those numbers.

Maria Tagliaferri is a graduate student doing her fifth-year masters at Villanova in mechanical engineering. When she’s not busy doing vector calculus and thermodynamics, she serves as the steward for Villanova’s Little Free Library. Inspired by exploring the Little Free Libraries in the neighborhoods by South Campus with her undergraduate roommates, Tagliaferri decided to bring one to campus. She and her family previously set up a Little Free Library in Cape Cod, and she recounted her positive experience, building community and getting people excited about reading.

Tagliaferri explained the purpose of the Little Free Library.

“It serves as a spot for people to drop off books they’re done with or grab new books they want to try,” Tagliaferri said. “It’s a little like thrifting, but for books, and it’s all free, which is great. It’s a good way to prevent books from being thrown out and to find more reading material.”

Sarah Wingo, the librarian for English, Theater and Romance Languages at Falvey, acknowledged the complementary role the Little Free Library can play with Villanova’s on-campus library. Although Falvey also offers popular fiction and other options for pleasure reading, she believes that the Little Free Library can “serve as a disruption point, where you might see it and think ‘I enjoy reading books for fun, too.’”

“It’s fun because they change. It’s exciting to see what’s in there and what’s new. Falvey gets new things, but we are so big, so if you’re browsing the shelves, you’re less likely to notice a new thing, whereas you can browse the Little Free Library quickly and easily as you happen to walk past, and maybe something catches your eye.”

Around a year after first dreaming up the idea, it was able to come to fruition through Tagliaferri’s hard work, as well as the help of SGA and VP for Student Life Kathy Byrnes and the support of Falvey Library.

Tagliaferri is very happy with the reception so far.

  “We were originally going to get donated books from the library, but it ended up filling up on its own,” she said. “It was cool to see that people noticed it and knew what to do with it. When I’ve walked by every week or so, I’ve noticed some different books there and a good mixture of different genres. It’s had a pretty good flow so far.”

Senior statistics and gender and women’s studies major Fiona Lonergan is one of the users of the new library. 

“I was really excited to see a Little Free Library on campus,” Lonergan said. “I’ve used the ones around the community, but I’m happy Villanova has put one on campus. It just makes it so much more accessible to find a good new book.”

For both Tagliaferri and Wingo, the library is about a lot more than just books. Wingo believes that one of the most important qualities of a library is that it serves a community, defining a library as a “a communal space where people should be able to go to access information without worrying about being charged.”

“My roommates and I noticed that, oftentimes when we had nothing to do, we would go right to our phones, and so I think, for us, reading became a cool way to escape and still do something that’s enjoyable and relaxing,” Tagliaferri said. “For our generation, it’s also a cool way to connect.”

If you’re looking for something to read next, Tagliaferri highly recommends The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green and is hoping to read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin next. If neither of those inspire you, you can also check out the Little Free Library as it moves to its permanent location near the fire pits. Be sure to pick out something you think you’ll enjoy, because, as Wingo reminds us, “Reading should be fun. There is no one right way to do reading.”