Reimagine Libraries: Telephone Booth Books

One of Britain’s few remaining traditional red phone booths has been recycled into one of the country’s smallest lending libraries – stocking 100 books. Villagers from Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset can use the library around the clock, selecting books, DVDs and CDs. Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not.

Reimagine Libraries: Biblioburro

Biblioburro: A traveling library that distributes books to patrons from the backs of two donkeys, Alfa and Beto.

Luis Soriano, and elementary school teacher from La Gloria, Columbia, came up with the idea of Biblioburro after witnessing first-hand the power reading had on his students. Since the late 1990s, Soriano has traveled to communities in Colombia's Caribbean Sea hinterlands with a portable library, which began with only 70 books.

Reimagine Libraries: Book Bike

"Everyone has the right to build and cherish a private library."

With this in mind, Gabriel Levinson of Chicago created the Book Bike: a custom-built tricycle stocked with 200 lbs of free books. Since July of 2008, the Book Bike has been responsible for placing over 3,000 new and used books into peoples’ hands. Weather-permitting, you’ll find the Book Bike at Chicago public parks on the weekends; anyone who wants a book is invited to take something home to read.