Seattle’s Little Free Libraries Offer a Catalog of Collections and Connections

Spooning buttercream into a pastry bag, Kim Holloway is close to opening time. She pipes rosettes of frosting on trays of vanilla cupcakes—some plain vanilla frosting, some cookies and cream.

With the aid of Holloway’s “partner in crime,” Kathleen Dickenson, they prop the lid of an old-fashioned school desk in Holloway’s front yard and fill it with cupcakes. Holloway adds edible pearls and glitter. Shortly after 3 p.m., the Little Free Bakery Phinneywood is open for business—the business of sharing.

“I love to bake, and many people have told me, ‘Oh, you should open a bakery.’ And I just think, ‘No, no, no, no. It would take the joy out of it for me,” Holloway says.

Like hundreds of other Little Free hosts in the region, she’s found joy instead in giving.

And, like so many good ideas, this one started with a book.

In 2009, a Wisconsin man named Todd Bol built a Little Free Library in his front yard, encouraging passersby to take a free book or drop off extras. The idea and the format—a wooden box set on a post, usually with a latched door—seeded a movement, with more than 150,000 registered worldwide.

“Seeded” got literal fast: The Little Free book idea spread to other sharing opportunities, including a rampant crop of Little Free Seed Libraries, where people swap extra packets of cilantro and Sungolds.

Seattle’s density, temperate climate, walkable neighborhoods—and maybe our introvert culture?—make it easy for the little landmarks to thrive. They exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when locals thought outside the box by putting up a box, including what’s believed to be the nation’s first Little Free Bakery and first Little Free Art Library. Many built on the region’s existing affinity for hyperlocal giving—the global Buy Nothing phenomenon, for one example, was founded on Bainbridge Island.

“We just seem to do more of all these versions of sharing,” says “Little Library Guy,” the nom de plume of a longtime resident who showcases the phenomenon on his Instagram feed and a helpful map.

The nonprofit organization now overseeing global Little Free Libraries finds the nonbook knockoffs “fun and flattering,” communications director Margret Aldrich says in an email. (She also notes “Little Free Library” is a trademarked name, requiring permission if used for money or “in an organized way.”)

Some libraries stress fundamental needs: A recently established Little Free Failure of Capitalism in South Seattle provides feminine products, soap, chargers, even Narcan. A Columbia City Little Free Pantry established by personal chef Molly Harmon grew into a statewide network for neighbors supporting neighbors.

Others are about the little things: Yarn. Jigsaw puzzles and children’s toys. Keychains (one keychain library in Hillman City has a TikTok account delighting 8,000+ followers). A Little Free Nerd Library holds Rubik’s Cubes and comic books.

Regardless of where each library falls on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they stand on common ground. “There’s a line from [Khalil] Gibran: ‘Work is love made visible,’ ” Little Library Guy says in a phone call. “That’s what they’re doing. They’re showing that they love the community by doing something for them.”

Here’s a little free sample of what you might find around town:

Seeding a Movement

At the UW Farm, on 1.5 acres of intensively planted land at the Center for Urban Horticulture, students grow more than six tons of organic produce annually. They learn about agriculture and ecology while providing food for 90 families in a neighborhood CSA, for college dining halls and for food banks.

One chilly November day, students and volunteers on the self-sustaining farm worked with the small staff to inventory what seemed like countless seeds for next year’s plantings: Parade onions, Autumn Beauty sunflowers, Painted Mountain corn, Genovese basil. Packs with just a small number of remaining seeds were set aside for the Little Free Seed Library installed near rows of winter greens.

Farm manager Perry Acworth organized the little library during the pandemic, seeing the renaissance in home gardening coupled with a run on supplies. “Seeds were sold out … even if they had money, they couldn’t find them,” she says.

Acworth picked up a secondhand cabinet—one with a solid door, rather than the usual Little Free Library glass window, because seeds need to be protected from light. Althea Ericksen, a student at the time, designed it, painted it with a cheerful anthropomorphic beet, and installed it.

Seeds were packed inside jars to protect them from rodents and birds who otherwise would have a feast, and the Little Free Seed Library was born—shielded from rain and direct sun, convenient to pedestrians as well as cars.

On a recent day, seeds for radish, mizuna, red cabbage, and flashy troutback lettuce waited in lidded jars for their new winter homes.

On the side of the seed library, thank you notes sprout comments such as, “Thank you for sharing.” Enough harvests have gone by to see the library’s benefits, from flowering pollinators to harvests of food. A mere handful of seeds isn’t useful for the farm’s scale, Acworth notes, but for library guests, “If I have five sunflowers in my yard, five heads of lettuce, that’s great.”