EVS Express

What is a living library.

The Living Library is exactly like a normal library – readers come and borrow a “book” for a limited period of time. After reading it they return the Book to the library and – if they want – they can borrow another Book. There is only one difference: the Books in the Living Library are human beings, and the Books and readers enter into a personal dialogue. The Books in the Living Library are people representing groups frequently confronted with prejudices and stereotypes, and who are often victims of discrimination or social exclusion. The “reader'”of the library can be anybody who is ready to talk with his or her own prejudice and stereotype and wants to spend an hour of time on this experience. In the Living Library, Books cannot only speak, but they are able to reply to the readers' questions, and the Books can even ask questions and learn themselves.

The idea of a Living Library (Menneske Biblioteket = Human Library) was initially developed by the Danish youth NGO "Stop the Violence" (Foreningen Stop Volden ) as part of the activities the NGO offered to visitors at the Roskilde Festival 2000, Denmark's largest annual music event. At that point, it was clear that the activity showed potential beyond the expectations of both the organisers and the festival hosts.

Organising living library in Arad.

When I first heard about the idea to organise a living library in Arad, I had lot of thoughts running through my mind at the same time: it's a really great and original idea but how, where, when...can't be easy to organise it here and especially with such a short time, we had approximately one month. But we (me, Oana, Lorena and Emad) put our heads together, read the organisers manual, searched for “books”, found places for the event, handed out flayers and spread the word about this wonderful project. Still until the first day, every one of us was a bit sceptic, how it might turn out...none of us had done it before, didn't know how the books might behave, what kind of readers we might have, if any. I was a bit more optimistic, because I'm an optimistic person and I believe that you mostly get what you expect but deep down I had my doubts as well.

3 days of living library in Arad.

The more happy we were up to even clapping our hands, when on the first day (6th of May 2010) behind theatre (on Avram Iancu square), we had our first reader, and of course she was not the last. For 2 hours we had quite active interest, not everybody became a reader but the mood and atmosphere was really friendly and nice. Only for 2 hours because low-budgeted as we were, hadn't bribed the weather man and our 3x3m tent couldn't protect all the books and readers from a heavy rain.

Next days we spent inside – in the new mall “Atrium” in a nice cafe on ground floor. All together we had 14 books – the most popular ones were 3 women prisoners and a blind man. We also had psychologists, a social assistant, an actor student, a volunteer, an african-american, an immigrant, a Roma woman, a prison guard and a council for victims of domestic violence.

The number of readers was different every day, and some people who read some books on the first day, came back on the second to read another book or books. While on the first day, all the readers read only one book, on the second day there were even people who read 3 books. The age of readers varied from 7 years (the youngest readers who filled the evaluation form also, were 14) up to 52 years. The younger readers were the most interested in the blind person book, the readers from 20-52 were mostly interested in prisoners and also prison guard. The exact number of readers remains unknown because some of them were too young to fill in the evaluation, some ran after reading the book when the rain came on the first day and some of them read more than one book and filled more than one evaluation form, but according to evaluation forms, it is possible to say more or less, how many times books were borrowed: 11 times on the first, 30 times on the second and 13 times on the last day. 62% of the readers were female and most of the readers were in the age between 17-25, together with much younger and much older readers, the average age of the readers was 25.

The feedback from the books and readers was very positive and most of them would be happy to participate in this kind of project again. Lot of them suggested to have this event in Arad at least once a year and I myself found out that similar events have been organised already in Estonia also.

I'm sure that in future event like this in Estonia or in anywhere else, I would definitely like to participate in organising and help with my experiences and knowledge that I got from this event. I'm really grateful for all the books, readers and other organisers and other helpers for participating and sharing this great experience.