The North Jefferson County Library District Board plans to build a “little free library” at the Montana City Solid Waste Transfer Station to protect discarded books from the weather until interested readers can claim them, the board explained at its May 24 meeting.
The Little Free Library, proposed by North Jefferson County Library Director Carly Delsigne, has been in the works since May 2021. Lynora Rogstad and Scott Erickson, library board members, are also helping lead the project. Delsigne got the idea from the indoor library section at the Cooke City dump where “people leave/take and have created their own little library,” Delsigne told The Monitor in an email.
Currently, books discarded at the Montana City Transfer station sit on open-air tables marked “free.” While the board is unsure how big the library will be, it will have at least seven shelves shielded from the weather, according to Delsigne. In addition to preserving books, the purpose of the little free library is to support “literacy, lifelong learning and the high quality of life with which those habits have been so closely linked,” Delsigne said.
