UW–Madison’s Nicholas Hillman and his family were recently featured by “PBS NewsHour” for a segment headlined, “Little libraries become food pantries during COIVD-19.”
Hari Sreenivasan begins the PBS report by explaining: “When the coronavirus emerged in the U.S., people who share books on a small scale — and countless others who wanted to help their neighbors — saw a new need. Boxes and stands offering free household goods, food, and other supplies appeared with signs saying ‘take what you need.’
“Now there’s a growing network of ‘sharing boxes’ nationwide and many began as part of the non-profit organization – Little Free Library. Part of the routine for the Hillman family in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, is a daily walk and a visit to the Little Free Library they added to their front yard last summer.”
“We’d never heard of these until we moved to Wisconsin about six years ago, and a lot of neighborhoods that we’d been walking through and had seen around town would occasionally have a little free library and we were curious about what they were,” Hillman tells PBS NewsHour.
Hillman is an associate professor with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, and serves as the director of the Student Success Through Applied Research Lab (SSTAR Lab). He also is a faculty affiliate of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE).
Sreenivasan reports that the “Hillman’s library is one of more than 100,000 of these book-sharing boxes installed around the world since the movement began in 2009. After the first few weeks of Wisconsin’s coronavirus stay at home order, the family wanted to be sure their little library box was still safe and meeting the town’s new needs.”
“We had books in the library and we just put a few cans of food in the library and then we noticed they were gone,” says Ashley Hillman. “So we thought, well, maybe there is a need here in our community.”
Sreenivasan adds: “They weren’t alone. Many stewards — all volunteers–began transforming their little free libraries.”
To learn much more, make sure and check out the full PBS NewsHour report here.