Town of Clinton, NY, Opens "America's Littlest Library"—in a British Phone Booth

The Town of Clinton in New York's Hudson Valley recently christened a bright red British telephone kiosk as "America's Littlest Library." The Book Booth, a branch of the Clinton Community Library houses about 100 books and is part of the library's book exchange program.

For under $1000, the library's Friends' group created the branch library from the classic British telephone booth. The idea came from Claudia Cooley, a library Friend, who was familiar with the recent British trend of transforming no longer used booths into art galleries, toilets, and, in one case, a pub. Cooley envisioned upcycling the booth, which had long stood outside a local café, as a way to bring together a community that does not have a town center.

The town of 4000, halfway between New York City and Albany, is served by three fire districts and four school districts and is divided by the Taconic Parkway. "There is no town center and the library is the place were the community gathers," says library director Terry Sennett (pictured). "We hope that the Book Booth will spark a sense of community in our town."

In fact, the project already has brought the town together. A local auto body shop volunteered to paint the weathered booth its traditional red and a local carpenter built the shelves. The booth sits outside the Wild Hive Farm Café, whose owner, Don Lewis, plans to house the cookbook exchange section inside his restaurant. Also, local children's book author/illustrator Peter McCarty, whose Henry in Love (HarperCollins, 2010) was named one of the Best Illustrated Books for 2010, designed the logo for the branch.

Fifty townspeople attended the Labor Day Weekend ribbon cutting for "America's Littlest Library." (The term "littlest" is used because a library in Norman, AR, claims the title "smallest.") Since its opening the library has seen the books in the "opening day collection" change, indicating that people are exchanging books. The initial collection consisted of popular fiction, children's titles, and how-to.

The Book Booth has embraced social networking, too. It has designed a QR code that brings people to its Facebook page. With 154 friends, it now outnumbers the Clinton Community Library Facebook page. And its 124 followers on Twitter (@TheBookBooth) hail from around the world.

The telephone booth was brought from England by town residents David and Jeanie Bean for use outside their British Tea Room, which they ran in town in the 1990s. The Beans met while both were appearing in a London production of West Side Story. The booth is a Kiosk 8 (K8) model designed by Bruce Martin in 1965 (the same year as the founding of the Clinton library). It was considered a masterpiece of industrial design but only 12 remain as working phone boxes.