Books connect people across space and time. 

When we read a book, we can gain valuable information about the author, the social values, and the historical context from which that book was written. Several literary theories, including New Historicism, Cultural Rhetorics, and Reader Response, prioritize these human connections between the reader, the author, and the people in between. 
 

Books can provide a tangible bridge between people. Nick Sousanis, the author of Unflattening, describes illustrating and reading comics, for example, as holding hands. The reader holds the book that the illustrator physically drew. The acts of reading and creating a book bind authors and readers together, metaphorically but also physically. Leah Misemer, another comics scholar, also explores literature's human connections. She describes the Correspondence Zone as a community of readers who can write letters to authors, make fan art and fanfic, and expand on the original story to make something new. 
 

As I mentioned earlier in the About section, paratexts are one form of human connection in literature. People leave physical traces behind when they read a book: notes in the margins, bookmarks, scraps of paper, and other everyday artifacts. When people pass along a book to someone else, these paratexts trapped in the pages connect the new reader to the old owner. The paratexts remind the new reader that another human touched those same pages. Many readers have all shared the same experience of reading that story. The paratexts also provide the new reader a clue about who used to own the book before them. A grocery store receipt crammed in the pages may show what kinds of foods that person ate, for example, or even which neighborhood they used to live in. 

 

For these paratextual relationships, serendipity is a tool to spark unexpected connections and bring people together in new ways. For example, we often don't plan to leave behind a bookmark or a receipt in our book, and the next reader might not expect to find that item when they begin reading. However, because of this encounter, purely by chance, both readers are connected. Children's lit scholar Kenneth Kidd writes about how serendipity is a powerful tool for learning because it can teach us the things we never thought to ask. For example, we may stroll through bookshelves and see an interesting book that completely changes our perspective. Geoffrey O'Brien also demonstrates the power of serendipity to help readers form unexpected connections in his book The Browser's Ecstasy. 

 

Serendipity is an especially important part of the free little library experience. Many lending libraries operate under a popular system: take a book, leave a book. Because many lending libraries do not have a "librarian" who weeds the stacks or chooses which books to put on display, readers will not know what to expect. Anonymous contributors can drop off books on any number of subjects. With a busy lending library, readers may never see the same book twice. We can imagine how this serendipity can bring people together. Neighbors and strangers alike share books from the lending library. If we apply Sousanis' concept of books bringing people together, hand-in-hand, we can imagine how a lending library encourages chance encounters between strangers who, although they have never met, touch one another as they hold the same book. 

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During COVID-19, when people all over the world were social distancing, this physical connection of sharing books felt both inspiring and frightening. Books can connect people, and during COVID-19, that became all the clearer as librarians and readers feared that readers would unwittingly pass along the virus by exchanging books. Librarians in institutions all over the country quarantined books until they could be sure that traces of the previous owner, like any virus particles, were dead. When my local libraries were closed, I felt comfortable visiting free little libraries. But as I touched the books, I was acutely aware that someone else had touched them before me. In a way, I felt like I was breaking social distancing guidelines as I visited these lending libraries, even though there wasn't another person in sight. While I and other felt comfortable visiting free little libraries, many readers with preexisting conditions were more hesitant to bring in these used books to their homes when they didn't know who had donated the book or if that previous owner had COVID-19. 

I interviewed people about their experiences with free little libraries during COVID-19 to see how communities may come up with safer literary solutions that bring people together without risking contamination.