But as Edison wrote, necessity is the mother of invention, so staffers got inventive–or, to be more precise, a library volunteer. “An idea came from one our TeenSpace meetings at the Santa Ana Public
Library where one of our mentors, Nate Holsen heard about the Little
Libraries project in Madison, Wisconsin,” said Manny Escamilla, a Santa Ana Public Library's History Archivist. What's the Little Libraries project? Essentially a little house, constructed to order, filled with books and placed in random areas across the city for people to take and replace with others.
And now SanTana's the first in OC to have one, near a community garden in Jerome Park.
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“We are painting them white because we want for the community to put their own art and messaging along with the cities' logo and from there, we are working on getting more” said Escamilla.
“It's up to the community as to what kind of books they want to leave and take,” said Escamilla. “However, we will be on the lookout that there is no offensive material and we are encouraging people to donate bilingual books and children's book, because thats where literacy really begins.” Escamilla urges donations for the project–you know, because of that whole underfunded thing.
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