We first found out about street libraries after hearing about them on Bookish, comedian Jennifer Wong’s ABC iView series about books and reading. A street library is a painted box outside our house containing a selection of books. You can take a book, or leave a book; it’s up to you.

Given that many people stop outside our house to discuss the garden anyway, we figured having a street library would give people another reason to stop by. So we decided to create a street library and put it in our front garden.

We built our street library out of plywood, and added a couple of old slates on top of the roof to give it a cottage feel.

We also ordered a sticker from streetlibrary.com.au that tells the neighbourhood this is a registered street library. Every sticker is numbered so that each librarian can register their library on a map. There’s already several street libraries across the inner west.

We put a selection of books in the street library this morning, some come by when you’re in the area!