Places
The Library Boat at Kemijoki
A retrofitted river ferry carries seven thousand books to nine villages along the Kemijoki river in northern Finland. Its librarian, Aino Saari, knows every reader by name.
Tag
libraries
Letters
The Bookbinder's Daughter Who Memorized the Naples Catalog
In a workshop above a bindery in the Spanish Quarter, an old woman recites, from memory, the catalog of a library that no longer exists.
Letters
The Library in Húsavík That Lends More Than Books
In a fishing town on Iceland's north coast, a small library lends seeds, fiddles, and bicycles. The librarian says she is only extending what a library always was.
Profiles
Forty-One Years at the Same Branch
Marisol Quintero has worked at the Eastlake Public Library since 1985. She knows the regulars by the books they read, and she remembers the ones who stopped coming.
Stories
The Library That Bought a Stranger's Debt
In a town of nine thousand, the public library used its end-of-year surplus to retire $1.2 million in medical bills owed by people it had never met.