Report from a Human Library in Stavern, Norway.

Saturday June 7th a Human Library was presented at the Labor unions youth conference in Stavern, Norway. The Human Library had ten books in different categories to offer its readers on the day and titles ranged from the hiv infected to the woman wearing the hijab, a blind person, a refugee and a transgender person.

The event was prepared especially for the youth members of the labor unions.

The readers where divided into small groups and during a two hour session each group met with two books. All the groups where distributed around on the outside grounds at the conference center. Where they could sit undisturbed with their book. Each book had an opportunity to share their experience and the readers would come with their questions on the topic.

There was a great deal of interesting acitivity going in the groups and some very intense stories where shared. It´s not everyday you hear a refugee tell about the hardship in their life, or a person with HIV to give insights into a life with the virus.

Ten Librarians where put in charge of a group each to serve as a facilitator of the loan and ensure the proces stayed on course. The rules where simple, readers could ask freely but had to return the books in the same condition as before.

The response from readers to the event was overwhelming. As on of the participants said to Library organizer Susanne Abelsen after the event, ”I am a new man after today”, which was not a bad summary of the day.

In the aftermath of the Human Library in Stavern, evaluations where handed out to readers, books and Librarians. The summary of the collected evaluations confirms the already positive impression, we that organize the events carry.

From the evaluations returned a staggering one hundrede percent of the readers would definitely recommend the Human Library to their friends. While 95% felt that the Human Library is an effective way to do away with prejudices and discrimination. A majority laid to reason the importance of talking honest and openly with each other and the effect of meeting the person in a face-to-face.

Some of the words used by readers to describe their experience:

Exciting, informative, educational, open, new, honest, engaging, touching, inspiring, giving, funny, liberating, useful, interesting, close, challenging, personal, innovative, super, admireable, fascinating, brave, couragous, insigthful, realistic and thought provoking.

This article is translated from Norwegian, it was originally published on June 17th, 2008, by the Norwegian People´s Aid.