Christmas is approaching and in the mailbox we found some nice news from the municipality in Aarhus, Denmark. A commitment of DKK 200,000 in support of developing and establishing a permanent book depot for Aarhus and East Jutland. The first steps have already been taken and now we can put more effort into the recruitment of books and librarians to fill up the depot.

Sports and recreation

The funds are some that we applied for from the Department for Sport and Recreation, and with the commitment to support, the municipality of Aarhus makes it clear that they want to see more meetings between people in public spaces. Meetings where we have time to look each other in the eyes and talk about issues that we normally might try to avoid or do not feel we have a safe frame or proper prerequisites to get into. That is the framework that the Human Library creates and in 2019 we will be able to create many more in Aarhus.

Many new volunteers

A book depot for East Jutland will make it possible for us to facilitate up to 30 events annually in collaboration with educational institutions, festivals, libraries and private companies and this will activate many new volunteers. A fully-featured book depot will be able to support activities throughout the region and thus act as a central collection of human resources that we can quickly mobilize. We look forward to welcoming the many new books and librarians in the Human Library East Jutland book depot.

Historical commitment

It is the first time in the 18 years The Human Library has existed that a Danish municipality provides support for the establishment of a local book depot. It is a bit historic for us, so thank you for the trust and support of the municipality of Aarhus, and thank you to all the people in Aarhus.