The Tiny Library People This summer has seen a strange blossoming of a new current in Toronto, the elusive fruit of strange new ideas cross pollinating each other in the city. Through out the Annex and Kensington there are small libraries cropping up on lawns, new typographical mushrooms ready for summer readers. It's pleasant to think that books are being exchanged anonymously in little wooden cupboards. That seems like something that ought to have happened somewhere, a long time ago to be sure, but is only now catching on here. It could be the case that tiny lawn based libraries exist in some other part of the world. It seems as natural as birds in trees, or socks in shoes. Hiding in a man made nest, protected from the elements, awaiting another reader seems so much like the nature of the book that it must do this elsewhere. Indeed, one begins to ask, how could a paperback novel not be housed in a small publically accessible place, it's nest maintained by ordinary people? The main point about the books in boxes story is that it is exciting to think that people are finally finding a way to share their sense of culture publically and anonymously with each other. Tiny libraries are a public agreement that ``anyone can look at the rubbish bookshelf''. This is a good first step. We have not yet reached a sense of community where people feel that ``my house is your house'' but we're moving that direction by putting up community run libraries. It is my hope that we move towards a direction where people are willing to constantly exchange odd n' ends. It would be great to see the anarchic free markets of academia, those dingy places where students exchange anything and everything amongst each other for nothing short of best wishes and memories, diversify off of university campuses and on begin to colonize ordinary lawns. The fungus of good will, its roots in poverty, may one day produce a resplendent mushroom on residential lawns. My hope is that people clean and make available their things and throw out the really miserable ones. Putting a little cupboard on a lawn would be an easily taken first step towards a sense of intimacy among neighbours. After that you might consider surrouding the mushroom of shared objects with a vegetable garden. Your neighbour will hopefully catch on and you can tactfully swap tomatoes when you have too many.