Photo of the Day: Little Free Library, Chautauqua Institution, NY

The shot of another one of these on Facebook reminded me that I had come across a cute “Little Free Library” myself, in front of an equally quaint cottage, a few weeks ago on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution, the Victorian Era community in upstate New York where I have spent so many summers.

In its simplest form, the “Little Free Library,” wherever it pops up, involves a simple rule: take a book from this small box, but bring back one of your own to be shared. Its aim five years ago, when it started, was to produce 2,500 of these boxes—the same number as Andrew Carnegie's libraries. With 15,000 locations and counting at the start of this year, the "Little Free Library" is well past that goal now.