Auburn Living Library
Auburn Living Library is coordinated by Auburn Council in partnership with Western Sydney Area Health Services and Auburn Hospital.
Auburn Living Library is a community-based initiative designed to break down cultural barriers and encourage harmony and cultural understanding in the community.
download Living Library flier a5 flier
download Living Library a4 poster
If you are interested in becoming a Living Book: Click here to download a BOOK registration form
Comments from some of our readers:
“I enjoyed learning about other people's lives and experiences”
“Reading Living Books is Fantastic” “
“Other people have similar situations to me”
“This showed me a greater understanding of our common humanity”
What is the living library?
A Living Library works just like a normal library, where readers come to borrow a book, and then return their book to the library. The only difference is that the books in a Living Library are people, and the readers and books enter into a personal conversation under the care and supervision of staff from the library and local community organisations.
Living Libraries provide a safe and friendly environment where you can meet people with unusual occupations and lifestyles or from different social, religious or ethnic backgrounds.
Auburn Living Library aims to work on three different levels and to help people find information and/or experience a different life (through speaking to Living Books) in three areas:
- Cultural Understanding/Exchange
- Community Safety
- Health Information
How does a Living Library work?
The Auburn Living Library is held in the Auburn Library Exhibition Gallery, partitioned into ‘Reader Booths’ so that books and readers have a semi-private space in which to have a conversation, monitored by staff from Auburn Library and local community organisations.
Our current catalogue includes 35 volunteer 'living books’, with approximately 48 different stories, that can be ‘borrowed’. At each Living Library session there will be approximately 15 'living books' available for 'readers' to choose from. The books at each session will present a diverse range of issues that address our three information and learning areas: cultural understanding/exchange, community safety and health information.
The Living Library provides a safe environment for books and readers – readers have the opportunity to borrow a person for 20 minutes and sit down and have a discussion. You can ask any question you like, but the living book decides which questions they would like to answer.
At a Living Library session, Librarians are always the first contact for readers. A catalogue of living books is presented by the Librarian for the perusal of potential readers.
The Readers choose who they would like to borrow from the displayed book catalogue and come to the Living Library Loans desk to arrange the loan.
Due to popularity of some of our Living Books, people are not always able to get the particular Living Book that they wanted to borrow. In this situation, the librarians are able to offer a reader the opportunity to wait 20 minutes until that book is available. Librarians are also able to direct readers to another Living Book – this is one of the great things about the Living Library! A Reader may end up reading a book that they wouldn’t have necessarily chosen as their first choice and are then able to experience a story that they may not have been inclined to hear, or wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hear otherwise.
Once people have borrowed one book, they usually have such a good time that they end up being return customers and come back to borrow other books!
What is it like to be a Living Book?
As in a real library, the books are the most important resource of any Living Library. A Living Book is simply someone who has an interesting story that they would like to share.
We provide training for books: how to tell your story, how to NOT answer a question that you feel uncomfortable asking, how to protect your privacy and look after your own well-being - while still generously sharing your story with others.
The most important thing that we wish to offer to our readers through our Living Library Catalogue is variety.
If you are interested in becoming a Living Book: Click here to download a BOOK registration form
We provide Living Book training to volunteers who would like to become Living Books in the Living library twice a year, and upon submitting a registration form we may contact you to invite you to attend training.
What are the books about?
Our Living Books come from all walks of life and include a Darug tribal elder and member of the Stolen Generation, an Iraqi mother of 13 who was detained in both Villawood and Woomera, a Franco-Australian who married a Lebanese man and lived through civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s, an aeronautical engineer with several interesting and totally unexpected tales to tell and a Tamil poet, writer and survivor of civil war in Sri Lanka.
For a sample Living Library catalogue, complete with Living Book titles and descriptions, click here
When and where will they be held?
The Auburn Living Library is held in the Exhibition Gallery, top floor of the Auburn Library. Civic Place, 1 Susan St Auburn
The sessions are held five times a year on a Friday, from 2-4pm and 4-6pm. The dates for 2009 are:
- Friday 27 February
- Friday 24 April
- Friday 26 June
- Friday 21 August
- Friday 30 October
Contact for more information
If you have any queries regarding the Auburn Living Library please contact:
Community Liaison Librarian Jenn Martin on 9735 1249, or by email jenn.martin@auburn.nsw.gov.au
Community Safety and Education Officer Linda Boustani on 9735 1209, or by email linda.boustani@auburn.nsw.gov.au