Phone Booths as Guerilla Libraries

The New York architecture graduate John Locke's ongoing experiment to convert phone booths into mini libraries is gaining a lot of attention. He hopes that New Yorkers will browse the books and pick up one while running errands, and perhaps replace it later with another one of their choosing. The goal is to attempt to foster community engagement and see whether phone booths can give value back to a neighborhood.

How does he select the books to go in each library? Locke says:

"I want everything and anything. I don't have much of a budget, so all the books are donated from people that live nearby and off my own shelves, so everything from Oprah-approved to Jane Jacobs. And obviously as people leave their own books, I'd want the collection to become a record of the interests of that particular site."

Read more about Locke and his project in The Atlantic Cities interview.