An Arlington resident is seeking to create a map of every curbside library in the county, and he’s asking for the community’s help.
Constantin Kostenko, creator of the newly launched Arlington Mini Libraries project, enjoys going on walks with his children in his neighborhood near Nottingham Elementary School.
Often, they’ll stop at one of the many neighborhood-run miniature libraries that have multiplied around Arlington since 2012. The book boxes operate on a simple system: take a book if you want, leave a book when you can, no library card required.
Though Kostenko enjoys checking what each location has inside, he said that sometimes, taking time to browse the offerings isn’t an option.
“You don’t really have time to explore the books, [or] it may be cold outside — so on and so forth,” he told ARLnow. “So I thought … what if you catalog the actual contents of the libraries, so that people who are around can see what’s there?”
Last month, Kostenko created a website designed to do just that.
Arlington Mini Libraries offers a community-made map of homemade libraries around Arlington, along with catalogs of their books. Contributors photograph and document locations, then scan in books using software on the website.
As of today (Wednesday), the website lists 20 library locations and 65 total books.
In total, Kostenko estimates there may be about 150 book boxes around the county these days. While he loves what already exists, he hopes his website can expand on it.
“I think it’s fantastic what mini libraries have done,” he said. “They have unlocked the books that people have in houses and made [them] readily accessible to everybody. And now, this project takes it a step further by putting the catalog of each library online.”
Arlington’s first (or nearly the first) mini library was established in 2012 — part of the nation-wide Little Free Library project that launched two years before that. Located on the 1700 block of S. Edgewood Street, the box encouraged residents around the Fairview Mews townhouses to take a book and leave a book, operating on the honor system.
Similar projects have proliferated since then.
Many are affiliated with the Little Free Library nonprofit, which maintains its own map of over 150,000 locations around the world, including a couple dozen in Arlington. But Kostenko noted that the map only includes official Little Free Library sites.
He wants residents’ unofficial projects to receive the same recognition.
“This is a public use project,” he said. “This is going to share the wealth of these little treasures that we have around the neighborhood.”
To make this happen, Kostenko isn’t just trusting in people’s inherent goodwill. The website encourages users to find and catalog libraries through a point system that rewards persistence.
Top users are ranked on a website leaderboard. Additionally, once a catalog is big enough, the site uses AI to generate a description of that library’s “character.”
Kostenko is still refining the concept as he encourages users to log as many sites as possible by the end of January. Further down the line, he’s thinking about adding extra incentives like money or gift cards for some contributors.
Depending on how the project goes, he noted that this model could potentially work just about anywhere.
“If there’s sufficient traction locally, it would be very simple to expand this nationwide [or] globally,” the site creator said.
For the time being, though, Kostenko is seeking users’ feedback as he continues to publicize the site. Ultimately, he dreams of a project that becomes part of people’s everyday lives, reflecting the nature of Arlington and strengthening its community bonds.
“It actually is a way for us, for people in the Arlington community, to connect with each other in a meaningful way,” he said.
