Libraries Facts

Those little boxes of books on posts across America started as one man's tribute. Todd Bol built the first in 2009, from wood off his old garage door. He shaped it like a tiny schoolhouse, for his mother, June. She was a schoolteacher who tutored neighborhood kids at her dining table. He filled it with books and staked it in his yard. Neighbors wanted their own. There are now over 200,000, in 128 countries. There's probably one on your street.

The Library of Alexandria held up to 700,000 scrolls. To fill it, guards searched every ship in the harbor, seized any books on board, and kept the originals. It wasn't destroyed in one fire - it died over 500 years. Less than 1% of ancient Greek writing survives. Sophocles wrote 120 plays. Only 7 made it.

Fire damaged Los Angeles' Central Library in April 1986. Over the next several days, some 1,400 volunteers helped box salvageable books. More than half a million wet volumes went into commercial freezers to stop mold. McDonnell Douglas then offered an unlikely tool, its space chamber, and dried tens of thousands of books free. The library reopened in 1993 and is open today.