When Megan Williams decided to install a Little Free Library in front of her house in 2014, her reasons were more pragmatic than whimsical. During the process of selling her family home, Williams realized she needed to find a space for her mother’s “huge and wonderful” book collection. So, in front of her house in Toronto’s Junction Triangle, she placed a handsome Little Free Library: a worn-wood dwelling decorated with Williams’s ornate hand-painted touches, depicting a man and woman with noses buried in folk tales and non-fiction, respectively. “I just liked the idea of community connection and the serendipity of it all,” said Williams, who teaches at Sheridan College and the Toronto School of Art. “I didn’t mind the risk of it not working, if all the books went and none came back. I really appreciated the fun involved in seeing who would stop.”

Though Williams didn’t track her library’s patronage, rewarding moments soon accumulated: the Somali taxi driver who hopped out of his vehicle to drop off a book on coaching; the neighbour who credited Williams’s collection with her discovery of Maya Angelou; the nearby French Catholic school pupils who kept the library consistently multilingual.

The non-profit Little Free Library organization was founded in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009 by Todd Bol, who built a mini one-room schoolhouse as a tribute to his mother, a teacher who loved to read. Bol placed the model on his lawn and filled it with books, in the spirit of other take-a-book, leave-a-book venues. Bol began building more book boxes for friends, and soon partnered with educator Rick Brooks on a mission to promote literacy and community through the project. The organization’s initial goal was to surpass the 2,509 libraries built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. This November, Little Free Library expects to establish its 50,000th location worldwide.

Little Free Library has also been powered by the zealous devotion of its stewards, some of whom carefully curate their collections and intricately decorate their mailbox-sized literary vessels as Victorian mansions, rocket ships, or even Doctor Who’s TARDIS. In Toronto this year, the International Festival of Authors placed 100 books among Little Free Library collections around the city, some with free event tickets tucked inside. It seemed like a natural opportunity for “cross-promotion,” says Catherine Coreno, IFOA’s communications and marketing assistant.

But not every Little Free librarian has found ownership rewarding.

Jane Schmidt, a librarian at Ryerson University, erected a box in front of her Toronto home last Labour Day. Schmidt admits she embarked on the experiment with a certain bias. “To a librarian, your first reaction is: you know what else is a free library? A regular library,” she says.

Still, Schmidt decided to order a basic exchange box, which arrived with a free batch of books, mainly in the young reader and self-help veins. At first, Schmidt stocked her stand herself, but soon turned over curation to the whims of her neighbourhood. Occasionally people stopped to chat, but mostly, Schmidt says, Little Free librarianship was a “fairly anticlimactic experience.” She withdrew from the organization in May, deciding that membership offered no tangible benefit.

Schmidt’s concerns with the organization went deeper than that, however. She found herself questioning its non-profit status and brand-building goals, as well as the behaviour of her fellow stewards, some of whom she says seemed motivated mostly by a vain desire to flaunt their literary taste. Most troubling to Schmidt was Little Free Library’s mission to deliver exchanges to so-called “book deserts,” or areas underserved by public libraries. “It’s a dangerous thing for an organization to come along and suggest that they’re going to ‘water’ book deserts and plunk something down that’s called a Little Free Library,” she says. “A library is certainly a lot more than a random collection of people’s discarded books.”

The cost of a handmade Little Free Library ranges from a simple $165 (U.S.) box to a $995 oak gable. Would-be librarians are welcome to build their own box, but must still pay a $42 fee for an official charter. The organization says benefits of registration include placement on a world map of libraries; access to a private Facebook group; a steward’s guide; a newsletter; and a discount on books for stewards in low-income areas. Spokesperson Margaret Aldrich says money earned from registration goes toward operations (the group has about 15 employees), program development, and a fund to place libraries in needed areas.

Aldrich says the organization is “great friends” with public library systems, noting that her nearest Minneapolis branch has a Little Free Library in its lobby. “You know they have the best books if they’re curated by a public librarian,” she says with a laugh. “It’s just growing the culture of reading.”

Meanwhile, as Little Free Library also grows bigger, even self-professed skeptics are hopeful of its ability to do good. “People love these things,” Schmidt said. “There has to be a way for libraries to harness the enthusiasm that this organization seems to have inspired.”