Outdoor library festival turning 18

Ljubljana – A number of cities, towns and villages will join annual outdoor reading in parks, squares and along rivers starting in Ljubljana on Friday for the 18th year. Eight locations in Ljubljana will take part in the Library under the Treetops project alongside another 13 Slovenian towns and one in neighbouring Austria.

The project’s coordinator Gaja Naja Rojec says that outdoor reading is designed to create community areas and bring good books to urban and rural areas.

The first outdoor library was set up 18 years ago in Ljubljana’s Tivoli Park, its initiator Tina Popovič from the Divja Misel NGO told the press earlier this week.

The project gained momentum in 2010 when Ljubljana became the World Book Capital, and has since been joined by ever new and diverse partners from around the country.

This is the reason why individual pop-up libraries differ in how many days they operate, whether they focus on silent reading or are accompanied by a number of events.

According to Rojec, the project has evolved into “a kind of a microcosm”.

As for plans for the future, she said they would like to have pop-up libraries also in more residential neighbourhoods in cities. So far, they have been set up only in Ljubljana’s Savsko Naselje and in Fužine.

A newcomer this year is Jurovski Dol, a village in the north-east whose nearest library is 10 kilometres away and which has not been visited by a mobile library for years. Nataša Kramberger from organic farm Zelena Centrala said that they wanted to bring good books to the village and raise its reading culture.

Apart from Ljubljana and Jurovski Dol, also taking part will be Nova Gorica, Novo Mesto, Lendava, Kamnik, Ribnica, Kanal ob Soči, Komenda, Kropa, Polhov Gradec, Rašica, Velika Planina, Polšnik, and Bad Radkersburg in Austria.

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