Rotary Club members are discussing the placement of a new Borrow a Book Box after the one at Hendrickson Park burned last week.
According to reports for the Poplar Bluff Fire Department, the box and books inside of it burned at 5:16 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 19.
Belinda Birrer, Rotary Club member and youth services librarian at Poplar Bluff Municipal Library, said she hasn’t talked to the board yet, but is looking into getting the box replaced.
“As far as I know, at this time, it will be replaced,” she said.
The library has two book boxes, and the Rotary Club also has two around Poplar Bluff.
Birrer said the box at Hendrickson Park sees a decent amount of traffic and generally more than the Rotary Club’s other box by the Karen West Head Start.
“We get a lot of families down there, so we try to keep it stocked, but there’s enough traffic that we just do everything we can to keep it stocked with books,” Birrer said.
The Rotary Club placed two book boxes last December, Birrer said, as part of the club’s focus on improving literacy in the area.
“The Rotary is committed to literacy,” she said. “They’ve done a lot with the library. They’re committed to literacy in our community, and that’s part of why they chose this project. As far as I know, we’re going to continue that project.”
Birrer said ideally the book boxes are self-sufficient, but the one at Hendrickson Park hasn’t been so far.
People can both take and leave books at the boxes, but Birrer and other club members also make sure the boxes are stocked with books.
“We just want these books in our community,” she said. “In a perfect world, they could take a book and leave a book. However, not everybody lives in that perfect world.
“If they don’t have a book to give, we are more than happy for them to take that book and read it, share it, have their own library.”