The news rack fairy of Sebastopol
Jayne Burns turns old newspaper racks into brightly painted little libraries
As newspapers shift away from print (or simply print fewer papers), news racks are becoming ghosts of their former selves. Many stand empty and rusting.
Enter Jayne Burns, the woman who first brought painted news racks to Sebastopol years ago with the organization Artstart. Now she is giving old news racks new life by turning them into little libraries.
“My family calls me a meddler,” she said with a laugh. “I just have no tolerance for anything that's just useless and ugly and in the way. I noticed an old Sonoma West Times & News rack in front of Coaches Corner where I’m a member. It sat there just ugly and unused for three years,” after Sonoma West stopped producing print papers then went out of business in 2022. (The company collected most of their racks, but it seems they missed a few.)
“So one day I just grabbed one of the weightlifting guys and said, ‘Can you help me throw this in my car?’ and I brought it home and refurbished it.”
It was locked, of course, so she put 50 cents in, opened it up, removed the locking mechanism, painted it and returned it—reincarnated as a brightly painted little library—to Coaches Corner.
A few months later she saw another unused newspaper rack in front of Whole Foods.
“There's a bunch of racks there,” Burns said. “And again, I just grabbed some man in the parking lot—I've never been shy; let's just say that—and he put it in my car. I took that home and painted it, but I did not return it to Whole Foods. I thought Community Market would be a really nice place for it. So I called them and made sure it was okay. I painted the fruits and vegetable design, and now it’s there.”
When she finds an empty rack that’s part of a larger bay of racks—like the one in front of the theater at Main Street and Bodega Avenue—she just brings her tools and paints and fixes them in situ.
She noted that, while little libraries are common in residential areas, these are the first she’s seen in commercial districts.
Where does she get the books? She stocked the first little library at Coaches Corner with books from home, plus a few books she picked up at secondhand stores. People responded so enthusiastically, leaving so many books at the Coaches Corner location that she was able to stock the other two little libraries—at Community Market and now on Main Street—with books from there.
Little libraries sort of run themselves—people take books and leave books. Most owners of little libraries, however, have to do a bit of curation to keep them interesting. She’s been doing that with the Coaches Corner little library.
“I go to the gym regularly so I’m trying to keep that one in order,” she said. She also looks in on the others from time to time, but thinks it would be fine if someone else wanted to adopt them.
“Not a big deal either way,” she said.
When I caught up with her in front of the downtown theater, putting the final touches on that box, she said, “Doing this brings together all the things I love: meddling, art, literacy and community.”
Want to help curate one of the little libraries? Contact Jayne at jadebyrdz@comcast.net.
how fun! and brings people together…
Thank you, Jayne and Laura!