Read me a story — but don’t take too long UPFRONT
By Travis Boland, Staff Writer
M
ost people still like stories — but many don’t like reading anything that’s long. The people who came up with the Short Story Dispenser initiative have a perfect answer: stories that can be read in one to five minutes. The Richland Library in Columbia is one of four sites in the U.S. to receive the first set of dispensers through a grant from the Knight Foundation in partnership with the Public Library Association’s Fostering Creative Community Connections project. Others are Akron-Summit County (Ohio) Public Library, Free Library of Philadelphia and Wichita (Kansas) Public Library. The three dispensers installed at Richland Library Main in downtown Columbia are about 64 inches tall and weigh about 66 pounds, making them easy to move to new locations. Buttons on the top give the reader a choice of a one-, three-, or five-minute story from the dispenser’s database. The story is printed on sustainable paper like a receipt.
Tony Tallent of Richland Library shows a printout from one of the library’s three new short story dispensers, which were installed in July. (Photo/Travis Boland)
“The idea is to have these in the community places and events,” said Tony Tallent, chief program director and innovation officer at Richland Library. The dispensers will be moved periodically to other locations in the area. In addition to encouraging reading, Tallent hopes the dispensers will highlight local and regional writers. The library plans to hold a short story contest in September, with winning stories added to the database. The dispensers are part of a worldwide movement called Short Edition, which
began in France. Short Edition is a community publisher that focuses on anything that can be read in 20 minutes or less. The original French website, with a platform through which anyone can submit writing, has gathered 200,000 readers, 8,000 authors and 80,000 short stories. The idea is to put the dispensers where people gather or wait: shopping malls, train stations, hospital waiting rooms. And, according to the Public Library Association website, the dispensers can be customized to fit any need, such as bedtime stories for hotels.
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