[wccrawford]

My wife runs one locally. She's pretty happy with it, but I have to bite my tongue when talking about it with her.

People frequently take all the good books, all at once, and don't return them.

Someone just emptied out half of it yesterday, and I don't even think they were picky. They just took a whole shelf of books.

It's such a crappy thing to do, and there's nothing that can be done to stop the bad actors.

[devilbunny]

A lot of the bad actors are scanning prices on them and selling them. Deface the title page and inside covers and they will be fine to read but worth almost nothing at sale. A stamp saying "Taken from the Little Free Library of X. Share and enjoy. Please report sellers." would do the job.

[wccrawford]

I think I'm going to get my wife a stamp that says some thing like that. I'll probably note that if it was sold, it was stolen, but not put any personal details on it. It's not like I could really do anything about it anyhow, and people would be mad if I told them that when they reported it.

Thanks for the idea!

[devilbunny]

I was thinking more like "of XYZ town" than anything about you personally. And since most of these are getting sold online, you want the duped buyers to report the sellers to the site where the books were listed. A bunch of one-star reviews for selling LFL books will tank someone out of abebooks or similar pretty fast.

You might even put a stamp on a sheet of paper with a note that it's in every book in the library to discourage the thieves from looking in the first place.

    FROM THE LITTLE FREE LIBRARY OF SPRINGFIELD
    ENJOY IT AND PASS IT ON
    ANYONE WHO SELLS IT IS A THIEF
    ONE-STAR REVIEW THEM WITH WHY
    ON THE SITE WHERE YOU BOUGHT IT

[shayway]

I'm sorry to hear that.

Where I live actually has the opposite; there are ~6 within a mile, and they're usually completely full. People are always dumping huge collections into them, to where I never even have the chance to give back myself.

I don't know what makes it different here. But it is possible for them to work without safeguards.

[nephihaha]

Bad actors? Bad readers surely.

The trick is to plump up such a library with a few books no one will take. Cheap romances etc.

[squigz]

I hate to be cynical, but that's always been my first thought with those too, and that just sucks...

I really like devilbunny's idea of a cute little stamp though! It probably wouldn't stop very determined people, but would probably deter a lot.