Smallest City Library?

Some small and remote villages have tiny libraries, tucked in a cupboard of the local church or post office.

But this might be the smallest library in a city.

The city is Christchurch New Zealand, ravaged by earthquakes in November and February, and where most of the city libraries are closed.

The library is a glass fronted fridge functioning as a book exchange. It sits on a cleared street corner, and anyone can go along with a book and swap it for another. The fridge is the latest in a series of temporary projects run by a couple of trusts: Gap Filler and Greening the Rubble. Their aim is to restore a bit of life and vitality to some of the empty spaces left by the earthquakes.

The chance is there to experiment – try out a lot of small projects with the expectation that some will fail, but that there will be some successful ideas come through.