Petoskey District Library to host ‘human books’ in unique program

PETOSKEY — Patrons can stop by the Petoskey District Library on Aug. 3 to check out a "human book," or people who have volunteered to offer their stories and perspectives.

According to a press release, the Petoskey District Library will be the first library in Northern Michigan to provide human books to checkout, as part of their partnership with the Human Library organization in Denmark.

The Human Library concept is designed to serve as a library of people, where readers can borrow people serving as open books and have conversations they would not normally have access to. Every human book represents a group in society that is often subjected to prejudice, stigmatization or discrimination because of their lifestyle, diagnosis, belief, disability, social status or ethnic origin.

The human books volunteer their time for the day, and have a 30-minute one-on-one conversation with whoever checks them out.

Mary Beauchamp and Mary Hohlbein at the Petoskey District Library have been recruiting, interviewing and training the “books” for the upcoming program.

“We are excited about this,” said Beauchamp in a statement. “Sometimes we don’t know what our own prejudices are, and we think we know a person without even having a conversation with them. This will be a unique opportunity to listen and talk to different individuals, and hopefully we can even learn a little about ourselves.”

The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 pm. on Saturday, Aug. 3 at the Carnegie Building, 451 E. Mitchell St. in Petoskey.

For more information, visit petoskeylibrary.org .

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Petoskey District Library to host ‘human books’ in unique program