The Human Library Engages Readers

Posted on November 21, 2025 by Chris Kretz

This past Wednesday, University Libraries and our campus partners hosted The Human Library in the Central Reading Room. The event provided the opportunity for visitors to check out Human Books, each one a person ready to have a conversation about an aspect of their life. The concept of the Human Library grew out of an organization in Denmark beginning in 2000.

This year marked our third annual Human Library and featured a total of 33 Books recruited from faculty, staff, and students of the University as well as members of the surrounding area. If you attended any of the 274 “readings” on the day then you might have talked with an amputee, a first generation student, someone who grew up deaf, or a woman who broke into the comics industry in the 1990s.

The Human Library is meant to foster conversations and give people who might otherwise never meet the opportunity to learn from each other. It’s an event that entails a lot of collaboration and beyond our books we want to thank the over 40 volunteers that helped keep things moving and our steering committe made up of members from the Division of Student Affairs, Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Intercultural Initiative (DI3), Office of Military and Veteran Student Services, and Diversity, Intercultural, and Community Engagement (DICE), and the Program in Public Health.

For more photos see our Human Library guide. And look for our next Human Library in Fall 2026!