Borrowing People: The Human Library
—James Baron
Most libraries lend out books, but the Human Library is different. As the name suggests, this library lets users check out living, breathing human beings.
The idea is simple. People volunteer to be ''books'' by choosing a title that describes a special feature about them. Library users can choose which human book they'd like to check out based on the titles. For example, a user might borrow a ''homeless person.'' In that case, he or she would sit down with a homeless person for around 30 minutes and listen to that person's story. Other titles might be ''Olympic athlete,'' ''refugee,'' or ''young single mother.''
The Human Library was set up in Denmark by people who wanted to encourage dialogue between different social groups. The founders believed that violence often comes from a lack of understanding between people.
So far, temporary human libraries have appeared in 50 countries. Some places, such as South Korea, have even set up permanent human libraries. As the Human Library shows, we should never judge a book by its cover, since every person has a valuable story to tell.
「真人圖書館」出借真情故事
大多數的圖書館出借書本，但「真人圖書館」不同。顧名思義，這種圖書館讓使用者借出活生生、會呼吸的人。
這個構想很簡單。人們選擇一個描述關於他們一項獨特之處的標題，自願成為「書」。使用圖書館的人可以根據標題來選他們想借的真人書。舉例來說，使用者可能會借「無家可歸的人」。如果是那樣，他或她會和一名無家可歸的人坐下來大約三十分鐘並聆聽那個人的故事。其他標題可能是「奧運選手」、「難民」或「年輕的單親媽媽」。
真人圖書館是在丹麥由想要鼓勵不同社會族群之間對話的人所設立。創辦者認為暴力常源自於人與人之間缺乏了解。
到目前為止，暫時的真人圖書館已在五十個國家出現。有些地方像是南韓，甚至已設立永久的真人圖書館。就如同真人圖書館所展現的，我們永遠都不應該以貌取人，因為每個人都有珍貴的故事可以傳頌。
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