Users of the Northgate Trail system will notice an addition to the site, courtesy of a Dauphin student.

Anya Jackson attends university in Saskatoon, where she has seen a lot of free libraries, cubicles in which books are stored for anyone to take and read.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time and I haven’t seen any in Dauphin,” she said. “I just thought it would be a nice addition to Dauphin and the community.”

Jackson spoke with some members of the Rotary Club about helping to restock the mini-library.

“Because the first bunch of books are some of my old books, because I’m a big reader. But I thought that once I’m away at school, I can’t always make sure there’s enough books in it. So they’re going to help me restock it with all of the extra books they have,” she said.

Everyone is invited to take a book and return it once they have read it, or take a book and leave one in its place.

“We thought up here at Northgate would be perfect, because a lot of families that come up. There’s people who stay at the cabins. Now with all this space out here with the picnic tables and the fire, we thought that people could take a book, read it, bring it back. Or, if they want to take it home because they’re not done, that’s the point. That’s the purpose,” she said.

Jackson’s father Terry built the mini-library, while Anya designed and painted the outside.

Now that is it up and filled with books, Jackson is excited to see her idea come to fruition.

“It looks great. I’m really excited for people to see it. I think it’s an exciting thing for people to walk by and see something new is here. Hopefully, they’re as excited as I am. So I’m very excited about it,” she said.

Part of the purpose, Jackson said, is to get more people reading.

“I love reading and I know that lots of people do. But it’s nice to bring light to reading. Now we have so much technology, but it’s nice to bring people back to physical books and hopefully this will bring awareness back to reading,” she said.