Take a book — it’s free.

Washington Noon Rotary is promoting literacy and bolstering a love of reading through the city’s first Little Free Library. Located at the western end of Washington’s waterfront, a quaint schoolhouse replica sits atop a post. Inside are books of all types; a small, eclectic selection available to anyone who would like to take a book — or leave a book.

The first Little Free Library was built in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009. The project was the inspiration of one man — Todd Bol — who built the first to honor his mother, a teach who loved to read, according to the Little Free Library website. His front yard miniature library was so popular, he built more and gave them away. This spiraled into a plan with youth and community development educator Rick Brooks, to build 2,510 Little Free Libraries — one more than the total number of public libraries built by Andrew Carnegie in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Within a four-year period, nearly 15,000 Little Free Libraries had been built across the world.

Now there’s one on the Washington waterfront, and plans to build more are underway, courtesy of a Rotary grant.

“Rotary gets what’s called a district simplified grant,” said outgoing Rotary President Spencer Stanley. “We use some to build the swing on the waterfront; we used some more of it to build our first Little Free Library.”

Stanley said Rotary members discussed the best location for the library, and ultimately decided the waterfront would be the best fit: with lots of foot traffic and the many cruisers who detour off the Intracoastal Waterway to overnight at the city docks. The library, however, belongs to the community, according to Rotarian and Little Free Library caretaker Amy Brewer.

“It belongs to everybody in the community: neighbors, friends, people we don’t even know yet. Anyone can use it. That’s why we want to take care of it,” Brewer wrote in an email.

Anyone can participate by both giving and receiving, and participate in Little Free Library’s stated mission of promoting literacy and the love of reading, as well as building a sense of community by sharing skills, creativity and wisdom across the generations.

“This Little Free Library offers a way to share good things to read — favorite books from your childhood, or books you would recommend to friends, books that teach, intrigue and engage you. All of us can help by keeping this collection stocked with good reading material,” Brewer said.