You can now rent free Library books from a wall at the 4th St Market

In a City with only one public library, the community is always searching for new ways to spread literacy and reading across our city.

In the name of this great quest: Little Free Libraries have popped up across the City, Chapman purchased and tried to preserve the Liberia Rubén Martinez bookstore (now the Centro Comunitario de Educación), and most recently a non-profit called Community Engagement and CSUF GCAC resident artist, Sarah Rafael Garcia opened a brick-and-mortar for her exciting Libromobile project.

To add another page to this story: the Santa Ana College Mural Team, 4th Street Market and Downtown Inc. recently partnered to create a mural that you can check library content out of.

The idea was shared with Santa Ana College Arts Department and Downtown Inc. by a shared contractor who encountered a mural library in a South American subway station. He sent the picture back home and Downtown Inc. and SAC connected the dots between 4th St. Market owner Ryan Chase and SAC Mural Team professor, Darren Hostetter.

Hostetter ran a contest for his students to design the best mural library concept and then painted the final product, including a stenciled QR code, or "digital" part of the mural.

This project was overseen by myself (Ryan Smolar), inspired by our downtown social media star (who likes to remain behind-the-scenes), executed by Darren Hostetter and the SAC Mural Team and made possible by Ryan Chase and the 4th St. Market. The inner-workings of the mural were advised by Santa Ana Public Librarian, David Lopez, who also told us you can apply for a library card to rent digital materials without even visiting the library. This means that the wall is not only a distributor of library content, but a library card dispensary as well.

​The 4th St Market library mural connects you directly to books and content about food and cooking, and we hope murals like this will pop-up around town and connect you with other types of material whether that be art, music, science or sports. If you want a digital library mural on your public-facing wall, please contact us.

Story by Ryan Smolar