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There’s a new library in Philadelphia – and it’s in the airport.

The Free Library of Philadelphia recently opened an outpost in the Philadelphia International Airport in the form of a book-themed lounge with free Wi-Fi access to the library’s digital catalog.

Passengers are encouraged to relax in the reading room, in the concourse between the D and E terminals, and download books or author podcasts from the library’s collection of nearly 30,000 titles.

“We brought our high-speed line out to the airport in that little area. That Internet connectivity is extraordinarily robust, it matches what we have in the library,” said Siobhan Reardon, president and director of the Free Library.

The idea was inspired in part by an especially snowy winter, she said.

“We were having extensive blizzards here in Philadelphia, and we knew that there were thousands of people camping in the airport,” Ms. Reardon said. “We thought, ‘What if we put a library in?’ ”

The new lounge is part of a growing trend of partnerships between United States airports and local libraries: Seattle-Tacoma (Washington), Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (Florida), and Manhattan Regional (Kansas) airports all have experimented with virtual or physical libraries to entertain passengers over layovers.

It’s also a global phenomenon. The world’s first permanent airport library, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol, offers 1,250 books translated into 30 languages. At Songshan Airport in Taipei, a self-service “Intelligent Library” features a whimsical, tree-shaped waiting area. And in Helsinki, there’s a 24-hour book swap nestled near Gate 27.

At the Philadelphia airport, librarians are on hand several times a week to answer questions and accept applications for library cards – free for Pennsylvania residents, $50 per year for nonresidents – which give access to an additional 120,000 streaming and downloadable e-books.

A separate exhibit in Terminal A, “Philadelphia’s Literary Legacy,” pairs descriptions of famous Philadelphia authors with QR codes for downloading 50 of their most popular works.