Words are like vegetables but only insofar as people don't like to be made to eat them.

The difference is, you can actually live on vegetables. They're good for you. Eating your words feeds only your humiliation, with the figurative egg on your face.

And so now, given that some of its users are not just "literary" hungry but literally hungry, the Barton branch of the Hamilton Public Library is providing soup cans and such on the premises. Because you can't eat their books ("War And Peace" would rupture your esophagus, not to mention the fine to replace it).

You will find not just soup at the Barton library, but canned vegetables and other non-perishable foodstuffs, hygiene projects, toiletries, warming clothes like tuques, gloves, socks and scarves, school supplies and other contributed items.

They're all in there, behind the Plexiglas-paned door of the Barton branch's new Little Free Pantry.

It's a play on the idea of those popular birdhouse-like Little Free Libraries that you see on people's lawns — you know, leave a book/take a book.

Little Free Libraries, which started popping up in 2009, have come in for a bit of a hard ride in the last year or so as librarians and others have pointed out these little book kiosks tend to be clustered preponderantly in areas of affluence already well-served by the library system and not in those neighbourhoods most in need.

Caitlin Fralick, branch manager at Barton, says the playful (yet serious) idea behind the Little Free Pantry is not a weighing in on the LFL issue; it's simply an opportunity for the library to connect with the community in a respectfully helpful manner and also take advantage of Leanne Phillips' carpentry expertise.

Leanne, community youth librarian at the Dundas branch (she just recently moved there from the Barton branch), and Caitlin were at an Ontario Library Association workshop last year when the pantry possibility came up.

"It's been really well used so far," says Caitlin of the pantry that went into the branch in mid-December.

"Within half an hour (of it going in) it was being made use of. Everyone is donating. Staff. People in the community. A lot of young people are using it. We get everything from bottled water and gift cards for grocery stores to fruit cups and granola bars (the latter of which are popular)."

The Barton branch is in the Landsdale neighbourhood, identified as a Hamilton priority neighbourhood, with a poverty rate of 40 per cent, compared to the city average of 18 per cent.

Leanne got right behind the concept once it came up, as she grew up with a mom and dad always doing building and wood projects, and she herself consequently has a facility with such things. She built the Little Free Pantry at Barton herself.

"I bought the lumber for the frame but I've always got scrap lumber around (from projects she's done) and the legs of it are posts from a fence I re-did last summer," she says, smiling.

She reworked the door from a refinished buffet and hutch door, replacing the glass in it with Plexiglas. She did the lettering with her Cricut Craft machine.

"We've had a lot of positive feedback," says Leanne, who refinishes and builds furniture when she's not librarian-ing (I just made up that word).

The whole thing, very handsomely put together, is done up in a beautiful shade of Hamilton Public Library blue, kind of teal maybe with a little cyan, like I would know.

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The pantry is one of several ways the Barton branch is ingrained in its neighbourhood. They also team up with 541 Eatery & Exchange just down the street for the Book Club At 541, for which the library supplies books and movies.

Words and foods (and toiletries, etc.). A marriage made on Barton.