The nation's first permanent Human Library — where people serve as living books — moves into a new building with a café, cooking class studio, listening room and smart farm, opening as a full cultural complex on June 23; a ribbon-cutting ceremony is set for June 25 alongside the reopening of the Sanggye 10-dong community center.
Seoul's Nowon-gu will open Madeurium Library on June 23, expanding and relocating the Human Library it has operated as the nation's first permanent such facility.
A Human Library is a new-concept reading movement in which a person becomes a living "human book," sharing experiences and knowledge through direct conversation and empathy. Nowon-gu launched the country's first permanent Human Library in 2012 and pursued the expansion — funded through a donation-in-lieu-of-development arrangement — to broaden its programming and improve the visitor experience.
The new library occupies the third floor of the Nowon transit-oriented youth housing complex (Harrington Place Nowon Central, 495 Nowon-ro). The second floor of the same building will house the newly built Sanggye 10-dong community center, also created through a donation-in-lieu arrangement, which is set to open around the same time. The district expects the library's presence in a youth-centered cultural space to strengthen community exchange and cohesion.
Madeurium Library spans 744 square meters and includes a reading room and lounge, a children's reading room and a human-book reading room, as well as a listening room, a café, a cooking class and education studio, and a smart farm. Produce harvested from the smart farm — an urban agriculture system using information and communications technology — will be used in cooking class programs held within the same library.
The Human Library already runs a monthly "Human Book of the Month" curation, one-on-one and group reading sessions, and career-exploration programs linked to local schools. Since 2022 it has also operated a remote platform through podcast and YouTube channels. The move to the larger space comes with a significant expansion of the collection: the library plans to hold approximately 30,000 volumes, including human-book and other non-print materials, transferred holdings and newly purchased titles.
After completing final finishing work and equipment transfers, Madeurium Library will begin operations on June 23. Weekday hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; weekend hours run until 6 p.m. The library will be closed every Monday and on public holidays. An opening ceremony will be held June 25 alongside the inauguration of the Sanggye 10-dong community center.
The opening follows last month's launch of Pureun Sup Small Library, a nature and ecology-themed branch, and further enriches the district's library network with a new thematic focus on human books. Nowon-gu is also pursuing several other library infrastructure projects, including the ground-breaking of Taereung Eoulim Library, a remodeling of Sanggye Library, and the construction of a public library on the Gwangwoon University Station transit-oriented development site.
Nowon-gu District Mayor Oh Seung-rok, himself a registered human book in the library's collection, said, "A library grows stronger when people gather and meet alongside books." He added that the district would continue developing policies to make libraries the center of community life and a hub for cultural activity.
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