Politics & Prose Works With Dow Jones to Fill Lubuto Library

When global business news and information services provider Dow Jones & Co. launched an employee book drive to provide more than 4,000 titles for a new library that it's funding in Zambia, Jane Meyers, founder of the Lubuto Library Project, believed strongly that those books should come from an independent bookstore. The result is a partnership between Dow Jones and Washington, D.C.'s Politics and Prose Bookstore & Coffeehouse that will fill the indigenously styled library with titles carefully selected to provide educational opportunities to Zambia's street kids, orphans, and other at-risk children.

Dow Jones, which issued an award to Meyers for her international work, initially suggested that employees make their donations through Amazon.com via a wish list of Meyers' creation. Meyers, a former bookseller and librarian with more than two decades of experience, had a different idea. "I've always been committed to supporting independent bookstores," she said. "It's not just ideological. At independents, I'm able to work with staff more knowledgeable about children's books. They know that certain graphic novels would be good for our [collection] and certain fantasy books would not. Creating the collection takes more knowledge than you can have with a big impersonal system."

Meyers said that by relying on independents and handing over the reins to Politics & Prose for title selection, she has been able to maintain the highest level of quality control. "I've been insisting that our collections are as good as anywhere," said Meyers. "They are selected specially for children who want and need them, and they are up to the best of standards."

Sticking to her guns meant that a database and software had to be built to function in a fashion similar to a wedding gift registry, so that Politics & Prose could directly process orders from Dow Jones employees. The two companies worked together to make that happen. Since Politics & Prose is across the street from the collections headquarters for the Lubuto Project, there's the added benefit of no shipping costs for donors, who also receive a 20 percent discount on purchases.

Meyers worked closely with the head of the Politics & Prose children's department, Jewell Stoddard, a Lubuto Advisory Board member, who designed the 4,500-title wish list for the project, a task that took weeks. "We wanted to expose the kids to all kinds of ideas and cultures around the world without the books being too specific or requiring too much foreknowledge," said Stoddard. Selections include a range of fiction, nonfiction, illustrated nonfiction, as well as graphic novels and poetry.

Meyers hopes book donors will think about their act of giving, and how it will benefit the recipients. "It's very important to us that people understand what they are doing when they give," she explained. "We don't want mindless giving. People often see giving a book as a really important token, a more important and more personal thing than money."

Meyers is hoping to expand the Lubuto Library Project throughout Zambia and Africa and is in the process of coordinating further partnerships between bookstores and donors. Those interested in finding out more, funding the project, or reading a blog about one of the libraries should visit www.Lubuto.org. --Karen Schechner