Scott Rahilly, owner and operator of the Durango Book Rescue, stands next to his storage unit behind Eolus downtown recently where he keeps the bulk of his free books. His mission for the soon-to-be nonprofit organization is to create spots throughout town where books are available for the taking./Photo by Jennaye Derge

Take a book ... and another book

Local man to the rescue with free books for all

by Ted Holteen

Much like the rest of us, when it comes to Scott Rahilly, there’s a little bit of crazy in there, somewhere. But there are different kinds of crazy. There’s Phil Spector crazy and there’s Richard Branson crazy. Rahilly falls somewhere in between. Like those men, he’s pretty sharp, but his passions aren’t as extreme. I don’t expect him to kill anyone, but neither do I predict he’ll fly himself into space anytime soon.

What Rahilly is, is book crazy. And he wants to share that passion (I’ll stop calling him crazy now) with all of his neighbors, and if you’re reading this, you’re one of them. Rahilly is the founder and sole volunteer-employee of the Durango Book Rescue. It’s a simple enough idea – Rahilly’s mission for the soon-to-be nonprofit organization (legal status pending) is to create a slew of public spaces where books are staged for the taking by eager readers. But unlike similar “microlibrary” projects, like the Little Free Library on the Animas River Trail, the idea here is that there’s no need to leave a book. If you see something you like, just take it and Rahilly will replace it on the shelf with another title.

“It’s a self-sustaining model that just needs a little funding,” Rahilly said recently after a restocking trip to the “fishbowl” in the Reed Library at Fort Lewis College.

Rahilly got started on the Book Rescue project through familial channels. His brother, Denny, owns a used bookstore, Second Story Books, 862 Main Ave., and Scott watched as the store’s overflow inventory grew and grew. He rented a downtown storage unit next to his brother’s and began to amass quite a substantial collection himself with the number of titles swelling into the thousands. That storage unit – $65 a month – is the only fixed cost for the Durango Book Rescue and is covered by online book sales. Scott takes donations and culls the thrift stores for his inventory, and sells some of the titles to cover his modest overhead. Most of those are textbooks, technical manuals and the like – not stuff for the casual reader. It’s hard to describe the project as anything other than the clichéd “labor of love.”

“I’ve been putting money into it, and yeah, there ain’t none coming out,” he said.

As of this writing, there are eight Durango Book Rescue locations throughout town. Three are at Fort Lewis, where Rahilly is a nontraditional 40-something student majoring in interdisciplinary studies. In addition to the Reed Library location, there is a shelf in Noble Hall as well as a children’s rack in the Campbell Family Center. Other sites include Bread, Florida Laundry on Florida Road, Durango Joe’s (College Drive location), College Plaza Laundromat and the Manna Soup Kitchen. As word spreads, he hopes to be invited into more businesses. And no one is forced to take any titles they don’t want.

“If you have a doctor’s office or another specific business, come down to the unit and take what you want. Or ask me to find what you want,” Rahilly said. “I have more of a mission than just being greedy when I go to the thrift stores.”

So who is this altruistic Johnny Appleseed of the book world? Rahilly is like many here, an intelligent, thoughtful and caring man with a fascinating patchwork of a background. He was born near Toronto and grew up in Michigan, and his dual citizenship has probably been a blessing. He’s lived in many states and Canada, spent time at a Buddhist retreat and even lived in Southeast Asia for a spell. Many of his residency choices were driven by the closest thing he’s got to a profession, which is film work. Rahilly has worked on many movie sets in a variety of roles in the United States and Canada, and he’s parlayed that talent locally into a recurring gig with the Durango Independent Film Festival. He’s one of a few paid technical staff of the annual event, which once meant being a projectionist. But that’s become an antiquated term in the movie business, and Rahilly has adapted by keeping up with technology of digital projection as well as audio and print traffic.

“It’s not as simple as downloading a movie from Netflix and clicking ‘play,’” he said. 

Books, however, are decidedly low-tech, and the Book Rescue seems a perfect fit for Durango – assuming people know it’s happening. That’s why we put things like this in the newspaper. Rahilly is constantly on the lookout for new venues and is looking into funding sources to help literally put the books on the street. His next shopping spree will involve repurposing old phone booths into corner mini-libraries; add a few shelves, and eventually we might have books for the taking, sheltered from the elements, every few blocks. It’ll take about $5,000 to get there, and while such a sum seems daunting for Rahilly at the moment, he plans to add grant writing to his skillset in the near future. That could help out on a more practical level as well.

“Ideally, a part-time salary of about $1,000 a month would be great,” Rahilly said. “I do put a lot of time into it and I want to add more locations, be able to offer pickup service at people’s houses. That all takes time and time is money. So is gas.”

Oddly enough, Rahilly’s first fundraising foray will be done not for his own benefit, but for the Manna Soup Kitchen. He’ll hold what he’s calling a “free book sale” on the “first nice day” in May at Manna. After asking him three times what that is, I’m still not 100 percent certain, but the idea seems to be that people will come out of curiosity to pick through a few thousand titles and donate as much as they are comfortable with giving.

Before any of that, of course, there’s a film festival to work through and he’s also helping build sets for the FLC production of “The Producers” this spring. With a full course load and a budding side “business,” it should be enough to keep him busy, if not off the streets – that’s where he’s most comfortable, after all.

“I love books and I want other people to love books – literacy isn’t a given anymore,” he said. “I hope this catches on.”

Ted Holteen is a local man with an email address. It’s egholteen@yahoo.com.