Libraries Without Borders US is the American branch of Bibliothèques Sans Frontières, founded in France in 2007. Across some thirty countries, BSF builds spaces where people affected by war, natural disaster, and poverty can learn, connect, and rebuild their futures.
Our US programs share that lineage: the same conviction that access to knowledge is a right, adapted to the barriers American families face.
2007
Founded in France
~30
Countries of intervention
60,000
Physical and digital resources in 27 languages
800k
Books collected each year in France
Fifty countries of past and present intervention, from emergency response in Ukraine and Syria to long-term library development across West Africa.
BSF creates welcoming, secure places where children and adults can escape for a moment, express themselves, and glimpse a better future.
BSF works hand in hand with partners and local communities to create dynamic, inclusive learning spaces and methods.
BSF works to make places of encounter and discovery accessible to everyone, and to distribute educational resources and tools widely.
BSF puts impact at the center of its work. Every project is designed to answer the concrete needs of the people it serves, and evaluated with partners to keep improving.
Technology and design put to work for social impact, bringing down the physical and economic barriers to knowledge, even in the most complex environments.
A library of 60,000 physical and digital resources in 27 languages, matched to the diversity of needs, contexts, and partner objectives.
BSF identifies and trains “information champions” — librarians, educators, facilitators — so partners run projects independently, over the long term.
A portable multimedia library that deploys in twenty minutes. A quantitative study in Burundi found an Ideas Box in a refugee camp raised children’s academic performance by 23%.
A training platform building librarian capacity in countries where formal library science education is scarce.
The Books Mission
Each year BSF collects 800,000 books from cultural institutions, book professionals, companies, and individuals across France. Volunteers and the team at Solibri, BSF’s social enterprise, sort them at the collection center in Épône.
Beyond zones of intervention, the network runs permanent national organizations — each locally registered, locally staffed, and adapting the same approach to its own context.
France · Headquarters
Founded 2007. Coordinates the network, runs the Books Mission collection center at Épône, and develops the tools deployed worldwide.
Belgium
Programs across francophone and Flemish communities, with a focus on newcomers and youth.
Italy
Ideas Box deployments and educational programs from Rome to Sicily, working with migrant arrival and reception sites.
Spain
Digital inclusion and library capacity building, and the hub for the network’s Spanish-language content.
Switzerland
Supports the network’s programs and partnerships from Geneva, alongside the international institutions based there.
Canada
Québec-based, extending the network’s bilingual programming and tools across Canadian communities.
Established in 2014 and headquartered in New York, LWB US carries the network’s approach into American communities: meeting families where they already are rather than waiting for them to find the library.
The tools differ — LIFT kits instead of Ideas Boxes, laundromats instead of refugee camps — but the diagnosis is the same. The infrastructure exists; the barrier is the front door.
