Terms

Plain versions of the few things that actually matter. Nothing here is trying to catch you out.

Mini-Library Network, part of One Library Per Village. Last updated 11 September 2026. By using this site or creating an account you accept these terms and the privacy notice.

Borrowing: seven days, and never a fine

Take a book home and bring it back within seven days. If you have not finished, leave it at the nearest Mini-Library and take it out again from there — you carry on reading and the book keeps moving.

The week is a courtesy to the next reader, not a rule with a penalty behind it. Nobody is ever charged anything — no borrowing fee, no membership fee, no deposit, no late fine. That will not change. If a book is late, it is late; if it never comes back, somebody somewhere is reading it, which is most of what we wanted.

The books are not ours

Every book in a Mini-Library was given by somebody and is looked after by a Captain. We keep the register and the pages; we do not own, insure or transport a single book. If a book is lost or damaged, nothing is owed to anybody.

Captains look after their own Mini-Library

A Captain is the named person who keeps one Mini-Library. They decide what goes in it and take out anything that should not be there — see the guidelines. They are answerable for the contents of an open library in a public place. If one is repeatedly used for something it should not be, we can remove it from the network.

A Captain may stop at any time. We will find somebody to take it on or retire it, and its address is never given to anybody else.

Learning Centres run their own business

A Captain who also runs a tuition centre, a shop or a reading room and charges for their own services is running their own business. We take no share of it and we are not part of it. It must be lawful, and it must never be presented as something this project charges for. The Mini-Library inside it stays free.

Your account

One account, one person, and you are at least 13 to hold one yourself. Keep the password to yourself; what happens under your account is your responsibility. If you register somebody else at a Mini-Library — which Captains do for people without a phone — you are recording what they told you, with their agreement, and a guardian's agreement where they are under 18.

You may sign in with an email address and password or with Google. It is the same account either way, and the same account signs you in to my-tree.in, which runs on the same platform.

What you write here

Notes and ratings you write stay yours. By posting them you let us show them on that book's page, here and on any campus site in the network, for as long as the book has a page. Write nothing you would not say to the next reader's face, and nothing that identifies a stranger.

What we can do

We can remove a book, a note, a Mini-Library or an account that breaks these terms or the guidelines. We will say why. A removed book keeps its page and its journey, because that history belongs to every reader who contributed to it, not only to us.

This is a project, not a company promise

The site runs on a small budget and is provided as it is, with no guarantee that it will be available at any given moment and no liability for loss arising from its use. Books get lost; libraries go quiet; a page may say a book is there when it is not — which is exactly why every listing tells you how long it has been since anyone actually saw it.

We will give notice before anything significant changes, and if the project ever closes we will publish the data so the libraries can carry on without us.

Where this applies

These terms are governed by the law of India, and any dispute belongs to the courts of Kerala. If you want to raise something before it becomes a dispute — almost always the better route — write to hello@mini-library.in.