science

The Human Library

The Human Library is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Human Library rather than just read about it. In short: The Human Library is an international organization and movement that first started in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2000. It aims to address people's prejudices by helping them to talk to those they would not normally meet.

Key takeaways

The Human Library belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Human Library to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Human Library from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Human Library is an international organization and movement that first started in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2000. It aims to address people's prejudices by helping them to talk to those they would not normally meet. The organisation uses a library analogy of lending people rather than books. These people have "experienced prejudice, social exclusion or stigma," and participants can ask them questions so as to "learn about the other person and also challenge their own prejudices." The Human Library Organization is active in over 85 countries, in which there are a few permanent Human Libraries but most happen as events.

History

The organization began in Copenhagen in 2000 when the first Human Library event was held at Roskilde Festival. The event was run by Ronni and Dany Abergel, Asma Mouna, and Christoffer Erichsen, then working at the Danish Youth NGO Stop Volden (which translates to Stop the Violence), inspired by the American Stop the Violence Movement. The first event ran four days with eight hours of conversations each day and more than 1000 people took part. The next Human Library was hosted in Oslo, Norway, by Ronni Abergel for the Nordic Minister Councils youth assembly "Unge I Norden". The event was prepared in partnership with Terese Mungai-Foyn and went on to inspire the establishment of the Norwegian Human Library program in 2003. The first permanent Human Library was established in Lismore, Australia, in 2006. As of 2025, the project has grown to have partners in more than 85 countries across the world. In October 2025, The Human Library announced that it was closing its Reading Garden in Copenhagen due to funding shortfalls due to the loss of revenue from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, particularly in the US. “We’ve definitely felt the change of policy and change of administration in the US, where a lot of our partnerships were from,” Ronni Abergel said in an interview with The World radio show. “People have withdrawn, and we’ve had to reduce our activities and our programming. And, to be honest, we’re hurting.”

References

External links Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Human Library

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Human Library claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Human Library before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Human Library ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Human Library

In research: The Human Library appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Human Library in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Human Library is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics International human rights organizations, International non-profit organizations, International organisations based in Denmark, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Human Library outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Human Library in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Human Library means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Human Library out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Human Library in simple terms?

Why does The Human Library matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Human Library?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Human Library.