The archive · Public & Social · Strategic decision · 2000–2023
Human Library: Copenhagen lends people as 'books' at Roskilde 2000 — now in 85 countries
In 2000, Copenhagen youth workers turned people into borrowable 'books' at Roskilde Festival; the dialogue format now runs in 85+ countries.
Human Library Organization (Menneskebiblioteket)
What it had to solve
After a friend was killed in youth violence, the Abergel brothers founded anti-violence NGO Stop the Violence; when its funding was cut, they needed a new format that kept reaching young people.
How it works
In 2000, Ronni Abergel and his brother Dany, with Asma Mouna and Christoffer Erichsen, developed the Human Library in Copenhagen as a project for the Roskilde Festival. They came from Stop the Violence, a youth anti-violence NGO founded after a friend was stabbed to death in early-1990s Copenhagen; when government funding for 133 organizations was cut and theirs was among them, they needed a new way to keep doing the work.
The idea: a real library where the 'books' are people. Volunteers who are routinely prejudged — by ethnicity, diagnosis, disability, sexuality or life story — appear as titles in a catalogue, and readers borrow one for a private half-hour conversation. The first event was open eight hours a day for four days, offered more than fifty titles, and drew more than a thousand readers.
What looked like a one-off art project became a global, reproducible method. The Human Library Organization, founded by Abergel, produced an organizer's guide with the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Council of Europe, trained local organizers on several continents, and by the 2020s the concept had been presented in more than 80 countries and operated in 85+.
The format is now used by Copenhagen social-work students, American medical students at Thomas Jefferson University, and global employers including Microsoft, Heineken, eBay and Daimler — evidence that a civic idea about dialogue could cross from a music festival into institutions.
Why it lands
- It converts the hardest work — changing how someone sees a group of people — into a simple, safe, repeatable activity: a conversation.
- The library framing flips power: the 'book' is the expert on their own experience, and the reader asks what they always wanted to ask without judgment.
- It needs almost no infrastructure — a room, a catalogue, volunteers — so local organizers from 85 countries could adopt it.
- Its origin as a response to violence gave it a moral clarity that the format carries without lecturing.
What it did
The first event ran four days, eight hours a day, with 50+ titles and over 1,000 readers; by the 2020s the concept had been presented in more than 80–85 countries, used in schools, libraries, hospitals and companies like Microsoft and Heineken.
What you can take
Give strangers a safe, time-boxed reason to talk: the stigmatized answer directly, and the format spreads anywhere someone can run a library.
Since then
The first event's impact stunned its organizers; Abergel spent the following years traveling to spread the method, which reached the US and Canada in 2008 and new continents through the 2010s. The organization, headquartered in Copenhagen with trademarked methods, keeps running events in libraries, schools, festivals and companies, and the format has been adapted by universities, medical schools and employers worldwide.
Sources
- The Early Years — The Human Library Organization
- The Human Library: challenge stereotypes and prejudices through dialogue
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