CHICO — Since 2014, Hilary Herman has managed the Little Free Library at Rotary Park by supplying books to children, young adults all bookworms in the greater south Chico neighborhood.

Through yard sales, estate sales and rummaging through free piles, Herman, who held a career as a building official, now spends her time in retirement cultivating a selection of books she thinks would be a hit for any passer-by.

“I actually wanted to be a librarian, but in those days you needed a masters and I needed to move on, get a job, those kinds of things,” Herman said. “I’d figure I’d be the old gray haired lady, like, stacking the books when I was retired, but I kind of do it in other ways with the Little Library.”

In the 12 years Herman managed the Little Free Library near 1532 Broadway Street, she said maintained a fair selection of children’s books, hardback and paperback fiction and non-fiction books — but much of it she calls “junk” she’ll have to manage or donate elsewhere.

“I try to keep a big variety of ages in kids books … right now I just I have a lot of (crud),” Herman said. “It’s interesting I’ll get a lot of romance novels in there, and I guess they’re fast because I’ll get like 20 of them, and it drives me crazy.”

Cheaper paperbacks, romance novels, mystery books, and current novels are part of her library, though she made a decision early to make the selection secular and non-sexual, because kids may be browsing.

“I’m not buying these books, so I have to get them in all kinds of variety of ways.” She said. “It’s constant.”

Despite the high maintenance and the fact that the library’s take-one-book-leave-one-book concept “doesn’t really happen that way,” Herman maintains a passion to keep the little library healthy and alive.

She sees families picking out books nearly every time she drives by, and all kinds of readers thank her for her work, including unhoused people who stay at the park.

“I think it’s great people go to the park, they have their kids, they pick out a book,” Herman said. “When I always go that way, and I just kind of stop and I see … It often needs straightening out it does drive me a little crazy.”

Maintaining a library with unsupervised, all-day access is a lot different than a regular library, but so far only four vandalism incidents happened in its time, she said.

“I really try to keep this one stocked, It’s a big commitment to do that. I’ll get books, move them in my car, use my trucks — constantly.”

Herman sits on the Butte County Library Advisory Board for District 3, and said reading has always been a part of her life.

She said she noticed young adults trending more toward technology and away from books, like her grandson’s generation having smartphones as their primary form of entertainment.

“My parents were big readers. When I grew up, that’s what you’d do,” Herman said. “It was kind off our major form of entertainment. We had three TV channels and it went off at a certain time. You did that, then you’d read.”

Elsewhere, Herman leads two book clubs and is an advocate for the Butte County Library, adding that recent funding allowed historic hours to return to the county’s six branches.

“Somebody once called (Butte County Library) Switzerland; you go from little kids to a person that puts a sign up like, ‘leave me be’ because that’s what they need in life,” Herman said. “It’s just remarkable, all free.”