This photo was not taken in Ithaca but in beautiful Uberlingen in Germany. This bookshelf is a project they recently started there. The rules of the shelf are: Anyone can put books into the shelf. Anyone can take a book. If you take the last book, you have to replace it. That's it. And it seems to work. What a cool idea. Let's set one up in Ithaca!
I like the idea too! Wonderful. I doubt it'll ever work in Manila though. Sigh.