This Wednesday, 21st October 2015, I get to do something I bet many writers dream of. I get to open a library.

Granted, it’s a little library. A very little library. A Little Free Library to be precise. Little Free Library UK is a charity that promotes reading, art and community engagement. They build and install beautiful little book cupboards in public places across the country, increasing access for everyone in the community. This one has been designed by artist Hannah Adamaszek and is going in on Wapping High Street, in association with Tower Hamlets Community Housing who went hunting for a local author to help launch the project.

I live just over the borough boundary in Hackney, but in a way I’m even more local than that. Close readers of the ®Evolution books will have worked out that the real-life location of the Squats, the semi-derelict riverside neighbourhood that the outcasts of future London reclaim and make their home, is the area that we in the here and now know as … Wapping. And all readers will recall that those future refugees turn to the archived knowledge of the past in order to restore the abandoned buildings, and learn how to live independently.

Libraries are important, and not just in the aftermath of apocalypse. Worlds are discovered in libraries. Ideas are shared. Imagination blossoms. Friends find each other.

So if you’re in Wapping after Wednesday, keep your eyes peeled for a magic box – especially if you’ve got a book to share, or are in need of one. You might find yourself whisked away to the past, or the future, or some little slice of the present you hadn’t yet encountered. You might learn something you didn’t know you needed to know.

You might discover that libraries, like another famous magic box, are always bigger on the inside.