What is it?

The Iron Rail Book Collective is a non-profit reading room, lending library, and bookshop.

Covering issues such as politics, race, the environment, feminism, anarchism, socialism, gay and lesbian studies, social theory, and history, fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction.

A news-stand.

A home for zines and other self-published tracts and manifestos.

It's a comfortable, welcoming, non-institutional space where we can learn together and talk to each other.

Our library contains over 5,000 titles. You can now see our work-in-progress library catalog online at www.librarything.com/catalog/ironrail The "tag" that the book has is what shelf it is on in the library.

You can borrow videos and DVDs from our library! We have an awesome selection of interesting films and documentaries, which are kept on a shelf behind the front desk, but please feel free to look through them and check them out! We only ask that a $20.00 deposit, refundable upon return, be left when the video is checked out.

The bookshop offers books from presses such as Verso, South End Press, and AK Press.

The record rack stocks CD and Vinyl. We carry new and used reggae, rock steady, avant-garde, political soul and jazz, r&b, international, punk, hard core, and more.

The reading room allows for comfortable browsing of our zine and reference collections while sipping on coffee.

How can I check out books ?

Membership cards cost 10 dollars or 3 hours volunteer time for permanent New Orleans Residents. We require a $10 fee and a $10 deposit for non-residents of New Orleans including visitors and out of town volunteers.