Go to the library to check out a ... person?

That's right. At the Living Library in London, you can borrow a person for a 30-minute chat. The idea is to "take out a prejudice" and, through conversation, examine your stereotypes. The website doesn't tell us much, but an article written by David Baker, one of the human "books," does a nice job describing the process and the purpose.

"The human "books" on offer vary from event to event but always include a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and Young Person Excluded from School. I was there as Gay Man.

In the catalogue we had been tagged with the kind of negative attributes that readers might expect to encounter. Male Nanny was down as "twee" and "child molester". Police Officer was filed under "corrupt". Mine included "very well dressed" and "has some sexually transmitted disease", though thankfully there was no mention of Barbra Streisand."

and...

"First out were Social Worker ("naive") and Immigrant ("wasting resources") and then Muslim ("beard") was borrowed for a quick chat, presumably about bombs and his attitude to women. The rest of us tucked into the sandwiches and pretended that we weren't at all worried about being, almost literally, left on the shelves."

Who would you check out? What stereotype would you represent if you were a human "book"? Would you be sad if you were left sitting on the shelf?