Floating Library, a pop-up and mobile device-free public library aboard the Lilac Museum Steamship, will dock at Pier 25 on the Hudson River in New York City and run from September 6 through October 3, 2014. In addition to hosting an outdoor reading lounge on the ship’s main deck and offering a range of reading materials on tap, Floating Library will feature art installations, roundtables, performances, and workshops, including a bookmaking course with the Center for Book Arts and Small Editions, a reading with Ugly Duckling Presse, and a live recording session with Heritage Radio Network.

Artist Beatrice Glow, a Hemispheric Institute Council Member and Visiting Scholar at Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, curated the collection of literature, which contains several arts-related books.

According to the website, Floating Library “intends to recodify how we occupy public spaces by bringing activities that are typically confined within privileged institutional walls—such as reading, writing, researching, questioning, and debating—to open space.” It also “draws parallels with the balancing act we collectively perform to navigate uncertain times and shifting currents,” while pointing out the “social stratification” of print culture created by immobile libraries that cater to “the literate class that possesses esoteric knowledge/power.”

New York City’s Floating Library, supported by the Lilac Preservation Project, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Franklin Furnace Fund, among others, isn’t the first of its kind. Another floating library, fashioned from a handmade wooden rowboat by artist/librarian Sarah Peters, popped up in Minneapolis’ Cedar Lake last month. And MV Doulos Phos, the world’s oldest ocean-faring passenger ship (having been built in 1914 and served with the United States Coast Guard during World War II) held the largest floating bookshop, with 8,000 titles aboard until it was handed over to its new owner in March 2010.