Here’s a compelling reason to go out on a school night: starting late last month, the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library and James J. Hill Reference Library partnered up to offer “Book It: Loud at the Library,” a series of Thursday night shindigs that begin with a little friendly trivia competition (hosted by Books & Bars’ Jeff Kamin), capped off by live music performed by a rotation of beloved local bands.

With two of the four planned evenings come-and-gone already (featuring live sets by Black Blondie and Murzik, respectively), the “Book It” series continues this week with one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Chastity Brown. Brown’s voice is rich and butter-smooth, and her songs have a soulful, often melancholic blues-folk sound with accents of jazz, country and even classical touches.

Programming like this strikes me as an ingenious way to rethink use of historic civic spaces, inviting the public to take advantage of landmark buildings for more than weddings and educational outings. It’s only smart to put these community spaces to use for everyday fun as well as edification. To wit: this music-and-trivia series fully exploits the marble-and-sandstone charm and architectural grandeur of the historic James J. Hill Reference Library, but does so in a way that welcomes you to sit and stay a while, to make this grand space your own not for a special occasion, but for a few hours of grown-up, weeknight play.

It’s a vivid example of the manifold benefits civic organizations and institutions can offer, if they simply think more broadly about mission and accessibility — all of us reap valuable quality-of-life dividends from these shared assets. At a time when state legislators are looking to cut to the bone any and everything deemed “nonessential,” such crowd-pleasing reminders of our shared stake in and benefit from these public resources seem to me particularly savvy.

There are two more events in the “Book It: Loud at the Library” series: Thursday night, Feb. 23 with music by Chastity Brown, and March 8 with performances by We Became Actors. Doors open at 6:15 p.m.; music trivia with Kamin starts at 7:15 p.m., and the live music begins at 8:15 p.m. General admission is $15 (some discounts available; show your library card and get a ticket for a free beer at the cash bar). “Book It” takes place at the James J. Hill Reference Library, 80 West fourth St., St. Paul, Minn. Find more information online:  http://www.thefriends.org/.