Libraries offer weird things to draw new borrowers

This spring, your next packet of garden seeds may come not from a hardware store or nursery, but from your local public library.

Fighting to stay relevant in the digital age, public libraries have taken to lending all manner of weird and wonderful items: hand tools, baking pans, fishing poles, telescopes and knitting needles, among others. Don't like the memoir offerings at your local branch? Bring a USB thumb drive, plug it in at one of several massive Espresso Book Machines and print a hard-cover copy of your own memoir — or any other obscure title the library doesn't keep on hand.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., the library circulates three kinds of energy meters that patrons can take home to test how much juice their appliances use. On a recent Monday, 27 of the library's 30 meters were checked out with the 28th on hold, said Celeste Choate, associate director for services, collections and access.

Later this year they plan to begin circulating science equipment — oscilloscopes, microscopes and perhaps even a few life-size models of the human skeleton — so students can shine at science fairs. "Sometimes you need tools in order to do cool science projects," Choate said. "Not everybody can afford a pH meter."

In what's perhaps the most popular development, a handful of libraries throughout the USA are becoming ad hoc repositories of heirloom vegetable, herb and flower seeds. Librarians hand out seed packets as they would books, in hopes that patrons will grow the plants, harvest their seeds and bring a batch back for others to plant.

"Our community has really embraced it," said Justine Hernandez of the Pima County (Ariz.) Public Library, which has operated its seed library for just over a year. "It's really about people nurturing these plants and then sharing them with their neighbors and friends."

The 27-branch Pima system has circulated about 7,000 packets of seeds and more than 433 varieties, she said. Patrons can reserve Harlequin tomato seeds as easily as Harlequin romances. Of the 800 or so packets that went out in January, 140 came from previously lent packets, Hernandez said.

American Library Association President Maureen Sullivan considers the seed collections a powerful way to help people pursue "self-directed learning and education." Sullivan, interim dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, said she has been encouraging librarians "to get out of the four walls of the library and really be out and about in the community." Seed libraries, she said, are perhaps the most visible sign that libraries get it.

Choate, of the Ann Arbor library, said seed libraries and skeletons aren't necessarily a sign that libraries are trying to stay relevant — it's in the very nature of libraries to change. Many of the items we now take for granted — paperback books, pulp fiction and children's books, for instance — were novelties, or worse, when libraries first introduced them. "Back in the day," she said, "having fiction was scandalous."

Over the years, libraries have adapted to community tastes and needs. "It's an ongoing process, and it should be an ongoing process, because public libraries are funded by public tax dollars," Choate said.

Originally envisioned in the 1990s by ecological activists in Berkeley, Calif., public seed collections have only recently taken off in public libraries. Many librarians point to a Richmond, Calif., program, founded in 2010, as their model. Co-founded by teacher Rebecca Newburn, it has given rise to about 55 others nationwide, Newburn said. Another 90 are in development.

"It's really diverse in how it's showing up, but it's gone fungal," she said (Newburn explained that "fungal" is a quieter, more sustainable version of "viral").