Card catalogs in the Pima County Public Library have been converted to seed drawers.(Photo: Pima County Public Library)
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
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").