Sorry for those of you who read this that it took me so long to post again. Alas winter break likes to cast a spell over students in which they are unable to do anything productive. However, now is the start of a new semester and I am starting all new classes. The usual title of this blog post is from something I learned in IST 613. The class, which is on planning, marketing and assessing programs in libraries called for us to create a group and then pick a project to work on. The project my group picked was bakeware in libraries. At first I thought this was the a crazy idea, libraries that circulate bakeware? How would they clean them, who would use them, why would people go to the library to take out bakeware? All of these questions made me slightly skeptical about the project. However, upon doing research I found out that this wasn't something out of the ordinary, but, in fact, a practice that many libraries across the country currently do.
For many libraries it starts with a donation. Typically there is a member of the community who has a lot of cake pans (most of the libraries I found that circulate bakeware circulate mainly specialty cake pans). This member doesn't need the cake pans anymore so she simply donates them to the library. These are pans that are shaped like Elmo, Dora the Explorer, a Christmas Tree or even a heart for Valentine's day. These cake pans are relatively expensive and are typically only used once by the person who buys them. After all how many times are you going to bake a Dora the Explorer cake? When the libraries started circulating them people were ecstatic at the idea that they could take out these cake pans and use them. Libraries, especially ones with young mothers who brought their kids to story time, saw a dramatic need in their communities to have this type of material.
To top it off libraries aren't only circulating cake pans, there are libraries that circulate seeds, musical instruments, tools, etc. I think that people are so used to libraries circulating books, that many people don't even realize that libraries are there to serve the community and if the community really needs tools that can be loaned out, that is something a library can do.
My question is how receptive are communities of this idea? I know that some communities greatly embrace these non-traditional circulating items, but do many people take advantage of this service? How can a library convince their members that the library isn't only about circulating books?
