Need a cake pan, augur, fishing pole, or a piece of artwork? All of these items are available for checkout at libraries around Michigan, according to an article in the Sunday, November 25, edition of the Detroit Free Press.

The Grosse Pointe Public Library, where you can borrow tools, started its collection during World War II, when men were off at war, so boys could help out around the house. User-centered? You bet, all the way back in the 1940s. There’s a similar collection in one of the small neighborhood libraries in a low-income neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where I used to live.

Annette Lamb, in her presentation to the Michigan Association for Media in Education in March 2007, suggested that we acquire things like fancy-edged scrapbooking scissors for loan. She encouraged us to think about the practical but non-traditional things that teachers spend their own money on but would love not to. When I did my practicum in the Livonia Public Schools, they sold poster board for projects out of the library storeroom. Some college libraries have vending machines stocked with CDs or inexpensive flash drives.

Now, I love a challenge, so it got me thinking … if Library 2.0 is truly user-centered, what unusual but useful items should I be adding to my collection?

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What unusual objects do you circulate?

What cool things could be be circulating that we currently aren’t?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Library 2.0, Library Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.