Is there a Rosy Future for Libraries?

books to keep in this library. I mean, it's been such a heartbreaking situation there for years now, but visitors to the library have found at least a temporary escape from the devastation by coming down there to browse the shelves and and just read for a bit. As one visitor told the BBC, and as since the library gave me back my life, I would say, just like the body needs food, the soul needs books. That's incredible, it

really is. And while this is obviously an extreme example, it's it's amazing how libraries have served as an escape for people for so long now, and how they've been a place for self improvement and community and entertainment for so many And that guy is thinking, how did the modern library come to be? And how our libraries evolving, So that's what we're talking about today. Let's dive in

either podcast listeners. Well, from the part time genius, I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh I Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof class still on the run from library funds that are way way overdue. What did he say? It's been like seven seven years. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. All right, well, Mengo, before we get into the episode, we've had more than one listener asked if I was actually saying your name correctly, and the

answer is yes, So there's enough to that. I mean, I've known you for more than twenty years now, so I feel like it's kind of like when you know, kids just say a name for a grandparent, you have to accept like that it's what it is. So if they say mamma, it's in fact, Should I just call you mammal? Is that work? Anyway? We've had some requests for you to say your own name, so let's just

go ahead and do this. You want to go for it, and the listeners will know how bad I am at saying your name sure, it's it's pronounced Kyle Jones really all this time. Okay, So there it is, And I wanted to actually let you know that you're saying my name incorrectly because in the part of Alabama where I'm from, it's pronounced wheel. So now we both know. Alright. Well, back to Tristan's late fees and things that are long overdue. Today, we're finally getting into a topic we wanted to cover

for a while now, and that's libraries. Yeah. So you and I have learned so much throughout our lives thanks to libraries, and we really wanted to kind of return the favor by higlighting the best facts and stories about them we could find. Alright, so mego. You mentioned that you sort of feel indebted to libraries for being such a helpful resource over the years, and of course Tristan and many others are indebted in a different kind of way.

But one thing that's become clear for me over the years, especially working on this episode, is that pretty much everyone feels that way about libraries. In fact, to get specific, a full percent of Americans they just sixteen and older, say that public libraries are important to their communities and that those communities would be negatively impacted if libraries were to close down, as at least according to a two

thousand thirteen study from the Pew Research Center. Wow, so it's honestly a little surprisingly hear that the approval numbers are that high for libraries. I mean, maybe it's just me, but I tend to think of them as being in the same boat as like, I don't know, the postal system. You know, it's this like long running public institution that's become a little more ignored in the digital edge. Yeah,

well that's the thing. I mean, the number of people who approve of libraries and theory is significantly higher than the number of people who actually use them. So even though of citizens felt libraries were good for their communities, only about fifty three percent had actually visited a library or bookmobile in the last twelve months. So, I mean, I do feel like if half a population is using a largely government funded resource like that, it's it's really

not that bad. Though the visitor account has fallen further since two thousand thirteen, when Pew published another library study. Just last year, the number of people who had visited a physical library in the past twelve months had fallen to about forty four percent, and has the popularity of libraries also dropped since two thousand team No, I mean

that's the craziest part. So Pew asked the same question about community impact in two thousand fifteen and found that public support for libraries had remained at that same sky high level, which is great, but it does raise the question if if just about everyone considers libraries to be a valuable resource, why do we find fewer people using them? Yeah.

So I actually did some digging on that, and at first it seemed like the reason for the decline and visitors was, you know, due to technology and these technological shifts and maybe like this growing preference for e readers and tablets. Yeah, and and that was the PEWS takeaway as well. But I guess you're saying there's something else

might be at play here as well. Yeah. So, there's this independent federal agency called the Institute of Museum and Library Services, it's i MLS, and every other year it surveys libraries all over the country to get a better sense of how things are going in the industry. And one thing that the agency shows is that the revenues for libraries started dropping during the Great Recession in two

thousand nine and have continued to decline ever since. And this revenue is like this money from late fees and book sales or what are we talking about here? Yeah, I mean that's part of it, but most of the revenue lasses due to budget cuts from local and state governments and whenever they need to drum up more cash for public projects, libraries are just an easy target. And

so how does that relate to fewer people visiting the library? Well, the i MLS puts it this way, and their report from two thousand twelve quote we found that as investments such as revenue, staffing, and programs increased, so did critical use measures such as visitation and circulation. In the same way, as investments were reduced, mostly in reaction to post recessionary

budgetary reductions, we saw decreases in library use. So basically, the better funded to the library is the more people use it, which actually makes a lot of sense, right, I mean, more money means more staff members and longer hours, newer computers, not to mention more Harry Potter books on the shelves. So while libraries do stand a benefit from better publicizing things like their e book lending programs, which

I think something like of libraries offer. Now, if we really want them to live up to their full potential, then I guess it's up to the public to make sure that we properly fund them exactly. And while we're on the subject of the library's full potential, have you ever heard of this idea called the third place? No,

what's up? So it's actually a community building concept that a sociologist named h I think his name is Ray Oldenberg, and he outlined it in the late ninet eighties, and his thinking was that society foster's healthy, happy citizens if it helps them strike a balance between, you know, the time spent at home, at work, and in neutral public spaces.

So the idea is that a person's home is their first space, their workplaces this second place, and their third places are the stimulating public spaces where people gather to have conversations or to take part in some shared activity, or just to be in the presence of other people. So really, everywhere except the home in the office is

third place. No, I mean, so some of the historical examples, Ray sided where French cafes and maybe American taverns during their respective revolutions, and you could think of diners and coffee shops as modern standings. But third places can also be parks or rec centers and churches. The list goes on. But it doesn't mean that any place can be a third place. So, for example, it it's got a few rules.

It's got to be somewhere that's universally accessible, both in terms of proximity and price, So at third places, some somewhere that costs nothing or at least not much. And the other main requirement is that it's somewhere welcoming, where social and economic status don't really matter, and where the environment is so comfortable that people develop a connection with

the space. All right, I think I get it. So, so a library is kind of a third place that's focused on learning, and I guess that's always been the case, even back when libraries did little beyond lending print books, but it seems especially true under today's model, where libraries are offering community classes and provide access to things like, you know, everything from sewing machines and spinning wheels and go pro cameras, all kinds of things now right, and

now more than ever, libraries are becoming places where people can learn a new skill or collaborate on a project. Yeah, I guess you've you've sold me on this third place thing, mango, and that that really might be the way to think of libraries as we go forward, and I think so too. So there's a British journalist named Caitlin Moran who wrote a really great piece about libraries for the Times of London.

And this was back in two thousand and twelve. Apparently the British government is a little farther along with their library budget cuts than we are in the States. So nearly ten percent of England's public libraries have closed since two Yeah, and so Caitlin wrote about what it was like to see all these old public libraries being shuttered, and one pardon particular really speaks to how libraries exemplify

this third place and their benefits to society. She writes, quote, a library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind, hospitals of the soul, themed parks of the imagination on a cold, rainy island. They're the only sheltered public spaces where you're not a

consumer but a citizen instead a mall. The shops are places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier, but a library is where the wealthiest taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary instead satisfying reversal balancing of the power. That's pretty awesome, And you know, I like to house she's reflecting both on her own experiences with libraries, but also what libraries are to other people. That's ultimately what's going on with this public approval rating that we

talked about before. I guess, so what do you mean by that? Well, I read in that Pew report that from last year that over three quarters of adults in the US have been to a library at some point in their lives. So to be sure, some of the goodwill people feel towards libraries comes from their own personal experiences with them. Even if someone hasn't been to a public live re since childhood, they probably have some happy nostalgia for those early visits, and I guess that gives

them a positive view of libraries in the present. But I also think that people just like the idea of a public space that's set aside for reading and learning, which, you know, basically what everyone thinks of when they think about libraries, it's kind of like, even if we don't use them, we still take comfort in having the option and knowing that these places are make a difference in the lives of the people around us. I mean that

sounds right to me. And there's something in the concept of the library that really speaks to us on this fundamental level. It's like, we want freedom and we want to satisfy our natural curiosity. So what could be better than this big open space to explore any avenue have thought you want? Yeah, after all, I mean that there's a reason libraries have cropped up in just about every

civilization for the last few thousand years. And I guess the only problem is that we aren't always as good to them as they are to us, that's for sure. But the funding threats and reduced foot traffic that our libraries faced now don't seem nearly as bad when you look at the rest of our messy track record. But libraries. Yeah, now that we've gotten a sense of where libraries are today, we should definitely talk about their history and how they've

been developed and also destroyed over the centuries. But first, let's take a quick break you listen to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the shockingly long history of libraries, and I do mean long. So in fact, libraries are so old they even pre date books. The oldest library ever discovered dates back to the seventh century BC. It was the private library of this Assyrian ruler and it

contained over thirty thousand tablets inscribed with cuneiform. And many of the libraries tablets were just archival documents or religious texts, but there were some early literary work sprinkled into including the famous epic of Gilgamesh. Well, I like that literature was included in that one because it helps strengthen this

claim that it's the oldest library. I mean, ancient civilizations did really distinguished between archives and libraries, so it can sometimes get a little bit dicey when we're trying to decide what should or shouldn't be considered one. Today. For example, archaeologists have uncovered similar collections of Assyrian clay tablets that date back even farther. But you know, the contents are mostly records of various business transactions and things like that,

so you couldn't really call it a library. I don't think. Yeah, I mean it sounds more like a records room or something. But another thing that might lend a bit more credit to the royal library I mentioned is thats contests were largely a mass through the conquest of other territories, So the Assyrians would loot texts from the temples of Babylonia and other nearby regions and and then just add them

to the private collection. So it really was this effort to compile a wide range of knowledge and text from different sources, rather than just someone's personal business archive. I mean, I guess it was for a good cause, but you know, building something as peaceful as a library through conquest just feels a little off tonight. I think I'm more on

board with the Library of Alexandria's approach. So until it was miss Lee burned to the ground during the Roman conquest of Egypt back in thirty BC, the library held something like four hundred thousand scrolls, and people had moved from clay tablets to papyrus at this point. But you know, the scrolls weren't the spoils of foreign conquest. Instead, the Egyptians waited for foreigners to bring text to them. According

to the Greek physician and philosopher Galen. King Ptolemy of Egypt ordered the scrolls of any visiting ships to be seized and painstakingly copied into manuscripts. But the part that I found funniest was that Ptolemy kept all the originals and added that to the library, and then made the visitors take the copies instead. Well, one thing I was struck by while researching is how so many characteristics we

associate with libraries were relatively late additions. So even when scrolls gave way to books, libraries still looked really different from how they do today. For instance, did you know the practice of shelving books vertically with their spines facing out did take hold until the Middle Ages? I mean, the closest things to public libraries and those days were monasteries.

But the monks who lived there didn't really want to share their books with one another, so they actually hoarded books in their private workspaces, going so far as to chain the books to their desks. I mean, we've mentioned this before in the World Records episode, but the books were later moved to communal desks where everyone could use them, but they were still chained up to keep them from disappear.

I mean, everybody knows that monks have sticky fingers though, right, So, so when did the monks switch to more of a vertical storage when they got sick of hearing all those rattling chains? I think has more and more volumes were added to the monks collections. The books had to be piled on top of each other, which made it just really cumbersome and noisy to remove them from one another. But even after going vertical, books still weren't displayed with

their spines out. They were stood on their edge opposite the spine, or even placed vertically but with the pages facing out instead of the spine. Oh wow, I mean, hiding the spine seems like the worst idea. You'd have to pull every book off the shelf just to find the one that you were looking for. Yeah, but you've

got to think about this. Back then, like printing on book spines didn't really start appearing until so in the meantime, people had to come up with their own ways and life hacks to deal with this confusion, and one early solution was to draw identifying marks and designs on the thick of the pages, which is actually called the four

edges of a book by the way. So, for example, there was this Italian doctor who had a friend's nephew illustrate all the four edges of his books, and he'd put scenes on there that depicted the book's subject matter. The other popular solution was to wrap a title label across the book and and tie it on with the chain. Again with the chain. I mean, these people must have

been thrilled when printed spines finally came out. But you know, while we're on that subject, I also came across a surprisingly late addition to libraries, which is really the concept of lending or circulating books. So most of the ancient and medieval libraries we've been talking about, we're private. They were either reserved for the use of royalty or maybe clergy.

And you know, even though there were some libraries that were open to the public, or at least the portion of the public that was literate, they were only allowed to reference the books, not to borrow them or read outside the library. And in fact, the lending library concept that we're so familiar with, that didn't catch on until around the eighteenth century or so. And that's when you know, public library started to crop up in in England and

in France. Yeah, there's another precursor to public lending libraries in the US, and they were called subscription or membership libraries, and they were funded by fees and donations from paying members. So apparently there are still like twenty or so membership libraries left in the US. But back in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were all over the place. Yeah. I wasn't aware of these until we started doing our research.

But but Ben Franklin started one in Philadelphia, right, Yeah, that's right. It was called the Library Company, and it was the first of its kind in the American colonies. Franklin started in seventeen thirty one along with a like minded group of scholars that he routinely met with, you know,

talk politics or philosophy and other smart stuff. And Franklin's group needed a means of obtaining more reading material for the discussions, but books were super expensive and hard to come by, so his reading club pooled their money and they started soliciting new members who could each contribute money to help grow the library's collection. Yeah. But you know, before anybody accuses Ben Franklin of being too elitist, we we should point out that he also had a hand

in establishing the country's first public library. So this was back in sevente Franklin caught wind of a town in Massachusetts that had named itself after him, so he decided to reward their flattery with a gift. Now, the town actually asked Franklin to donate a bell for their steeple, but he nixed the idea in favor of a collection of books. And he declared that rather obnoxiously, at least that since was preferable to sound. Yeah, there's nothing elitist

about that, not at all. Well, the town of Franklin definitely was an elitist because the residents took a vote on what to do with those donated books, and they decided to make them available to everyone, and with that America's first public lending library was born. That's pretty great. But you know, we can't really talk about the history of US libraries without mentioning Andrew Carnegie. His donations made a huge impact on library of all men, and not

just in the States but throughout the whole world. Yeah, it's true. I mean everyone remembers Carnegie as this wealthy industrialist and man about town, but he was also really philanthropic, and he gave tons of money towards projects aimed at making the world a better place. And I'd have to say his greatest gifts were the astounding two thousand, five hundred and nine so called Carnegie Libraries that he funded

over just a fifty year period. Yeah, so there were thirty five hundred public libraries in the US by which is a crazy amount of expansion in the hundred fifty years so since uh the first one in Franklin. But of those thirty five hundred libraries, just shy of half were paid for by Carnegie. That's incredible, it really is. I mean, you know, I think what I like best about the story is why Carnegie did all this in

the first place. So, according to his autobiography, he fell in love with reading as a young boy in Scotland and he would regularly borrow books from the Tradesman's subscription library, which his father helped to start. Then years later, Carnegie moved to Pittsburgh with his parents and got a job at the local telegraph company. As luck would have it, his employer actually had a private library that he allowed his workers to borrow from on Saturdays, and this just

changed Carnegie's world. I mean, here was this wealthy businessman lending his personal books to a bunch of blue collar kids, you know, just so they might have a shot at bettering themselves. And Carnegie knew that without that act of kindness, all that knowledge would have stayed beyond their reach. And that's when he resolved that if he ever struck it rich,

he would use his wealth to establish free libraries. And he definitely kept his word right Even today, almost all of the Carnegie libraries in the US are still standing, and over half are still in use. His active libraries, a lot of them in lower middle income areas. Yeah, and Carnegie actually had another lasting impact on libraries that I want to talk about. But before we get to that,

let's break for a quiz. Okay, man, go, So, since today's episode is about libraries, we decided to look for one of our listeners that had a library card to come on and take a quiz, and we found one. He's uh. He's also somebody that spent a ton of time in libraries working on a couple of fascinating oral histories, and we'll talk about those. But Brian Abrams, Welcome to

Part Time Genius. Hello, thanks for having me, and for full disclosure, Brian is one of our long time friends, worked with us on several projects in our Mental Floss days, and has also, as I mentioned, tackled a couple of really fascinating oral histories and is working on another that we can't talk about just yet. But two of them. One was an oral history of David Letterman's top ten lists, and another was an oral history of the movie die Hard,

Die Hard So Cool. So actually I'm curious, Brian, can you just tell us a little bit about when you decided to tackle these, Like, how did you decide to do oral histories on these two very different things. That's a that's actually a really interesting question. It's and it's one that's easy to answer. I was given to contract to do them, and you know, you know me, um shines. Sounds like you had a real passion for them. Yes, exactly, Uh,

Dinard posters all over my walls, Um. But it's it's it's amazing to me who you got to talk to? You like you got former um right, presidents of NBC for the David Letterman one and like all these celebrities for the die Hard. Can you talk a little bit about how you can actually approach those people. Yeah, it's actually really difficult. I think that, you know, I think a lot of old histories are sort of done in

in a very authorized way. You know, the author or the author's people, they go to, you know, the top exec right. Maybe you know, if you're gonna do it normal history on say Saturday Night Live, you kind of you get the okay from Lauren Michaels and then you can go around and talk to all the usual suspects

who were there. And I did not do that. I was working on the outside in and it was very difficult, and it took a lot of time to finally wrangle one by one of all these people that sort of make up the quote story of die Hard for instance, which, um, you know, it took a long time and I probably needed you know, three dozen sources before say one of the main stars or one of the studio exacts would be willing to you know, take my phone call. Um. But that was a I mean, not to disparage Letterman.

Letterman is a great story, but you've I'll be thinking about die Hard um again because of all the posters on my wall. Um, you know, that was such a weird constellation of a story. It wasn't just about the making of the movie, which wasn't really a controversial production, um, but just sort of the ways in which the producers got to that point and the ways that sort of Bruce Willis found a stardom. It's all. It's all really. Yeah, his name wasn't even on the movie posters, right, isn't

that part of the story. Yeah, that's that's true. That the original one sheet, I think they wanted the studio was worried that he Bruce Willis, who had just you know, he was leaving TV. He had a hit series, Moonlighting, but then he had a couple of movies, uh that were not great or A Blind Dade came out, it

wasn't great at the box office. The second one was called Sunset and it bombed, and they were worried that he was kind of box office poison, and so they wanted to make the building the star on the on the original on the original one sheets. Yeah, that were distributed to the theaters. That's pretty crazy. That's pretty wild. Well, it's it's it's exciting to think about the ones that you're working on in the coming year. So we look forward to those. But we can't let you go without

putting you to the test with a quiz. So, so what quiz do we have for Brian today? Mango? Because he has a library card, We're gonna play a game called Name that librarian. All right, that's what you've earned, So say sixty seconds on the clock. You got your time ready, Mango. We're gonna list off some clues and we'll see how many of these librarians you can name in a minute. So are you ready, Brian? Oh, I'm so glad I called yeah. Okay, here we go. You

got your sixty seconds ready? Alright? The time? Does the time start with the beginning a question? Or when I finished the first question? Beginning? This is important. I've never known how your sixty second quizzes. Okay, that's the kind of power Mango has around here with the control of the time. All right, here we go, Question number one. This former librarian famously tied a key to a kite to try to understand electricity. He also invented bifocals. Well,

that sounds like Benjamin Franklin. Alright. This former librarian wrote a wrinkle in time. Oh, that would be Hank Kingsley Madeline Lingo. All right. This former librarian went on to become the first director of the FBI. Oh wow, uh yeah, what's the face Hooper? You got it. This former librarian wrote several but loved children's books, including Ramona Quimby age eight and The Mouse and the Motorcycle. You got it. This former librarian became a communist revolutionary. He's known as

the founding father of the People's Republic of China. Oh would that be uh? This former librarian was actually named Charles Dodgson. He wrote, Alison Wonderland, I think it's Louis Carol. All right, let's rush, Let's get one more. This former librarian and first Lady was married to the forty three president of the United States. Lash you got Brian? Do

you did? Great? He only got one wrong, which entitles him to a Certificate of Genius and an official part time genius t shirt one of the smartest ways on the market to cover up your torso. Congratulations. Al right, great job, Brian, I'm honored, Thank you very much. Okay, Well, so, besides making it much bigger, what else did Carnegie do for the U S Library System? All right, Well, this is going to sound a bit exaggerated, but really he

revolutionized the whole way libraries work. So before Carnegie, most libraries operated according to what's called a closed stacks policy. And under this closed model, patrons weren't allowed to browse and select books from the collection by themselves. After all, there was nothing like you know, anti theft sensors or cameras in those days to help the libraries collection keep

from walking away. Instead, people had to ask a librarian or a clerk to either you know, retrieve the specific books they had in mind, or just take a gamble and leave it to the clerk's discretion to choose something for them. I love that. So you can tell library staff or i mean, the mood for a mystery and then they disappear into the back room and grabbed like a random act at the Christie or P. D. James or something to the close stacks. Yeah, I mean, that's

exactly how it worked. And the first five libraries that Carnegie built actually operated this way too. But then Carnegie began to notice the closed that system had a few problems. So, for one thing, it was clunky. Employees were constantly bustling back and forth to fetch books, and more workers had to be hired to keep up, which would cause operating costs to increase. But the even bigger problem was that the closed stacks made the library feel, you know, really impersonal.

I guess, yes. I was just thinking it must have been hard for a library and to get a sense of what kind of book you'd like when there's this massive line of people behind you who also want to borrow something. Well, plus, there was no chance of discovering a book you'd like on your own. I mean, it was all left up to fate and the librarian, I guess.

But you know, Carnegie decided to change that. He started using an open stacks policy in all of his libraries, allowing patrons to browse the shelves for the very first time. So pretty soon non Carnegie libraries all over the country

switched to open stacks too. You know, I'm listening to you describe the shift to sell service libraries, and I just keep thinking back on that idea of the libraries the third place, you know, this accessible space that's open to everyone, And it sounds like this open stacks policy really helped bring that idea to fruition. And what's really exciting now is looking around and seeing all the ways librarians are picking up on that concept and just running with it. So what do you mean by that? You

want to give a few examples. Yeah, So one thing is that some libraries have begune offering self publishing and print on demand services, like the Sacramento Public Library that they've got this community program called I Street Press, and it revolves around one of those really cool espresso book machines. Those are kind of like those like the all in one book robots, right exactly. It kind of looks like a copy machine, but it can actually print, bind, and

trim a complete paperback in three to five minutes. Yeah, And so one way the library uses it is to supplement their in house book collection. The machine is connected to this database about three million titles that are either out of print or backlisted, so people can actually print their own copies if they're unable to find them anywhere else. That's pretty awesome, but it doesn't seem all that community driven though. Well, that's the other thing the library you

is it for? So they offer these free writing and publishing classes where people can come and learn about the craft of writing and get a sense of whether they'd like to self publish a book on their own. Then if someone writes and designs their own book, they can pronount as many copies as they want right there in the library. And this is the coolest part. If someone donates a copy to their book to the library, it actually gets added to the local authors section and can

even be requested by other libraries. Oh, that is pretty cool, and I know that'd be a lot of fun for writers to be able to see their their own work in a library's collection. But all right, so what about for libraries that can't afford their own bookmaking robots? I was looking at the cost of these things are over a hundred thousand dollars, aren't they. Yeah, they are pretty prizy, and that library only has one because it requested the funds by writing for a special grant. But don't worry.

There are lots of unusual community programs and services that even the thriftiest of libraries could adopt so um. Take, for example, the four branches of the Queen's Library in New York. They operate a new lending system called the Tiberry, where patrons can check out neckties for up to three weeks at a time. The idea has spun out of the fact that of local libraries already offer online career

and job related services. I mean, people have been coming to the libraries to job hunt online for years now, so why not make sure they have something stylish to wear when they actually land that job interview. That's pretty neat and it makes a lot of sense to me, I mean, although the only problem is they then have to figure out how to tie the tie right. Well,

the Queen's Library has you covered there too. All the ties, which are donated by the public are distributed in these little boxes that also include this illustrated guide for how to tie half winds or not, And there's also tips for how to nail an interview just in case you need some extra pointers. Wow, I guess, I mean they they thought of everything. Yeah, surprise. Librarians are really smart

and long suffering. On a slightly different topic, I don't know if you've seen this tumbler called I work at a public library where library and share some of their

favorite stories and what is it? So it's this long running collection of photos and anecdotes submitted by these war weary library arians and it's been going since like two thousand and eight, I think, and there's something like sixty pages of stories at this point, and they all offered this pretty hilarious look into the weird stuff librarians have

to deal with. Probably one of my favorites is this one where a librarian comes across the guy lying flat on his back in the History of Europe section of their library, and after asking if he's all right, the guy responds, I'm just contemplating life. But I understand if you need me to get off the floor then according to library, and he willingly, and with no further persuasion,

gets up and moves to a chair. That's amazing. And and see you said it was off topic, but there's that open communication in sense of community we've been talking about right there right if you say so, thanks for making it connect. Yeah, but it's sadly there are also times when the community just can't help you out and a person has to make his way alone. It's time

for the fact off. Wow, that's some trash talking right there. Um, But I know, as we've got into our research for this episode, we kept talking about some of the non book things we've heard libraries we're lending. So why don't we focus on those today? Ye? All right, let's see

what I've got here first. Okay, Well, if you've ever thought about trying out surfing but didn't want to invest in your own board or for the price of renting one, you could just head over to the Inverlock Library and Victoria, Australia to check out the one they keep on hand for the locals. That's awesome bringing back to this hemisphere.

I think it's pretty great that they are now more than a hundred libraries in the US with three D printers that library guests can use, and for many of them you actually have to take a couple of hours safety course first, which does seem reasonable to me. This some of year you'll find guests making Christmas ornaments, but you'll also find students making models for school projects and

other stuff. That's pretty cool. Well, I think it's pretty funny that the Aurora Public Library in Illinois allows you to rent one of their thirty sculptures for a couple of months. So what do you do with them? You just make your house or your office look all fancy.

I guess I don't know where they came from. Well, another thing you can check out that may see him a little more useful is one of the many kitchen tools available in several libraries now, so blenders, mixers, and my favorite Coventry Public Library and Rhode Island offers more than fifty different cake pans. There's even a SpongeBob one. I'm not sure if it makes kids dumber like the show does. As we learned our Mr. Rogers episode, we

have to test that out with our own kids. I guess. Alright, Well, back to the third place idea we talked about earlier. There are more than three hundred libraries in the US that have these little seed libraries. We're growing vegetables and flowers. And you may be wondering how this works, since you wouldn't think you could bring those seeds back, but they do invite guests to save their own seeds and donate

them back to the library for others to use. I think it's pretty wild that some libraries are starting to involve dogs in their library activities. So some use them to encourage children to read by spending some quiet time reading to a therapy dog, and the Yale University Law Library has provided a dog for stressed out law students to hang out with while their study. Who knew you could check out a dog? That really is pretty cool, So I think I have to give it to you. Mango. Congratulations,

you win the fact off. Oh thanks so much, I'm so honored. Well, that's it for today's episode. Honestly, there were too many great facts and stories about libraries to fit them all into one episode. So if you have any favorites you feel like we should have mentioned, let us know. You can email us at part Time Genius and How Stuff Works dot com or call our two seven fact hotline. That's one eight four four pt Genius.

It is still seven, right, Mango. Oh that's great. I can't believe we keep it going that long, but we love hearing from you. Thanks for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christop Neil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland

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