Show Notes
Patricia and Nicole chat about how effing rad public libraries are and share some of the free in-person resources that they’ve encountered at their local libraries. There are so many amazing things available at some public libraries that they had to cut this library love letter into multiple episodes.
Mentioned on the show:
- Move Over, Melvil! Momentum Grows to Eliminate Bias and Racism in the 145-year-old Dewey Decimal System via School Library Journal
- The Best Libraries You Can Get a Card for Out of State via Book Riot
- Digital Public Library of America
- Queer Liberation Library
- Library of Congress
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [Music]
Patricia: Hey there, Misfits! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I’m more than just Patricia’s roommate, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We’re recording this show on March 25th, 2024.
Patricia: I’m sure historians are gonna say we’re roommates.
Nicole: Besties.
Patricia: Besties. Who changed their names to have the same really long last name.
Nicole: That just shows the level of commitment to our friendship.
Patricia: Clearly.
Nicole: Mmhmm.
Patricia: Clearly.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: By the time that this show is being published and you’re listening to this, we will have had a four-day weekend and my birthday, and so it’s really, like, it’s really weird to me, like, oh, we’re gonna have a whole lot of things between when we’re recording this and when you’re listening to it.
Nicole: So, as you’re listening to this, everybody ready? And one, two…
Patricia: Nope!
Nicole: Three.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: Happy birthday.
Patricia: Nope.
Nicole: No?
Patricia: No.
Nicole: Okay.
Patricia: Maybe, like, the Stevie Wonder version, but don’t you dare try. I’m not even
Nicole: [Laughter] Just people randomly walking down the street starting to sing happy birthday…
Patricia: Ooph.
Nicole: …Patricia? No?
Patricia: No.
Nicole: Okay. Ooh, special thank you and shout out to Apple podcast listener hazel_flagg.
Thank you for the five star rating and the review. The review is great.
Patricia: The review is great. Well done. Well done. Another one for us to print out and hang up.
Nicole: Absolutely. We will hopefully soon have a whole wall collage of these things.
Patricia: Shout out also to listeners Deb and Mo for some snail mail.
Nicole: Absolutely love getting snail mail from listeners. This is one of my new favorite things.
Patricia: It’s like a big hug. I love it.
Nicole: If you want to write us snail mail, our mailing address can be found on our website.
Patricia: Under the About page. Just so you know.
Patreon reminder! For our first 60 subscribers, we will send a rainbow prism. We only have one Patreon level right now. It is three bucks a month. You can be what we call a helpful helper and keep this show going. We are paying out a lot of money to keep this show going and we would love to keep it going without ads because, ugh, so many of the ads out there on podcasts just make me so sad. And so I’d really love to keep this going without that.
Nicole: You don’t want to be hocking like socks and underwear and mattresses.
Patricia: You know what? I think the socks and underwear and mattresses I’m cool with, it’s the supplements. It’s the subscription vitamins. It’s the weird wellness things. That’s just not something I want to promote.
Nicole: That’s fair.
Patricia: And also, if you are a Patreon subscriber or you become a Patreon subscriber, in the top of the Patreon, we have a pinned survey. Please fill that out. That is how you will get your rainbow prism. And even if you don’t want a rainbow prism, please fill out the survey. We ask a couple questions on there to find out more about who you are.
Music: [Music]
Patricia: Okay. So, I don’t think we can get any further along in this podcasting adventure without doing a show on how effing rad public libraries are.
Nicole: Public libraries are so rad.
Patricia: And I want to start off with libraries are so much more than books, and I think a lot of our listeners know this, but even if you know some of this stuff, we’re also thinking that you can share this episode to share some of the library love.
As many of you are aware, I have a master’s in library and information science, and while I don’t currently work in a library, being a librarian is still a huge part of my identity and how I move through the world. Libraries are, by far, the absolute best deal in a country where it feels like it costs 50 bucks to walk out the door, libraries are indescribably valuable.
Nicole: And even if libraries were just about books? That would still be cool.
Patricia: Free book’s pretty cool. Yeah.
Nicole: I love a free book. But today we’re going to be talking specifically about public libraries. Not your K to 12 school library, not your private independent libraries, not your academic libraries, and definitely not your archives.
These are your publicly funded, accessible to everyone, libraries.
Patricia: Whenever I tell someone that I’m a librarian, they automatically mention Dewey Decimal
Nicole: Boo
Patricia: Boo. I’m like eff Melvin Dewey and his classification system. Library of Congress call numbers for life. In case you didn’t know, the Dewey Decimal classification system has a lot of racism and homophobia and sexism built into it.
According to an article from the school library journal, quote, “for instance, Black history is not a part of American history. Women’s work is a separate category from jobs. Non-Christian religious holidays are situated with mythology and religion, and LGBTQ+ works were once shelved under perversion or neurological disorders before eventually landing in the sexual orientation category.
I will absolutely link that article in the show notes because, you know, I’m gonna cite my sources and there are definitely librarians out there on the ground working to make this classification system less garbage.
Nicole: That’s good. Anytime we can have a less garbage classification system.
Patricia: Less garbage.
Well, there is a word I wanted to say, but this is an all ages show, so.
Nicole: So we’re gonna go with less garbage.
Patricia: Less garbage.
Nicole: Okay, so, I know you’ve got, like, a massive relationship with libraries. But for me growing up, my library experience was primarily, well, primarily with, like, my elementary school library. But we had a branch of our county library walking distance from elementary school.
And so every now and then, our elementary school classes would take a walking field trip to the library. And we would all take home library card applications and get our parents to help us fill them out. And then they’d help us get a library card. This was a really small branch, so its stacks were limited to like, you know, eight shelves, and there was a wall of, like, children’s books, all at children’s books height, and magazine racks, and, like, two to four computers, so it was a relatively small branch.
But that was my primary experience of libraries growing up, and so it wasn’t until I got to, like, university that I really started seeing, like, a huge library. But also, the other things libraries started to offer at my university library. And then of course, when I met you, that’s when the real, like, library love affair started.
As you really taught me, like, oh, my friend, there is so much more that libraries can offer you besides, like, databases and all the books you could ever sniff.
Patricia: Yeah, I didn’t know that story. Thank you for sharing that.
Nicole: Yeah, I should take you there sometime.
Patricia: I would love to go. I should take you to my hometown library that recently got renovated.
I remember my grandparents used to take me to the library every weekend. My grandparents were huge readers and I got my first library card when I was very young. My grandma got me my first library card. And I remember I grew up in a small town and my elementary school, we took like a field trip, probably when I was in like the third grade or something like that to the public library.
And like, my classmates were all, like, ooh and ah, and I just, like, waved to the librarian. I knew her name. I walked in like I owned the place, because I was so familiar. And I’m just like, this way to the children’s section, everyone’s like.
[Laughter]
Nicole: I can totally see you, like, marching in front of the class and being like, “hello, librarian…”
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: “How’s your family?”
Patricia: Right.
Nicole: “Did you have a good weekend?”
Patricia: Come on, everyone. All the choose your own adventures are over here.
Nicole: Ooh, you knew where the good books were.
Patricia: I knew where the good books were.
Nicole: Okay, so before we get into some of the things these libraries have to offer that we’ve mentioned, let’s start at the beginning, though.
How does one get a library card? Do you have to show up in person? Do I have to still get my parents to sign off on my library card?
Patricia: It depends. So, many systems in California, those are the systems that we’re most familiar with. We’ve lived in California, almost, you’ve lived in California your entire life.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: And I’ve lived in California my whole life except for one year in Philadelphia. So many systems in California require you to show a piece of mail with your current address on it, or a PDF of a utility bill or something like that in addition to your ID. While I understand wanting to verify addresses in this way, this creates a barrier to access.
Not everyone has an address like our unhoused neighbors. Uh, not everyone has a utility bill like a teenager or sometimes even a roommate or a spouse whose name isn’t on the bills. There are definitely some library systems that are, they’re removing these barriers that don’t require an address verification necessarily.
They also don’t necessarily require children to get a parent or guardian to sign off on a card. There’s this whole thing called the Library Bill of Rights, and there is the Intellectual Freedom Manual that talks about all of the barriers to access that librarians really aren’t supposed to be gatekeepers, we’re supposed to be stewards of information, and so I’m really happy to see more libraries taking down those barriers so that everyone can get a card.
Nicole: Also, some librarians are really rad. I think you told me a story once of seeing a librarian where someone asked, do I have to show mail? I don’t have mail with my home address. And they like slid them a postcard and were like, write yourself a postcard
Patricia: and then slide it back. Yeah.
Nicole: And they’re like congratulations you have a piece of mail with your address on it.
Patricia: Right? Yeah. Like I’m sure they totally weren’t supposed to do that. And also come on. Yeah.
Nicole: Great. Now we did what we need to do to get this person a library card.
So, in California, you can get a card at any public library throughout the whole state as long as you are a resident of California. Other states, it depends.
And we are not going to go into the rules for all 50 states here. Some states have reciprocal library systems, and some libraries outside of your home state will even let you get an e-card, so an electronic library card, for an annual fee. And we’ll link to…
Patricia: We’ll link to actually one of my Book Riot colleagues wrote a whole article on some of the libraries that do that. So we’ll add that link to the show notes.
Nicole: Yeah, there are also virtual libraries that exist entirely online as public libraries, and these are ones like the Digital Public Library of America, or one I just recently learned about, the Queer Liberation Library.
Patricia: Yeah.
There’s also, we’re not gonna talk a lot about the Library of Congress, but if you’re in the U. S. you can definitely access like all kinds of photo archives and free to use photos, slave narratives, like recordings and stuff like that through the Library of Congress. It’s phenomenal.
Nicole: There’s all kinds of cool things there.
Patricia: And you can do all that without a card. So, me knowing this, I have to share a story.
I was in a very white affluent area of California, and whenever we go to a new place, we try to get library cards. Pretty much, that’s just what we do. We just collect library cards, because you can, even if you can’t get physical stuff from there, like we’ll talk a bit later, you can access the electronic databases and things like that.
So I was visiting a friend in a very white affluent area, and I’m not going to call them out, but we went to the library and I went to get a library card and the person at the desk said, “you don’t live here. I can’t give you a card.” And I was a bit taken aback because I had never encountered that.
I already had like half a dozen library cards. I was very confused. I was like, is this place different? And so I was like, are you sure? And she was giving me a lot of attitude and I, well, I don’t encourage people saying like, let me speak to the manager. She was rude enough that it really made me question her motives.
And so I said, “hey, are you the librarian?” And there was literally the librarian sitting off to the side at the reference desk, and she looks over and I said, “can you ask the librarian?” And the librarian’s like, “yeah, anyone in California.” And this woman had the most sour lemon face as she signed me up for a library card. And. It’s beautiful.
It’s beautiful.
Nicole: It was pretty great. This, this sour lemon face, as you put it, of this person who had to then sign both of us up.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: For library cards.
Yeah. And so, I’m like, haha, I’m gonna borrow all your books. No, I’m not gonna borrow all your books. Like, what exactly was she expecting me to do?
So, depending on where you live, there may be a citywide library system, a county system, or even a state level system. So for us, this would be like, we were able to get ones from where we used to live in Pasadena, California, there was a Pasadena city library system. There was also an LA Los Angeles city system, but there was also a Los Angeles county library system, which was the one that had a branch near where I grew up.
So there’s, there’s these different level ones. I don’t think California has a state library system.
Patricia: We… I don’t know if it’s a system. There’s a California state Library.
Nicole: Yes, only in Sacramento with a branch in San Francisco.
Patricia: I mean, how many branches does something need to be called a system, though?
Nicole: That’s true, yeah.
I don’t know.
Patricia: All systems are valid.
[Laughter]
Nicole: You’re the librarian here. Also, though, if you work at a university, like Patricia and I both do, you may have access to the library resources at your job. So we both can access the university library. And if you’re a student at any university, just about every university has a library, and
Patricia: yeah.
Nicole: usually they’re pretty big and really cool.
Patricia: Yeah, even the small ones, they’ll at least have like an interlibrary loan so you can get things from a nearby college or a nearby library or something like that. Our friend group is, in general, overeducated, and we always have at least someone at any given time. Who is either in grad school, or working at a place of higher education, and we will grab journal articles for each other, cause we’re nerds.
Nicole: Yeah, sometimes I see that the request for these articles isn’t even related to like, something we’re doing at work or in academics. It’s just like, I don’t know. I think I searched for an article about, like, hermit crabs one time or something. Like, it’s completely random in whatever is piquing our special interests at the time.
Patricia: I mean, I recently read, like, a pop psychology book on productivity, and he kept referencing this study and that study. And I was like, I want to read these studies because I don’t want to trust this person’s information. So I definitely will. I will get self help books and then I will look directly at the studies, that’s the kind of person I am.
Nicole: So Patricia, do libraries all have the same things in their collection?
Patricia: Absolutely not. So, library systems choose the books and music and resources that they offer based on the community they serve. So, Oakland Public Library has a lot of Black history and also just books by Black authors and things like that.
So, each library should have a collection development policy that kind of outlines just that, what they, what they have in their collection, and it also should outline when they get rid of things, the kind of things that they don’t necessarily carry. And also this collection development policy, a lot of libraries have it on their website. So if you are curious, you can often go find the collection development policy for your local library to kind of get an idea of, of what the whole vibe of the library is.
Nicole: That’s actually really cool. I didn’t know that. I know some libraries will sometimes get special grants or something to curate a particular part of their collection.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: But I didn’t… It makes total sense that there’s like a policy.
Patricia: Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting because I’ve also noticed in all the different libraries we go into that we walk in and I could tell what a community is about and what they value by what the librarians have curated in the library. It’s like, even if it’s just like, oh, this community values like a lot of space for gathering versus a lot of space for private reading time versus like, I don’t know.
I just think you could tell a lot about a place from their library.
Nicole: You’re going to have to start giving me like community personality profiles of the libraries we walk into, because I think this is fascinating.
So a single podcast episode like this, we cannot possibly cover every amazing thing that libraries do and that librarians and staff that make them so awesome.
But we’re going to do our best to cram as much library info into this single episode as possible. So buckle in, folks. Hold on to your butts, everybody. We’re about to tell you all the things we can… Not all the things. As much as we can fit into this episode about some of the things we discovered about our local library systems.
We spent some time in prep for this episode just going through our local library systems in the area, which we have several that we have cards to in the San Francisco Bay Area. And from there, we hope this excites you enough to go check out your local library and see what resources they have and what things you can access and do in your local area.
Patricia: So, we’re gonna start with in person library things. And some of these things are both, like, IRL and online, and you definitely can get a lot of value out of the library without even going to the library aside from if you need to go in person to get your card. But we’re going to start with in person things.
So, books,
Nicole: [Gasp]
Patricia: of course.
Nicole: Books?
Patricia: I know, libraries have books.
Nicole: Oh, that’s so cool. I love books.
Patricia: And many systems will give you the option to send the books or DVDs or CDs you put on hold to your local library branch. Like you can go to the online catalog, and, I like doing this cause it scratches like an online shopping itch for me.
You check out all these books and then you just have them sent to your local branch. So you don’t even need to drive around town to the different branches. If there are multiple branches where you live, they will just send it to your local branch and you can pick them up.
Nicole: Real quick, you mentioned CDs and DVDs. I think I’ve even seen at some of our local ones video games.
Patricia: Yeah, you’re right.
Nicole: They had video games there that you could check out for like two weeks.
Patricia: Yeah, I don’t play video games, so now that you mention that I’m like, oh wow, yeah, there’s totally video games.
Nicole: There was shelves of them.
Patricia: There are also some library systems who offer mailing services for folks who may be unable to get to the library for a variety of reasons, transportation, disability, uh, possibly some seniors and things like that.
So again, many librarians are trying really hard to make things accessible to everyone in the community.
Nicole: So now we’re going to move into beyond the books and CDs.
Patricia: But still in person.
Nicole: But still in person. I think this gets into some of the really cool stuff that libraries do. A lot of libraries will offer help filing your taxes. A lot of times this is through, like, AARP, who will partner with your library, but it’s not always them, and it’s not just for seniors, like, anybody can come to the library and get help filing their taxes, and this is, of course, usually if you have, like, pretty straightforward taxes. And this isn’t coming from the librarians themselves.
Patricia: No, these are, these are professionals and volunteers who know what they’re doing. And when I was in my twenties, I used to go to the library to have them help me do my taxes all the time. The other thing at the library, although often libraries also have a virtual reference desk, but I want to talk about the reference desk.
And you can also email librarians for, with questions. So, the reference desk isn’t only for book recommendations, but it is for answering questions.
And…
Nicole: I love this aspect of a library, sorry, I had to break in, because, like, there’s a person you can just go to to ask any question?
Patricia: Yeah. And not only, like, will you help me find books on blank, just, like, questions.
Nicole: Like, how far away from the sun is Jupiter?
Patricia: Yeah. Or even just like more in depth questions, and we’ll get to genealogy later, but a lot of people think that this is a bit antiquated with web searching being available, but I’ve come to recognize that especially with a lot more AI information popping up when you’re Googling something, that it gets harder and harder to tell the difference for a lot of people between what is actual information and what is not.
And as librarians, like, that’s what we do. We figure out what information is real and what information is nonsense. I also noticed I have a friend who is a teacher and sometimes they send me teacher-ish or like parent-ish links, like, look at this thing I found. And the sites that they send are sites I’ve never come across in my life.
They look like Angelfire or Geocities sites. I’m like, what is happening? And then they’ll tell me what they’re looking for and Google knows that I’m often looking at like dot orgs and dot edus and sites like that. So when I look for information, that is often what is returned. And I’m like, I just Googled and I found this, but their web searches, even if we’re looking for the same thing, we’re not getting the same returns.
And so this is one of the reasons I think the desk and even the virtual reference desk is so important because people… We were, you know, given Google and just expected to know how to use it without actually being taught things like boolean search and keywords and stuff like that. And so, yeah, this misinformation and lack of information literacy just, you know, well, one, it chaps my hide, but two, there are ways around it, and I think this is why librarians are so important, and we can all access librarians through the reference desk.
Nicole: Oh, there are some really cool additional services that we have come across in our, uh, travels, visiting libraries. And this is the availability of professionals, like social workers and lawyers.
I remember when we were, we were at one library, we went through and we saw a sign that was like, the social worker is here on Tuesdays and Thursdays from like three to seven or something.
Patricia: Yeah, that was rad.
Nicole: That was really cool. And other places like lawyers will be on hand at certain times to help with various community engagement activities…
Patricia: Documents.
Nicole: Document preparation.
Patricia: I noticed one library we don’t have in our notes here, but they would have a notary.
Nicole: Oh.
Patricia: Like, notary’s here on Fridays or something like that.
Nicole: That’s really cool.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: We did also notice that like, one of our local libraries, Berkeley, had a set of resource lists for local, social services. So if you needed food or help with shelter or medical assistance, it was all on papers that you could just walk in and grab without having to talk to anyone.
Patricia: And I think that’s really important to find out because sometimes when folks need social services, they don’t seek help because they have to talk to someone and there might be a lot of shame around it and the talking to someone can actually be a barrier to access. So I love that the librarians had a foresight of just realizing talking to someone might be a barrier, let’s just put out the resources on these lists so that people can access them.
Nicole: Yeah. Didn’t we see one also when we were just poking around the other day that occasionally one of our local libraries had like a medical and dental clinic like pop-up, like once a month or something?
Patricia: Yeah. It was a big like medical like the, the trucks they use for like blood drives and stuff like that. But it was a medical truck like that. And yeah, they would do like community medical and dental care.
Nicole: Yeah. I think that’s just amazing.
Patricia: Yeah. Another thing that feels obvious that libraries do, but I still want to mention it, is literacy services, which is teaching people how to read, and it’s usually adults.
And you can also get training and volunteer sometimes with the library to help people learn how to read. I think I would be terrible because I would just cry all the time because I just get so proud of people for trying. That’s my toxic trick. I, I cry when I’m proud of people. Um, but like, the library can also have like a lot of volunteer opportunities.
Nicole: Yeah, there was one similarly we saw that was like, you can come and volunteer to just talk to people who wanted to practice their English skills.
Patricia: Oh yeah.
Nicole: It was just come and sit and talk to people so they can practice English.
Patricia: Yeah. Oh, I love that.
Nicole: Other things that you can get help with at the library include help with writing your resume, or searching for a job, or practicing interviews.
They also often have computer labs and printers. I know our local library, even one of them does, like, free printing up to two dollars worth of printing a day.
Patricia: Yeah, or
like your first ten pages free or something, and then it’s like 15 cents a page.
Nicole: Yeah, we actually used that when we were moving up here from Los Angeles, when we were trying to find an apartment.
We were apartment hunting and it was… We found one we really loved and they’re like, okay, we need you to print out, like, we need copies of whatever.
Patricia: Paystubs and stuff.
Nicole: Paystubs and other forms. And we were just like crashing on a friend’s couch for a weekend. So we were able to run to the library, log in on their computers.
Patricia: We ran to the library, we got cards, we went to the computer lab.
Nicole: That’s right, we got cards first. And then we went to the computer lab and were able to print out the docs… Like access and print out the documents we need.
Patricia: And then we filled out the application and we got it to them like an hour later.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And we got the apartment.
Nicole: It was super cool. That wasn’t where we got like trapped in a marathon circuit or something, right?
Patricia: That was…
Nicole: That was a…
Patricia: after.
Nicole: after that.
Okay.
Patricia: Or it might have been that same day. Yeah, it was a marathon and everyone was dressed like Wonder Woman.
Nicole: And it was a loop around a neighborhood and we somehow found ourselves in the middle.
Patricia: Oh my gosh. Other things that libraries do, which some of you may know, some of you may not, are programs and there are, you know, we’re not going to talk a lot about like kids programming and stuff today because kids and teens often get a ton of different programs, but on April 8th in kind of a slice of America, at least there is an eclipse, a solar eclipse, a full solar eclipse. And some libraries are doing, like, eclipse parties, and they’ll have, like, eclipse glasses and viewings and stuff like that. Also, there are some libraries that do dungeons and dragons. different other game nights, board game nights, crafts, cooking classes, video game nights, but that’s usually for teens, unfortunately.
Nicole: To be clear, that’s not the same as having video games on the shelves to check out. That is, having video game systems in the library to come and play at the library.
Patricia: Yeah, with like screens and you get to, teens get to be with other teens playing video games, which you pointed out is really important because not all kids have game systems at home.
Nicole: No, these things are like five, six hundred dollars now.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Not every family can afford that.
Patricia: Yeah, but also libraries can have author talks. I remember it was, you know, a decade and a half ago, but San Francisco public library had done a speed dating night, which I thought was hilarious. And when I was in library grad school, my mentor was the children’s librarian at the Chinatown branch of the San Francisco library.
And the city librarian, every year during the winter holidays, would do a program and teach the kids how to play dreidel. And so this is the Chinatown branch. It’s in the Chinatown neighborhood, and most of the people using the branch are Chinese or Chinese American. And so that is how I found myself teaching 80 Chinese American kids how to play dreidel one day after work.
Nicole: That’s really, that’s almost like a built in cultural exchange program in some ways.
Patricia: Yeah, it was, it was great. The kids were really good at it. They got really into it. We were handing out candy.
Nicole: Libraries will also, because they have computer labs and everything, they’ll help you with computer stuff. If you need an email account, they can help you set up an email account.
Patricia: Yeah, and I think, like, if you are listening to this podcast, you probably don’t need help with that, but there are seniors out there, and there are people who didn’t grow up with computers, there are people who don’t have their own computers, or don’t even have internet at home.
Nicole: I also think about, again, returning to, like, our unhoused neighbors don’t have a computer. But, like, you need an email address to do just about any job application and stuff now. Anything you are trying to do in this world, you need an email address, and not everyone has a computer. What about people who’ve recently immigrated?
Patricia: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Something else that I think is super cool, uh, that some libraries have are seed libraries.
Nicole: Oh, these are so cool.
Patricia: They will repurpose, like, what I recognize is sometimes they’ll repurpose an old card catalog and they will have seeds and sometimes they’ll also offer local gardening advice for your planting zone, and if you get seeds from the seed library, often what they’ll ask is if you plant them and something grows, they ask that you collect the seeds and restock the library.
Nicole: Yeah, so that’s how it becomes a library and not just giving away free seeds.
Patricia: Yeah. Oh, I love it.
Nicole: I think that’s so cool. Other things you can get in person at the library, we mentioned DVDs and CDs. You can also sometimes get like vinyl records
Patricia: mmhmm
Nicole: and other media like that because not everyone wants to pay for streaming. Not everyone even has internet access, but you can still access music, TV, all the, the media you want. There’s usually some access to it. Like I said, video games.
Patricia: The library will also have some, like, kind of uncommon DVDs. I remember I got ahold of the DVDs for the 1996 six episode miniseries of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere from the BBC. And so, I was like, yeah, okay, I’ll watch this. But it was before Netflix. It was before, like, actually, I don’t even know if that’s streaming anywhere.
Sometimes you can find DVDs at the Library of things that aren’t even available for streaming, or you’d have to, like, pay for them.
Nicole: Some libraries will also offer help with your genealogy research. This is different from online resources, which we will get to, but this is, like, in person genealogy resources.
So this might be someone who, like a reference librarian, who is very knowledgeable in this area, but they may also have very specific books and materials.
Patricia: Well, and sometimes there’s very specific librarians, too, who, like, this is, like, this is their jam, like, genealogy is their thing, and, like, the genealogy librarian is in on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or something like that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Also, libraries can have unconventional items, and I have seen, like, there’s all kinds of postings online about, like, there’s a library somewhere, I don’t remember where, but they have a bunch of different cake pans.
Nicole: Oh, yeah. You’ve told me about this.
Patricia: So, like, different shapes that so, I mean, cake pans take up a lot of space.
I know this intimately. And sometimes you just want a pan that’s shaped like a bunny for one specific thing, but you don’t actually want to buy the cake pan.
Nicole: Right.
Patricia: But I know Berkeley has, or at least used to have, small kitchen appliances.
Nicole: Ooh.
Patricia: So, like, you could borrow a food dehydrator, or an espresso machine or a juicer.
Nicole: Oh, that’s really cool. I’m sorry, you can’t see my face now, listeners, but I am just like, I’ve got this look of amazement. That is so cool because like, what if you want to just try out a food dehydrator or an espresso machine? These are expensive machines.
Patricia: Yeah. Well, and not everyone has space to keep all these small appliances too.
Nicole: Right.
Patricia: Other things, libraries can often have museum passes or passes to local museums or, or kind of things like that. But another thing is, some of them have state park passes.
Nicole: Yeah, this is really cool.
Patricia: And they’ll even supply, like, hiking backpacks with, like, a state park pass and a backpack and a compass. And it’s, it’s really cute.
And of course, one of my favorite things, some libraries also have a music section where you can get sheet music, which sheet music can also be an expensive hobby as Nicole just like side eyed my music shelf. Um, but like, you could get sheet music.
Nicole: This is like, as we’re talking about these things, I love these, like, really more obscure curated library collections.
One of the local ones we use fairly regularly now is a tool lending library, which is so rad. And it’s not just, like, some hammers and wrenches, it is all the gardening tools. Also circular saws. We went the there was a loose nut thing under our sink, and it took, like, a specific wrench to get in there to get it, we went, and I was like, I need, I took a picture of it, and was like, this is under my sink, I need a wrench to get this, and they’re like, oh yeah, here, we’ve got six of them.
Like, they’re really knowledgeable in there, too, I think it’s so cool.
Patricia: We also needed some, like, big gardening shears. And it’s like, we didn’t want to purchase them. Like, we just needed them for one thing.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: So we just went to the tool library, got the shears, used the shears, bring them back to the library.
I also, hand trucks and furniture dollies.
Nicole: Oh, those were really handy when we moved.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. A couple of our local libraries also do bike clinics, so you can bring your bicycle in and they’ll help you repair your flat tire or anything like that, which is really great because we have, at least in our, in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s a bike culture here and a lot of people are encouraged to ride their bicycles.
Patricia: Yeah, so they’ll also have like tools you can borrow and help you replace your chain and stuff like that.
Nicole: Yeah. They’ll, they’ll, and they’ll help you fix it on clinic days, but otherwise the tools are available at the tool lending library. Yeah.
Patricia: These are just some of the things you can get in person that we have talked for so long.
Nicole: I guess we’re gonna have to do a part two.
Patricia: I think we’re gonna have to do a part two.
Nicole: Oh, this is very exciting.
Patricia: Yeah, because we have so many other cool things.
Nicole: As I scroll through the list of resources. So we have covered the in person, we have another whole series of information for the digital resources that you can access through your local library. So I guess, stay tuned for part two?
Patricia: I guess. But you know what? I think we could still get to some of our takeaways.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Because I have definitely bullied a number of people into using their local library. Libraries are more than books, and, I don’t know. This is, might be a very me thing, but, like, if you’re not using the library, you’re also throwing money away. And it is also one of the greenest things you can do. We are very much into using what we have and repairing things. Like, we’re trying to repair things more.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And so, using, using the library is environmentally friendly.
Nicole: Incredibly. Using your library also helps ensure that libraries get more funding so they can continue to offer resources for folks that want and need them.
The more you use the library, the more the library can show how much people are using them and get more funding to do more cool things.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And so, on that note, also, do like we do, go to your local library when you’re on vacation.
Patricia: Yeah, especially like if you’re in, in state, and if your state does the thing where you could, like California.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Where you can just get a library card from wherever.
Nicole: Yeah, or even not even on vacation, but sometimes, like, we’ll just be visiting friends or something.
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely. Friends or family. I still think we should do like a little day trip down to Santa Cruz and get a Santa Cruz card.
Nicole: Yeah, we didn’t get one last time we were down there.
Patricia: Yeah. And hey, if your library does something or offers something cool, let us know. We want to hear what other libraries are doing.
Nicole: Yeah, tell us what cool thing your local library does.
Music: [Music]
Nicole: Hey, Patricia.
Patricia: Yes, Nicole.
Nicole: What’s filling your cup?
Patricia: So what is filling my cup right now is that I have my first tulip bloom. So I love tulips. They are one of my favorite flowers. And when I was a child, I used to plant tulips. In front of our home every year. And even when I went to college, I would come home usually for a weekend in October and I would plant tulip bulbs so that when I would come home during spring break at the end of March, the tulips would be blooming and tulips also usually bloom around my birthday.
So they are a very special flower to me. And they were also just like, the easiest flower to draw when I was a child. I just, like, all my childhood drawings, all flowers just defaulted to tulips. And this year, or this past year, I mean, I planted them in October, but I planted some Queen of Night tulips, which are such a dark purple, they’re almost black, so.
My goth tulips are blooming and I’m very excited.
Nicole: I love how dark they are in color.
Patricia: They’re so intense. I’m gonna have to post a picture on my Instagram.
Nicole: I don’t will a picture even capture?
Patricia: I don’t know. They might just look black if I take a picture.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: What’s filling your cup, Nicole?
Nicole: Okay, so on a similar note, I’m going to roll with the floral theme on the cup filling.
My first California poppy bloom has come up, and I know there’s a couple listeners who follow me on Instagram or whatever, so they’ve been seeing the, this is year two of the Chaos Garden, and in true Chaos Garden fashion, the first bloom is not in the actual designated Chaos Garden space. It is one of the
Patricia: I love how there’s wait, wait, can we just appreciate designated Chaos Garden space?
Nicole: Yeah, it’s the little strip of garden that I just threw a million seeds at last year, let them bloom and go to seed, and reseed themselves, and that’s what sprouted this year.
Patricia: I know, but then your chaos garden’s being chaotic, and
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: outside of its space.
Nicole: Yes. So, some of the, the poppy seeds, as they are wont to do, blew off into other parts of the yard, and it is one of those that has sprouted the first flower this year.
So, that is my cup. I am very excited to start having flowers appear in this garden. And I’m sure the couple of people who also follow on Instagram for my garden are going to be very excited when the others start to bloom, but this is the first one.
Patricia: Yeah. Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink.
You can find her at loopdilou.com and we’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, the podcast email list, and a link to our ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.
You can also find us on Instagram and Blue Sky at eedapod and email us at eedapod at gmail dot com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It really goes far in helping other people find us.
Also, thanks again to Hazel_Flagg for their written review in Apple Podcasts.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at Patreon dot com backslash eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself.
Drink some water and go to the library. We’ll be talking to you soon.
[Laughter] Got nothing?