Pacific Grove Public Library’s kitchen tools collection proves there’s more to libraries than books.

Sara Rubin here, thinking about what to make for breakfast—and how, if only I had a waffle iron, maybe waffles would be on the menu. 

I’m not planning to buy a waffle iron, because I have a rule about acquiring kitchen gadgets: They need to serve more than one purpose to make the cut. Luckily, for an occasional waffle craving, I can now check one out from the Pacific Grove Public Library. 

I learned about the library’s new collection of kitchen tools by reading Tajha Chappellet-Lanier’s story about it in this week’s edition of the Weekly. (In reporting the story, she also discovered that P.G. Public Library has a collection of framed prints available for those who want to check out art.) 

It’s not the first time we’ve reported on a local public library adding to its collection beyond “traditional” materials like books, audiobooks, movies and periodicals. In 2014, the Monterey Public Library created a seed library, for example. 

As PGPL Director Diana Godwin told Chappellet-Lanier, “The idea of a library of things has certainly gone on for some time.”

I tend to think of a library as a place to acquire knowledge, but of course there are many kinds of knowledge. It’s not just a temple to ideas, but also practical application of those ideas. And in contemporary times, I can imagine finding a recipe online (instead of a physical cookbook), maybe watching a YouTube video to learn how to properly do a technique or use a particular gadget, and then needing to check out said gadget from the library. 

The notion that libraries need to adapt and update their collections is not new. Certainly the shift to digital media is old news by now. But thinking about the logic at work behind the scenes in developing a collection and keeping it relevant is always interesting to me. (In 2022, I wrote a story about the Monterey County Free Libraries system’s fiction collection.)

Since PGPL’s new 37-item culinary collection became available for checkout, it’s proven popular. I’m curious to see how it evolves as librarians learn what is and isn’t in demand, and what’s next in the evolving library of things.

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