San Rafael offers first ever bamboo library cards

I first saw this about a month ago, but just recently remembered how cool it was and wanted to pass it along. Did you hear that the San Rafael Public Library is offering bamboo library cards to patrons?

Now that's awesome. It sounds terribly expensive, but however they can afford it, it's got to be making a big impact with their patrons. The cards look great, and it's wonderful to see a library incorporating a renewable resource like this.

Way to go, San Rafael Public Library!

But of course, I'm never satisfied until I can steal and improve. My library won't be doing this, but if we did, maybe we could use something with a local connection, instead of bamboo. Chelmsford is known for glass and granite, so why not try a library card made out of one of those materials? Impractical? Pah.

Well, maybe. Then it hit me - has any library ever used library cards made out of discarded/recycled books? I don't really know how it would be done - laminated pages or covers, or completely pulped and re-pressed into new cards? It'd be fun if you could still read the text on the page or see the cover artwork. Also neat to put the library logo and barcode on one side, so there would be some uniformity, but otherwise the flipside of the card would be different so each card would be unique.

I like this idea, but haven't looked around to see if anyone has done it, or how it could even be done. One of these days, in my spare time...

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Chelmsford Library to get Electric Car Charging Station

Well, the fun never stops at the Chelmsford Library - I recently read in the newspaper that we'll be getting a car charger for electric cars.

What?!?, you might exclaim - I did, anyway. I was surprised to be finding out about it from the newspaper, but also the logic of placing it at the library wasn't immediately apparent to me.

According to the article, the charging station is a result of a state grant our Town Manager applied for (Chelmsford was one of 25 towns included in the grant), and it seems this project is really being driven by the Town (rather than the library).

The Town's Facilities Manager is attending an informational meeting this week, and hopefully will have more details to share after that. Right now, it's not entirely clear where the charger will be located, and therefore what kind of impact it will have on parking. I'm not sure if we'll have to dedicate a parking spot to this, how long it takes cars to charge, or if anything will be required of library staff. We've been assured that this won't be added to our electricity usage though, so that's good.

I'm pretty happy that car chargers will start popping up around the state - especially that many of the town listed on the grant are small rural towns, and not just big cities. Chelmsford makes sense because a lot of commuters go through here, so hopefully we'll be seeing more of these as electric cars become more popular (which they probably won't until chargers are widely-available, so I don't know if that makes us the egg or the chicken).

Since this was a Town project, I understand why they're placing it at a Town building, situated in the center of town. But it still does seem like an odd fit for a library - even more of a stretch than a Redbox. However, our solar panel array was also part of a Town grant, and the library was chosen in that case to help showcase the use of renewable energy, and we also built a print collection around it. Hopefully we'll be able to do the same for electric cars.

By the way, here's a Sun-eye view of the solar panels at the Chelmsford Library:

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