On Seeds and Libraries

Howdy, folks! This is the first of a series of posts on the Hampshire College Seed Lending Library. Our first post covers how this whole thing began:

At the end of Spring semester, 2013, a student pitched an idea to the library as part of her Div III work: a library of local, sustainable, non-GMO seeds, available for check-out. I currently have a large stock of the seeds, donated from a handful of generous companies, binders organized by seed type, and a little documentation. There’s still a long way to go – we hope to launch the seed library in the Fall, so I want to figure out a subset of seeds – maybe one to two dozen – specifically selected for the launch. We still need to catalog the seeds and figure out a plan for access to the seeds and circulation. I’d like to find a way to specify how difficult each seed is to grow and to harvest. I need practical things like seed packets for return seeds and labels, as well as a workflow. Ideally I want a website to help students better understand how to care for and return their seeds.

We do have a home for them – we have an old card catalog on the first floor – perfect (I think) to adjust for seed packets!

There is still a long way to go. This project is certainly in the realm of, “Not what I thought I would be doing as a librarian,” but it’s such an excellent experiment – perfect for our experimenting library!

This was originally posted June 17, 2013. See the original post here.