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Comment by setr | Hacker News Reader

>your local library might have one to borrow.

Why would you find mills in a library? What else do they have..

A lot of libraries don't just share books. For instance some let you check out laptops, wifi devices, etc. There are also tool libraries, and even seed libraries.

You might be surprised by what's available at your local library these days.

Seeds too. My local library has a bunch of different types of plant seeds, mainly foods. The idea is you take seeds in the spring, plant and grow them, harvest them, and then preserve the seeds and return them to the library to be "borrowed" by another person the next year. They have the seeds in an old card catalog case, and each drawer has the plant name on the outside and a color green, yellow, or red, indicating how easy or hard it is to save the seeds.

Toys! Our local library has tons of toys to checkout. Been great to give our small child who likes new things for a while a semi-constant stream of new toys, that are in better shape or fancier than the $1 garage sale toys he usually gets.

Tools. There's a library-affiliated technology library[0] in the city I live now that has almost anything someone who is a 'maker' could want. And many large town (25-60k towns) libraries have similar, smaller scale departments.

[0] http://www.dospace.org/

My local library has at the very least books, videos, music, jigsaw puzzles, and museum passes. That's just the stuff that's obviously visible from the entrance.

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