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Libraries are a great institution. It’s a big building where you can borrow items for free! Most of us think of libraries as a place where we can borrow books and maybe CDs or DVDs. There’s little else we could get from a library, right? Well apparently, baking pans are an item you can borrow from some libraries.

Journalist Annemarie Dooling posted a picture on Twitter which shows that the Ludington Library in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has a baking pan section. You can actually check out specialty baking pans for your own use at home. It’s such a clever idea. We’ve all been there where we need to bake a cake or something and we rush out to the store to purchase a pan of some kind only for it to be used the one time than sit in the back of the drawer collecting dust until it inevitably ends up in the donation pile. So being able to borrow a fun-shaped pan and then return it saves everybody stress.

After the photo was released on Twitter, replies and comments began appearing that point out it’s not limited to that one library either. There are many others – like the Akron-Summit Library in Ohio or the Brown County Library in Wisconsin – that are offering this service. And a quick Google search of their inventory shows that they have plenty in store for checking out.

Sara Slymon, library director for the Brookline County Library in Massachusetts started the cake pan collection at her library, and told the International Housewares Association, that she feels the concept of having a cake pan collection on stock at the library is a good one. She believes it allows people an opportunity to either access quality items they may not otherwise be able to afford or use these items that they wouldn’t necessarily have a reoccurring use for therefore wouldn’t want to buy for themselves. Many of the cake pans at the library come from her own personal collection while there have been others that have been donated.

Dooling’s tweet about the cake pans then promoted some people to point out there there’s a hell of a lot you may be able to find at your local library that you may not be aware of, such as bicycles, a cheese warmer, and even a donut maker, as someone posted a CNN Money article to the thread. Of course, all libraries differ, so you would have to go into your local branch and nicely ask a librarian what services they offer. But either way, you never know what hidden treasures you may find at your library.

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