Last week­end we had an energy audit done on our house, a fas­ci­nat­ing exer­cise to watch. Besides the fact that I was inter­ested to see what our issues are, I was cap­ti­vated by the equip­ment used. Being a geek, it was extra fun for me.

infrared cam­era

As the gen­tle­man who per­formed the audit (Jim) worked, we had a lovely talk about a vari­ety of things, includ­ing libraries. We talked about ebooks (he has a Kin­dle) and libraries (he thinks we’ll be cut out of the pic­ture) and library ser­vices in gen­eral. Jim men­tioned how he tries to work with orga­ni­za­tions to improve energy effi­ciency, includ­ing libraries. Appar­ently he’s worked with Wis­con­sin libraries to give each one a wattmeter to cir­cu­late to res­i­dents who want to mon­i­tor their elec­tric­ity (see this exam­ple).

Jim is eager to work with Illi­nois libraries to see what we could do to help patrons who want to do more to make their homes more energy effi­cient. Chicagoland libraries already cir­cu­late museum passes, some libraries still cir­cu­late art, and there are toy libraries, so why not this ser­vice? Sev­eral libraries are offer­ing new gad­gets for cir­cu­la­tion (GPS devices, Flip video cam­eras, ebook read­ers), so lend­ing tech­nol­ogy isn’t new, either. There’s a lot of talk right now about green libraries, but can libraries green go that next step and help green their communities?

I love the idea, espe­cially when com­bined with com­ple­men­tary pro­grams, read­ing lists, and com­mu­nity con­nec­tions. Are any libraries out­side of Wis­con­sin offer­ing this type of ser­vice? If you’re in Wis­con­sin, have patrons been using your wattmeter?