Mar 8, 2023, WRAL, Raleigh, NC: From seeds to sensory rooms: Step inside Durham's 'Library of Things,' where you can borrow almost anything https://www.wral.com/library-of-things-borrow-3d-printers-video-games-lasers-sensory-rooms-in-durham/20753158/
You can leave the downtown library here with free packs of seeds, borrowed tools, a borrowed laptop and a WiFi hotspot, plus a podcast you recorded and a model that you 3D printed.
Also books. Durham County libraries have books, of course. But like a growing number of libraries around the state, Durham has embraced “the library of things,” making the library a community center for much more than reading.
This downtown facility, still new after a $44 million rebuild, has a place for teenagers to play video games, computers where kids can do homework and a sensory room where young people with autism spectrum disorder, or anyone else, can lay on a waterbed that vibrates to music….
The Durham library’s sensory room has fiber-optic light tubes that cascade over a chair, and a waterbed that vibrates to music. The room caters to people who sometimes struggle to process the world around them. Families reserve the room, and six people can go inside at a time. …
These sensory rooms are an uncommon but growing offering in North Carolina. Granville County libraries recently added sensory carts, which are smaller and more mobile, but in the same vein….
