Photo: Betty Crocker
Full-service libraries are starting to lend out cooking utensils as well as cookbooks.

You’ve heard of the Internet of Things, right? Using the internet to turn on the heat in your house before you arrive home from a trip, for example, or checking inside your fridge while you’re at the supermarket to see if you need milk.

Well, I just learned about something called the Library of Things. This expansion of the role of libraries is a recognition that you may not want to buy all the paraphernalia for making a gingerbread house, say, but would love to try making one if you could just borrow the equipment.

Deanna Fox writes at the Times Union, “When you go to visit Guilderland Public Library on Western Avenue [near Albany, New York], be sure to bring your appetite. Besides the expansive array of cookbooks in the stacks and…