Understanding Pip Install And Import Is Easy. When you want to use some external library, you pip install (library name), and when you do this it will make that library available in your virtual environment. However, in order to actually use that library in your python script, you will need to include an 'import' command. So, if we want to use a library named 'requests', we go to our system shell and type in: pip install requests. After that completes, then we add the import command into the top of our python script by typing in: import requests Now when you run your script you have access to that library.