My local library which is part of the Washington county Library system (next to Portland). It's where Hillsboro is, which is where Intel's manufacturing is, also called Silicon Forest, has a Library Of Things!

I've checked out a KitchenAid stand mixer, synthesizer, guitar, stud finder, drum machine, ukulele, air quality detector, and many more things.

They also have a sewing machine and a. Vitamix.

It's amazing! I love being able to check out new things from our library!

I think there's an effort towards tool checkout as well in the future! There's a tool library in a couple cities east of us as well that I keep hearing about!

PDX has it going on!!!

Libraries of Things are a thing now. The items that are most useful are those that lend things that you use from once a year to every couple of years.

My local library (PEI Library Service) has a telescope, radon detector, a basic (and I mean basic) toolkit, some gardening tools among other things. The collection has a couple of surprises, but mostly underwhelming.

I did request something more practical, like a bicycle disc brake flushing kit, but this has not happened yet.

I can hardly think of a worse thing than a bleed kit to lend out from a library. They're full of small parts to lose, and they'll never be clean once you use them. And you don't want people mixing up the DOT and mineral oil bleed kits.

I have worked in a bike shop as a mechanic, and we periodically ended up misplacing the various adapters. This is in a place where everybody using the kit is getting paid to do the job and has been trained. The librarians would go nuts just replacing O-rings and adapters that people had lost.

If you need one for your specific bike, you're probably as well off just buying the one you need from e.g. bleedzone.com [0]. Most of them are around or under $25, and if it's your kit, you always know who the last idiot to use it was :-)

[0] I haven't bought from them, but probably will when I need one. The shop I worked in has sadly closed.

> a bicycle disc brake flushing kit

With the right gear, the job is still horrible. SRAM brakes give me an unlimited number of maintenance chores.

To be fair SRAM are particularly a pain to bleed. Shimano, Magura etc are much easier

Yeah, the SRAM ones require two syringes and seven hands to bleed. And DOT fluid is great at removing paint if you spill it. I haven't done any Magura ones, but the Shimano ones were clearly engineered to be maintained by someone who isn't an octopus.

I recently learned that if you live in a place where Citroën LHM is readily available, it's a less-expensive and compatible substitute for Shimano mineral oil brake fluid. Conversely, if you're in a place where LHM isn't available for love or money, you can substitute Shimano mineral brake oil instead of going on a wild goose chase of the Citroën product.

Auto part stores often will lend both weird and specialized tools, and relatively basic ones, too.

Usually the way it works is you "buy" the tool and then "return" it.

Many autoparts store have a formal tool lending program that is structured as buy/return. I know it sounds like @bombcar is suggesting some “lifehack” that is closer to stealing. But, no, this is an actual service provided by actual auto parts stores.

https://www.autozone.com/lp/loan-a-tool

If it is a formal policy of the store, then it's a different story. They could also manage it in a way to minimize costs. That said, I have run into people who are proud of "discovering" the lifehack version.

Ok, so they don’t call it a ’buy’ program.

It’s a lending program, for free. With a deposit for full value so it becomes a purchase if you don’t return it in time. Same structure but the phrasing matters.

Cool idea.

From the website it seems like they're expecting that some people will do this with the intention of renting, but then decide to keep or not get around to the return process.

They make money on the parts you buy. the tools are a loss leader

The local library system has in addition to niche services like 3d printers and circuit card printers a humongous board game collection. You can reserve a board game online, it eventually appears at your local branch of the library and then you check it out for 2 weeks.

Really great way to test before you buy.

Do they have a fusion splicer ? I know it might seem random… but I feel like might come in clutch in the future

Our little town in Minnesota has some of these too (https://winona.lib.mn.us/library-of-things/) it's really cool! There's also a new maker space getting set up now which will have a tool library open to the community.

The Washington County library system is excellent; I love that one card will get you access to the entire area.

That's my library system too! I go to tualatin and it has a dedicated room for their makerlab and have classes every day for all kinds of stuff. Whenever I go in its pretty well attended.

My library has something similar. Sewing and embroidering machines, 3D printers and even a CNC machine. Most are free to use as long as you bring the material, the only one that I can remember having a cost is the laser cutter but even then it was under 10 bucks an hour. They have a bunch of other things like being able to check out a pass the the state parks and some museum passes.

This is the Charleston County library system.

The Greene County Ohio Public Library (Xenia, OH) did something like this a few years ago and other libraries in the area (Dayton Metro and Troy-Miami County) started similar spaces, too. They all have a similar array of machines-- CNC, 3D printing, dye sub printing, laser engravers, vinyl cutters, sewing and embroidery, video and photo editing, etc. It's amazing to me that within a five year timespan all of this became available to anybody in the community for the cost of materials.

That sounds so cool, are they building an entire fablab in there?

I remember a day, long, long ago in a dusty, lonely outback Australian town, when Mum would send me down to the library on a Saturday morning to loan the iron, a kettle, and the last weeks’ papers, which she’d return on the very early Monday morning after putting me off on the .. two hour .. bus ride to school.

Now I’m sitting in a room full of hard core technology, wondering if I shouldn’t talk to my local technical museum about setting up an 8-bit lending library with a catalog of fully operational machines ..

I'd argue that sewing machines are among the most complex, high skill items found in a typical home, above the laptop and car. I find it very hard to keep mine operational. I struggle with it a lot more than I sew with it. They require fine motor skills and scads of parts and supplies. If you plan to rent them, plan for a repair staff or frequent replacements.

Compared to a book, a sewing machine is a space ship, and you should see what people can do to a book. To be sustainable it needs a replacement value deposit, which isn't easy for someone who can't afford an entry level model.

Virtually every user-serviceable problem can be solved by one of the following:

Reading the fine manual and making sure the machine is threaded correctly.

Replacing the needle.

Adjusting the tension, starting with getting the bobbin tension grossly correct, then balancing it with the top tension. <- This is not hard; it's just that most people haven't been taught[0].

Removing the accumulated lint from the bobbin driver and feed dogs.

Lubricating the machine.

If none of those work, have it serviced. If the service person tells you the machine is crap, go to a thrift shop and buy a Singer 66, 99, 15 or equivalent Japanese clone for $25-$100. For a little more money, you can get a 201. A Featherweight is a joy to use and takes up no space in storage, but is much costlier than any of the above options.

Don't buy a slant shank machine (400 or 500 series); that was an evolutionary dead-end. If you absolutely need a machine that zigzags, ask the service person what they recommend.

[0] This is applicable to Singer class 15 machines and their clones, but the general principles apply to any lockstitch machine:

https://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/manuals/ha-...

If you have a transverse shuttle (you almost certainly don't) or a vibrating shuttle (you probably don't), you may need to look up information specific to your machine.

It depends.

We have a few sewing machines that are finicky. Tension goes off rapidly, binds a lot, lint buildup constantly has to be cleaned, clunks mysteriously sometimes. We also have a Singer manufactured in 1899 that just does what it's supposed to reliably (and you can still get parts for it!). Now mind you, it doesn't do fancy stitches or buttonholing or anything but straight stitching and a basic zigzag and you do have to keep the treadle properly lubricated but it even works during a power failure.

Sewing machines, like stand mixers and vacuum cleaners, in the end are power tools as much as radial arm saws, hammer drills, and routers are. It's great to have all the fancy features, but sometimes lowest tech is the best.

Have you considered that maybe your sewing machine is faulty in some way? Either the model or the particular instance of it.

I’m also a complete sewing machine noob. We have a sewing machine at our hackspace, someone gave me a minute long tutorial and I had zero trouble with it afterwards. I think the whole “tutorial” was just: follow the arrows when threading it, don’t push down the pedal when your finger is under the needle. And it just worked as it should.

Maybe i just got lucky! But my experience was so different from yours that it made me think that maybe your sewing machine is either bad quality or has some hidden defect.

The sewing machine stays in that library so I’m going to make the assumption they have a bit of in house expertise for advice and counsel - they have a photo of the anecdote in question and it’s only a starting point on how Finland is trying to use libraries to promote society and democracy by providing tools and spaces and opportunities - you might be focusing too much on minutiae - one of the librarians speaks about the ways they work to increase library use. There’s a short contrast with the USA and UK closing libraries in recent years and one of the librarians interviewed moved to Finland from the UK - that may also be a reason the BBC went with this story.

I bought a sewing machine a five years ago and I haven’t had to do any maintenance or repairs to it. What kinds of things are breaking on your machine?

I only use it a couple of times per year, and simply threading it is a genuine challenge for me. So is keeping a stich running. People who sew more or have good fine motor skill may just not remember the noob experience. I expect a lot of new renters to have a learning curve to climb.

In the United Kingdom, we learn (maybe past tense, I've no idea if the curriculum has changed) how to use a sewing machine at secondary school.

I’m almost 40 and educated in the UK. I don’t think sewing has been taught in UK schools for quite many generations now - although no idea what the state of affairs is today.

It might be you need to make a choice to choose it; I know that when I was at school in the UK I got to choose between "CDT" (craft, design, and technology) or home economics, which was sewing, cooking, & etc.

I picked woodwork, as 95% of the boys did, and about 80% of the girls picked the home-lessons instead.

I do recall doing some sewing lessons outwith the home-ec classes, but it was very irregular. I know I skipped some stuff because my grandmother had already taught me to knit when I was six-eight years old. Only at home did I use a sewing machine, never at school.

Interesting, it was indeed design and technology; we weren't given a choice - we did both for a a couple of lessons each (cooking, sewing, woodwork, electronics, metalwork and graphic design).

I guess it must have been dependent on the school then?

It was useful - I'm quite sure I wouldn't have gotten any exposure to those subjects without it.

Perhaps it varied on the school, or perhaps they tried to make it a little less divided on gender lines since my time. (I'm 50.)

Housework, sewing, knitting and stuff I'd been exposed to at home due to a pretty large family already. Though otherwise I would have probably benefited from it, and it did strike me even at the time that it would be best if we could do both classes, rather than having to pick only one.

Girls often do. But I never touched a sewing machine at school because I am male. I wish I had been because I do sew nowadays and wish I'd been taught to earlier. Clothing repair, basic electrics, cookery etc do have a place in school.

it helps to have a good sewing machine - the difference between a poor quality one and e.g. a nice bernina is dramatic. even an old one thats been well maintained will give you many years of reliable use with minimal maintenance, and they're very affordable used

> even an old one

My overlocker was made in West Germany (when that was a country), and is still going strong.

Threading was a bit tricky the first few times, but the manual is really exceptionally well written.

I bought mine 10 years ago, maybe longer. Never had to do anything. Super useful when we need it.

Sewing machines are complex, but ive had experiences both ways with them. One model I had endless troubles with both getting to run and keep running well, but then ive had others that are seemingly bulletproof. At my family's cabin my great-grandmother had a foot powered one that to this day works flawlessly and has never seen any maintenance or repairs ive ever seen and she use to make tons of quilts on it. I don't use it much these days but I do squirt a bit of oil on it every few years and make sure it is still working.

Opposite experience. I studied mine extensively when I got it. I rarely have problems. But it's definitely a mechanical wonder.

Get yourself an old Singer. They're the Toyota of sewing machines.

You have confused high maintenance with complex. Not to belittle sewing machines, which are very cool and not exactly simple.

Yes and no. I can stitch. I regularly do adjust clothes. I am a bad amateur. It's crazy what my neighbor does (She has a industrial sewing machine) and does piece finish work. It's a real skill.

However, I highly recommend everyone get and learn how to perform basic stitches because hand stitching is a lot hard to get a good quality stitch out of, especially for doing things like repairs in areas that wear.

Libraries around me have just become a homeless shelter. Pretty sad because the buildings themselves are actually quite nice and I'd use them often if it weren't for the high likelihood of being harassed.

Please critisize the harassment, not libraries for providing shelter to homeless people. A well managed library has a degree of supervision that allows the visitor to do something about harassment. This level of control is also important for homeless people, who are subject to harassment more than most. A reasonably well run library is also no place to consume alcohol or drugs in plain sight. In these respects libraries are so much more apt places than train/subway stations - something acknowledged by large user groups: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/diversity/librariesrespond/serv...

15 years ago I lived in East London, and when I came to borrow books (e.g. to the "Idea Store Whitechapel"), I felt some sort of proudness seeing homeless people hanging out there, listening to mp3, having a coffee in the cheap cafeteria or - yes! - reading: True inclusion seemed to work in so few places in the country - at least there it was tangible. I live in Marseille/France now and haven't noticed this here; but a homeless person is not necessarily obvious - next time I visit, I'll have a look!

> A well managed library has a degree of supervision that allows the visitor to do something about harassment.

Library staff in my city are instructed not to do anything themselves about homeless. If there's a problem then they just call the police, who are equipped to handle it. Same as the city bus drivers are not going to enforce paying fares or making sure no riders are causing problems. They just pull over and call the police.

Their is no polite "middle ground" where a librarian can just confidently ask a disruptive homeless person to vacate the library. 9 times out of 10 that confrontation will escalate into a full blown incident. That's why the rule is always just to call the police.

I grew up in Santa Cruz with a large homeless population. From interacting with them, they had to deal with full blown incidents/abuse/violence way more often than the average person had to deal with from them.

The problem is not homeless peoples' reaction to the world. The problem is societies place for them.

Homeless people have always existed and likely always will. The problem is in the last 45 years we've built a brittle, zero slack society. We've optimized around a particular vision of middleclass life while steadily eliminating the margins that once allowed vulnerable people, those prone to homelessness, and increasingly young adults who just need a place to start from, to exist on the periphery without being put in constant crisis. We removed the pathways that allowed unstable people to find enough footing to maintain a place to live.

We've embraced an economic model that requires continual growth and ever more housing. We've destroyed via economics and regulation many of the housing options that once existed for the very poor such as boarding houses, residential hotels, man camps. Demanding that everyone fit into a middle class model at all stages in life is cruel. It's even crueler when we act surprised or judgmental toward people whom society has systematically left with nowhere to go.

In AI speak 'we optimized away the edge cases and then blamed the people who (always had/always will) lived in them'.

Imagine regulating that everyone must eat a meal individually prepared in an industrial kitchen, with a mandated recipe from the community (any missing ingredients and the meal can't be cooked) and approved by inspectors post cooking, and capped the total meal kitchen capacity. Not everyone would be able to afford that. For peoples' largest expense (housing) that is what we have done and today 50% of young adult Americans are living at home with parents because that is our current housing model. What happens to young adults that don't have parents to live with? In part, homelessness.

This is a sad state of affairs.

I hope wherever you live can pull out of the dive.

Libraries are amazing and I would say that the fact they are so under funded and eventually turn into little more than a place to sleep, is very unfortunate.

I have woken up so much, sitting in a library for days, reading, reading, reading ..

If it weren’t for libraries, I’d have only read 1984 and not Down and Out in Paris and London, nor the one about Aspidispira, works with gravitas which fundamentally changed my opinion about personal responsibility at a respectable age.

I wonder if any of those homeless folk get a chance to talk to the ghosts of those aisles. Probably the library worked, once.

Indistinguishable from a joke

I don't have any change on me.

Do what I do: kindly tell them you have no change. Works for me every time

It's still annoying though.

Just say that then. Or give them a dollar.

Usually don't have dollars either.

Sure, that's exactly what you want in library.

I understand it's tough for them but some of the homeless people are not people you enjoy you want to be around. I don't understand this need to spread this sentiment.

You will encounter homeless people in libraries, because it's one of the few public spaces that won't kick them out. Your reaction to that shouldn't be to hate and avoid libraries though. It should be to appreciate them more.

I don't go to libraries very often anymore because so often they're effectively homeless shelters. Should I not mind this? I don't know, 'should' is doing a lot here, but the truth is I used to love going to libraries, browsing books, and soak up the general scholastic atmosphere.

Homeless shelter just isn't that much fun for me. If I want to be virtuous and go to a soup kitchen or otherwise try to interact with and help homeless people, I'll just do that.

What people in general don't seem to realize by taking things that almost everyone likes (libraries, as one example) and requiring one to go through some virtue test to go is that in the end, public support for the good is going to collapse, it will lose funding, and then no one can have it.

I think we're going to lose libraries.

> Let the library know about specific incidents so they can handle it.

Library staff is not equipped to kick homeless people out for fear that it will cause a scene and possibly escalate to an aggressive situation. They will just call the police. So then the police will come and remove the person, but they will come back the next week, or maybe the next day. So then what happens? Call the police again? This time maybe they get charged with trespassing and put in jail? This goes on and on. The library is supposed to be a safe place but that also means that it is somewhat of a helpless place for staff and quiet citizens. And over time it slowly becomes more and more uncomfortable to the point that regular people just stop going.

It's nobody's "fault". It's just a tragedy of the circumstances.

Sounds safe: https://ciceroinstitute.org/news-media/more-than-50-of-homel...

"In 8 states, over 50% of unsheltered homeless individuals are registered sex offenders.

National average: ~13% when including those with “unknown addresses.” "

The guy didn't said he hated it, you did. He just said he avoided it. I would too. The same way I wouldn't want to hang out at a homeless shelter (and why many homeless themselves avoid any places with many other homeless people).

I would avoid homeless shelters because I have no reason to be there. But I won't avoid libraries because I do have a reason to be there, and I know there's no reason to be scared of interacting with homeless people.

They're just people and the library is for them too.

They're not just average people, they're people with a particular condition which is more than likely associated with mental health issues, lack of social skills and several times more likely to be dealing with an addiction problem than a normal person.

Plus all the trust issues of having lived in the street. Only someone who hasn't interacted a lot with the homeless would say they are just like everyone else. Even if the reason they became homeless was just random by the time they've been homeless for a couple of years they are a different person.

There's a reason many of the homeless avoid shelters, if you talked to one you'd know why, and it's not because the other guests are lovely kind people to be around.

The bottom line is they have as much a right to be there as you do and you're free to ignore them or interact with them as much or as little as you want to.

That's not the bottom line, the law is the law nobody is arguing to kick anyone out. This thread was just about why someone might not want to go there and then being gaslighted that homeless people are somehow not a risk group in any way lol

It's up to you to do your own assessment but I don't see any reason to be fearful.

These are regulars at that library who never caused enough disruption to be banned, and aren't dangerous enough to be in jail. They also have more to lose by getting banned than housed patrons.

There absolutely are people which are fine and there are one's that don't. No need to create these specific scenarios.

That's the whole point of that post.

I hate and avoid homeless people. They're often in the library. Therefore...

I've had this idea for a business kicking around for awhile, basically a private library with membership fees. It would have all the accomodations you wish a library would have but that it can't have due to being public commons, like free coffee, private reading rooms, locker storage, and of course no vagrants.

This sounds like a good way to discover being a dick isn’t unique to the homeless.

Oh look, it's the guy who got offended when I compared his ideas to Nazis yesterday, saying he hates entire categories of people. I'm shocked.

Did you know, by the way, that the Nazis also targeted the homeless (whom they called "asocial") and people with mental illness?

Denver has this... nominally. 3 machines (2 in circulation, one is a "Display"). 4 week checkout period. 103 current holds. 103*4/2/12 ≈ 17 year wait time.

These sorts of services do seem very dependent on the details of how they are organized.

I’ve had experience with two university libraries with 3d printers. They both advertise them similarly, and they were nominally similar services, ostensibly letting students and staff both 3d print and learn about 3d printing.

At one, the arrangement was that they’d show you around the machines, give you a link to a list of notes and rules, and then you could come in and use the printers. If you wanted to do something unusual or use an exorbitant amount of filament, they asked that you talk to them first. That service is what initially introduced me to 3d printing.

At the other, the library staff decided they’d rather handle everything themselves. You’d submit an stl, then they’d print it at some point, potentially weeks later. Random color pla only, no slicing and providing gcode or even requests for settings. In practice staff decided they would only accept links to popular stls online; submitting your own stl would be rejected. They printed at such bad settings that everything would come out horribly. The service was worse than useless, taught nothing, and may well have turned many students off 3d printing entirely, if they thought the results were indicative of what 3d printing could do. We essentially have to warn students that the service is not practically usable.

But both, of course, say they have 3d printers.

In the equation there seems to be a typo;

103 - number of ppl in queue, 4 - up to X weeks per person, 2 - number of machines 12 - ??

Maybe you initially wanted to use full months for how long a person can hold an item, but then switched to weeks, and accidently still used number of months to get the number of years?

Anyway, for an imprecise number, you can do with months - 104*1/2/12 ~4.3y.

For more precise result, use seconds, as that's the unit used for the precise length of the year. Year is not 365 days. It's actually longer, quoting Wikipedia for (tropical) year,

> Approximately 365 solar days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds

That gives

  104 * (4 * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60) /2 /(((365 * 24 + 5) * 60 + 48) * 60 + 45)

Which results in 3.986 years. At maximum. Much less than 17!

Edit: getting asterikses * right

Why was this downvoted? The math checks out. Multiplying by 4 and then dividing by 12 is wrong.

Easy way to verify this: assume only 1 person in the queue and only 1 machine. Then the original calculation yields 4/12 of a year, even though the actual wait time is (about) 1/12 of a year.

That theoretical wait time doesn’t usually end up being so long. Between borrowers returning things early, people on the wait list giving up and most importantly, the library deciding that the current inventory is insufficient, the wait times usually are much less than that (I’ve observed this with books and other materials at my local library and the wait on in-demand times is never as long as the queue would imply).

Books yes, DVDs yes.

But we can check out a Netflix Roku, and the wait time really is what it says on the tin + a bit more; which works out to about once a year, which is about what we need ...

While the wait time to rent a machine may be long (I didn't even know Denver had this,) Denver also has the ideaLAB maker spaces at five branches, all of which are equipped with sewing machines to just drop in and use.

Some ideaLAB locations (like my local one) have fancy machines like embroidery, quilting, and industrial sewing machines. There's also lots of other tools, from basic hand tools to laser cutters and 3d printers (again, location dependent.) There's always staff on hand to help during open lab hours. All free to use. Really an impressive system that I use frequently.

https://denverlibrary.org/idealab

That doesn’t seem right - off the top of my head I think it’s more like 4 years? maybe it should be “103*4/2/52” (not “/12”) ?

… hopefully the effective wait time is considerably shorter if a long line is taken as a demand signal, leading them to buy more.

If you went into programming because you like making things, odds are high you'll like sewing too. Speaking from experience.

In my experience it will also make you appreciate aspects of physical production that don't apply to programming. For example, how precisely you need to cut fabric and join/pin/baste fabric together before you sew such that it looks nice. I'm glad I don't need to reckon millimeter precision on a ruler for my job.

What kind of stuff do you make sewing? About the only think I've ever wanted to sew was a new pocket on a jacket

Outdoor equipment, if you’re into that sorta thing. I didn’t know anything and I think my second backpack was nice enough to use.

Also laminated fabrics tend to be much easier to sew since they are so rigid

My family has one. I'm not sure we'd get one if we didn't already have it. With that said, I've repaired clothing, backpacks, and a fairly expensive musical instrument case. For the latter repairs, I broke a few needles, and had to work the mechanism by hand, a stitch at a time, because the motor wasn't strong enough, but it got the job done.

As for making things, curtains. They're not hard because they're rectangular, and mainly just need cutting and hemming, but the result is sizes and materials that would require buying something custom made.

Camping gear, hammocks, bags, any small change or repair. Strap breaks on a backpack, fix it. Pocket rips, fix it.

I started sewing because I wanted to make a Guybrush Threepwood costume for Halloween. I'm currently making a bag and the next items in the pipeline are a couple summer shirts and a custom cover for a camera lens I have. I also brought my sewing machine to a kid's birthday party to make small plushies with the kids.

I've also repaired a non-insignificant number of clothes from friends and family. I know I used to roll my eyes when people used terms like "upcycling", but I have to say that I've come around since.

Throw pillows out of old t-shirts.

working with your hands and developing physical craftsmanship is unbeatable

Finnish libraries are fantastic. Many had free-to-use 3D printers as far back as 2012!

Libraries are a place of possibilities and fun, and it makes people want to be there. You can imagine the long-term positive impact this has.

The Deichman Library in Bjørvika, Oslo, Norway (they named their public library after a businessman/book collector who donated his books to the city) is basically a hangout space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1xI7SSdLo

One of the libraries near me has kayaks for loan as well as picking up the slack when all of the funding for after school programs was slashed. The value of third spaces is slowly creeping back into the public mindspace, but not enough.

My local library doesn't have a sewing machine, but it does lend out projectors, game consoles, a telescope, musical instruments, and bicycles.

You can even check out a banjo, which seems like the sort of decision that says a great deal about a community's acceptance and tolerance.

Electronics: https://alpl.org/equipment/ Instruments: https://alpl.org/musical-instruments/ Bikes: https://alpl.org/borrow-a-bike/

My local library has a few interesting things like this including a podcast kit (i.e. professional microphones and mixers) you can book in conjunction with a room booking and also a thermal imaging camera you can check out to "identify energy efficiency in the home by finding gaps in insulation, comparing the performance of different walls and rooms in the home, finding air leaks and identifying water leaks or damp issues". I approve wholeheartedly of these and similar initiatives.

My very small town growing up had sewing machines and they eventually even got a 3D printer. In high school I sewed a heart shaped pillow for a valentines day present; the library provided a bin of free fabric/stuffing as well as the machine. Libraries are awesome.

My local library has been running a tool lender library for quite a while. It's quite popular as it rents out both manual and electric tools. This is great when you need an extension ladder but don't want to own an extension ladder.

It's a bit weird to see the BBC reporting on this happening in Finland, when plenty of 'Libraries of Things' exist in the UK! I think they tend to be run as community efforts rather than by public libraries. though.

The BBC Future website is not aimed at users in the UK, and features content produced by the BBC's commercial arm.

Users in the UK can read it without ads, but it's not generally promoted or linked to by bbc.co.uk

Noo, don't tell the major VC website about libraries.

The Olive Free Library in the Catskills, NY will lend a fishing pole. (The Catskills is considered the birthplace of “American” Fly Fishing traditions).

The main library here in Montreal has a sick makerspace with 3D printers (plastic and resin), wood CNC machines, a digital embroidery machine, button maker, shirt press, hole driller, laser cutter, vacuform and vinyl cutter: https://square.banq.qc.ca/fablab

It's a pretty dope library. They also let you borrow movies, videogames for all consoles and even board games, vinyl records and a few music instruments.

I am not very fond of this idea. I think libraries are for books, or possibly media. I can see the utility but I think it distracts from the actual purpose.

I used to think this way too. When I was growing up, libraries were for books.

And that one room where they had periodicals (magazines, newspapers, and such) but you had to read those there in that room.

And encyclopedias, for kids to use for their research reports.

And a story hour for kids (and, let's face it, for the parents).

And that one computer in the back that had Oregon Trail and Summer Olympic Games on it.

But mostly I remembered the books, and that's what I felt like libraries should be about.

Now I feel like a library's purpose is to support it's community. Mostly they lend books because that's what they're known for and they're very good at it. They're expanding into eBooks because that's another big thing people read today. And music CDs and DVDs which is very similar to lending books, and people like those.

Expanding out to lending things is a bit of a mind-bender for me too, but I think it's in line with what libraries have always done - help the community.

I'm torn on this. Often I feel like the parent, but I recognize maybe I'm being stubborn.

You say libraries purpose is to help the community. If that's true, what you're saying makes sense. On the other hand, if their purpose is to promote literacy and reading, well, this is off mission.

I think of the former mission as more being a community center. My mother loves this form and spends a lot of time at her local library. I'm a curmudgeon and an intellectual snob apparently. I don't even like them having popular books, but I'm trying to be less rigid and more honest here and admit that some scope creep is probably healthy and the question is just where you draw the line.

> but I think it distracts from the actual purpose.

The purpose of a library is what it does.

They used to lend books, to promote literacy & education. For youngsters to explore fields of knowledge & discover what they're interested in. Offer a selection of newspapers & magazines nobody can afford on their own.

Fablabs, places for students to work on their laptop, workshops etc fit right into this.

But the community center aspect has always been a thing. These days that might be extended in hosting a repair cafe, puzzles / board games, whatever that local community regards worthwhile.

If you think that's a no-go, maybe public libraries aren't for you. Or just stick to the book area.

Iowa has this too, the Des Moines Public Library has a Library of Things with over 50 items.

My local library had a heritage seed bank. More of an exchange I guess where people donated their heritage seeds but it seemed pretty cool. Will try my hand next year. Would be cool to get inter-library exchanges going.

I really wish my local libraries would offer things like this. I do own a sewing machine, and even if I didn't, I could probably call on a friend if I did need one, but there are several other categories of things this doesn't apply as much too: gardening tools, ladders, skis, a wheelbarrow. If I could just pop in a library and come back when I'm done, that'd be really convenient.

I can borrow CDs, DVDs, records, sheet music, games, but those were probably a pretty logical continuation of lending out books, so the jump to random items is probably one that needs justification to the people higher up the chain. Hopefully this will serve as a good example.

There are some tool libraries where i live specifically for big or expensive stuff like ladders, power saws, etc; stuff most people need once every few years but don't want to keep in their apartment

there's things like "tool libraries" and it might be good to see more lending beyond books;

some of the libraries I've seen have morphed more into like makerspaces and/or meeting spaces rather than just places to get books

Tool libraries rock, i think this model could work really well for lots of things especially in big cities.

I am blessed with a huge apartment but even i have to make decisions about what tools to keep around given the space. Yeah i could buy something from harbor freight and use it once and donate to the thrift store, but how much better if my neighbors and i could just share a big collection of stuff we all might need once every year or two

There's at least one in Melbourne, Australia (near the CBD) too: https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org

I signed my daughter up for a library card when she was two. She can't read yet.

I believed you can't teach a child to love libraries. You keep taking them, and let the room do the rest. That room do wonders and it did that to me and I am sure will do that to her too.

I’m trying to privately build a public library in a rural Idaho community. Borrowing sewing machines has been a popular request, as soon as we have space for them. It’s exciting to see that it’s a worldwide desire and not just a rural trend. Very cool to read about how Finland is doubling down on investing in libraries and skill building tools like sewing machines!

How are you going about this? Asking because I thought about doing something similar (e.g., Makerspaces, hackerspaces, Fab Labs).

Luckily a few others here in Idaho have done it by way of a Friends of the Library official non-profit 501(c)(3), so I have a model to follow that works in our region and for our rural conservative conditions. The standard non-profit benefits apply: we apply for a lot of grants, we set up endowments, accept land or stock as gifts, take on capital projects like building a library. The public library can then lease from us (probably for $0) or if we put a large enough endowment fund together we would very much consider taking it all private vs just a purpose built building for the library.

It's such an absolutely weird tension...

The libraries in Belgium at least are absolutely amazing!

They are filled with :

- books (obviously) beautifully curated

- comics

- magazines

- sometimes even audiobooks in the form of CDs

- sometimes also events with authors on absolutely important topics like ... what it means to be human

and they are also

- basically free (few Euros per year, at most, and if you cannot pay)

- staffed with people who absolutely love the mission

... and empty.

It's totally nuts. They are basically full of top materials with dedicated staff, but nobody goes there. We even have toy libraries and... it's the same. Sure during some moments of the week it's relatively busy but mostly empty. Meanwhile we can order online any book or toy or video games for very little money... but also we don't use them for very long.

It's a very strange tension that we somehow manage to setup a very inclusive infrastructure for knowledge in few centuries, or arguably decades, yet in few years we totally cancelled ALL that effort.

Now libraries are looking for events because nobody "needs" content anymore.

Ida Aukens prophecy has already come true. They own nothing and are happy about it...

You are being unfair to the spirit of the original quote.

Yes, the quote is naive in expecting a world where those who own share with those who rent without nefarious motives. But sharing, particularly in this context when profit is out of the equation, is a great idea. I don't have the money nor space for my own 3D printer, but thanks to my local library I own objectively more 3D printed stuff than I would without them.

Its a paper, much more than a quote

What?

I’d love to be able to borrow a sewing machine, tools, etc. I live in a small flat and I don’t need permanent ownership of those things. They spend 99.5% of the time sat taking up space. What good is that? For a lot of machines it’s not good to leave them idle, or sat in a shed collecting mould and rust.

It is exactly what the WeF meant too. The opposite world is one where we can own what we want at any point in time, kinda like in the past. They say that is unsustainabl... I just disagree-I think it would be great if each generation would be better of than the last.. You are happy in your tiny flat not owning that much... I'm not disputing that. I just say that is what the wef predicted would happen. That is all. I'm glad you at happy like that... If you continue reading Idas Aukens prophecy, she goes on to talk about a society outside of the happy own-nothing-living where people live a different life... I just hope there will be room for both.

Why do the pictures with this article feel so weird? Like, the first one is of a guy in Finland reading a book with an English title while standing in front of a shelf full of books with English titles.

Oodi is at least equally community / maker space and library, very distinctively and attractively designed, quite new, and in the middle of Helsinki, so there are a lot of non Finnish speakers visiting so there is a large English section.

Would you prefer it on a Finnish webpage?

https://oodihelsinki.fi/mita-oodilaiset-lukevat-syyskuussa/a...

There is lots of English/Swedish books in average Finnish library.

Manufactured reality

70% of Finns speak English

This only works in a high-trust society.

I think society only works in a high trust society. Well, maybe something exists functionally in low trust society, but it sounds miserable.

There are also surveillance societies with social scores so when you break the sewing machine you lose points and cannot get to borrow it again

In Japan there's a karaoke chain that rents sewing machine.

> 55% of Finns visit libraries at least once a month.

Wait what? That seems insanely high even for a progressive society.

As a reference point UK is at 30% on YEARLY STATS NOT MONTHLY

>In England, 30% of adults aged 16 and over used a public library service at least once in the previous 12 months.

I moved to Finland, and starting when my child was about three years old I took him to Oodi every weekend.

The soft-play area was heaven for him, and he liked flicking through the donald-duck comic books.

Even now, when he's nine, I go every month or two with him for an afternoon. He has no shortage of books at home, but he gets to run around, look at books, and play with other kids. He enjoys himself enormously.

I live in Finland and even I am sceptical of this figure. Maybe that’s because I go once a year.

I will say it’s very very common for folks to use the library for its primary purpose of renting books - which of course requires a visit twice in a month - once to collect and once to return.

On the return trip, you collect another set of books, which you then also have to return in two weeks.

On the return trip, you collect another set of books, making it a habit.

The report is deliberately misleading by the red-green government. If you read between the lines it is a poll among the library visitors.

I'm sorry, but that's not a library. It is useful, but calling these centers "libraries" just accelerates the death of actual libraries, and distracts from copyright reform.

I always wanted to start a musical instrument library. I loved working in a music store, helping people pick out the right instruments for what they're trying to accomplish, but always constrained by their budget. We had a per-semester rental program for school band students, where we'd take a deposit and rental fees but we'd handle the maintenance and families could save a ton versus buying. Something similar where like, you want to loan out a particular amp or pedal or synth or cymbal or something to go record a record for a week, the library would be there to help you access gear you couldn't normally afford, and I'd be there to keep everything working and help you find the right tool for the job.

Maybe someday.

I think musical instruments, especially digital ones like synthesizers or effects but also guitars and other acoustic instruments, have become a lot more affordable the last decade without severely impacting quality. You don't really need the expensive stuff anymore when you can record a quality recording with a second hand iPad and a below $100 microphone.

Rental of expensive stuff will always be expensive too due to insurance, maintenance and fraud. It's not really helping to make stuff more accessible, more a convenience for the pro's that need stuff for a gig.

Sewing machines are great for computer people: you can train your fashion sense and motor skills(!) - most 'nerds' lack it :)

Also it's an incredible women magnet :)

Hey baby, wanna see my sewing machine? I can add a gusset anywhere you want.

Forget about gussets, I can offer pockets

Ha. Give a lady something she really wants and you’re in.

That's one way to convert a library from home of books to home of everything non-bookish. No way the society is growing dumber day by day.

South SF library has sewing machines

SFPL used to have tools until it got ruined.

While in the USA, republicans are threatening funding of public libraries cause LGBTQ books are in there!

GASP, SHOCKER!

This article is also directly related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48596911 "The room the economy can’t see"

Capitalists won't willingly fund 3rd spaces without a demonstrable profit. So they're at the behest of public funding (read: government). And when the new ruling party gets in, they can demand their bullshit on threat of funding or be shut down.

cool

"Had"?

Has. I can confirm.

i love the one HN thread title a day that hits whatever this mark is. i love this lmao

Too bad the title got censored.

I know this is supposed to be sarcastic, but This is actually a great framing for why we should love our libraries.

They’re decidedly NOT productive to business. They’re yours as a person. They’re your time, your leisure, your enrichment.

I suppose they’re productive to business in the long run because the create more thoughtful and effective people so maybe they’re not all good.

Still, a good reason to lean into them.

It may lead to less demand for things like sewing machines which in turn may lead to less competition to less productivity, the producers innovating less, less GDP less happy people... Where have we seen this type of thinking before... In socialist States... I agree... But how do we create supply and demand? Letting China produce cheaply and open our boarders for a couple of decades, maybe... Maybe we are in a doom loop where we need a poorer generation or two before people turn around... It is interesting times. The most interesting is how people view the same things completely opposite. Some are super happy about the trend others super frustrated... Imho it is a part of the great reset and the big debt cycle. Maybe an attempt to soften the blow?!

Hilarious. Tool libraries exist and are quite successful here in capitalist US of A (and, apparently, in capitalist Finland. You didn't think they were communists or something, did you?)

> 1 point by timonoko 67 days ago : A Tour of Oodi

These are just echoes of Soviet Era "Cultural Palaces" aka "Folkets Hus" in Socialists-run Sweden. For the "Culture" no one wants to pay their own money for.

I visited it only once, using the Toilet. Kinda Scary. It was gender-free, consisting of large locked cubicles, which were mostly occupied as kiosks for drugs and sexual services. Romanian Romas also had permanent presence there. But sadly this gender-free dream was destroyed by the order of the Nazi Polizei.

Tool rental is a service that is commonly provided by private sector. I do not see a reason why this should be provided by a government. This seems like unfair competition to e.g. community hackerspaces.

Speaking as a co-founder of a large community hackerspace, we don't have the volunteer bandwidth to manage the additional overhead of tool lending. Please, please, please let the libraries offer more alternatives. It's exactly their mission.

Libraries are so unfair to Mr. Bezos. They should obviously be demolished. But I'm concerned that their demolition would be an expansion of government "doing things". It would be best if interested parties simply be allowed to demolish them at will without interference from the state.

At least in EU, private book/media rental is not legal without special licensing from copyright holders, while public libraries have exception for this.

In the US, there's not much demand for media rental any longer (RIP Blockbuster)--which has been largely replaced by licenced media streaming--but there are certainly private libraries of various types.

Because being able to read book is good for society.

> a nonprofit or a charity would be a much better framework

Why?

I do agree that libraries (in the UK at least) have mostly failed to see the writing on the wall and diversify. I used to live near a library that was on the edge of a super popular park. They had a "give us improvement suggestions" thing and I spoke to them about taking advantage of the park - it would have been a prime spot to open a cafe attached to the library. They actually couldn't comprehend that idea. Like, that's not what libraries are.

I am not sure I like the direction the modern libraries are taking.

Libraries should be places where people pickup books and read them, that's it.

They should not be community centers, DYI hobby centers, convention/exhibition places.

I feel they have been co-opted by people who have no interest in knowledge acquisition.

I'd argue the opposite: because they are focusing on knowledge acquisition they are trying to separate the medium (the books) from the objective.

40 years ago books were the only way to obtain knowledge. Nowadays even those who come for the books do so with a laptop for taking notes. If I were a librarian, it would be naive of me not to ask the question "if all the books are online, then why are we here?"

Anecdotally, on the topic of "knowledge acquisition", I used to run a drawing group. Finding a place to do so was a major problem because nobody wanted to invite strangers home and not everybody could afford the ~$20 it would take to stay at a cafe for long. A library with a meeting room would have been our dream solution and perhaps would have kept the group from dissolving.

Libraries have been renting non-books for a long time. Different communities have different needs. It's not a big deal. Some libraries in the Los Angeles area lend sewing machines, bike tools, and other useful stuff. The main branch library has 3d printers and other tech stuff ordinary folks can't afford. And of course, they have various workshops on numerous topics for adults and children.

Given all the stuff I've taken advantage of, if the libraries here were only for borrowing books, they would seem kind of useless. And this is from someone who has the max 30 books checked out right now.

The Los Angles Public Library lends an amazing variety of tools -- https://lacountylibrary.org/tools/

- glue gun

- Crikut cutter

- pots and pans

- tape measure

- bike repair kit

- bolt cutters

- musical instruments <3

It’s easier to take time to pick up a book and learn something if your life is going smoothly in other areas. If all your clothes need mending it can make a barrier of embarrassment to go to a public place like a library. With the hollowing out of the middle class, people live in smaller housing and move more, lose their inter generational resources. If there’s a trusted social institution that is knowen for borrow and lending, and people have a need to borrow tools for their everyday life it seems not such a deviation from the purpose of libraries

Libraries might not be a business but they still have to compete for funding. If those funding them think they are no longer relevant, the alternative is to slowly lose funding and die. People don't care about books anymore, so if the library must dangle an enticement to keep people engaged enough to retain the instilled indeed that knowledge should be freely available instead of siloed (and the other benefits of libraries), so be it.

Adapt or die is the way of life.

As others have said, reference is something we can do easily on the internet. But I would add that sitting down and studying a text with others is something best done in person. It’s a nice social experience and better achieves the goal (also gets lazy nerds like me out of the house).

Andrew Carnegie funded 2,500+ public libraries and many were built with lecture halls, auditoriums, and meeting rooms on purpose. The public library was a civic institution from day one.