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'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!!!
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.
Usually the way it works is you "buy" the tool and then "return" it.
This is the Charleston County library system.
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 ...
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.
They're just people and the library is for them too.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
some of the libraries I've seen have morphed more into like makerspaces and/or meeting spaces rather than just places to get books
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
https://oodihelsinki.fi/mita-oodilaiset-lukevat-syyskuussa/a...
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 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.
SFPL used to have tools until it got ruined.
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.
Also it's an incredible women magnet :)
Maybe someday.
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.
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.
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.
Adapt or die is the way of life.