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!!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'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

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!

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...

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.

This only works in a high-trust society.

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'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.

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 :)

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

Berkeley had a very cool tool lending library

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

Socialist wet dream. In reality someone has to pay for all these adults wasting time instead of working for a living.

> 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.

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.