How About a Tool Library for Your Neighborhood

 


The Gross Pointe Rotary Club started the first known tool-lending library in Gross Pointe, Michigan, in 1943. The Grosse Pointe Public Library now operates this tool library.

Columbus, Ohio, is the site of the second tool library in the United States (1976), and ModCon Living still operates it. This nonprofit organization works to preserve and revitalize homes and communities in Central Ohio. That library has over 4,800 tools available.

Other early examples were the Phinney Tool Library (178) and The Berkeley Tool Library (1979), founded with community block grants.

In Springfield, the Urban Neighborhood Alliance (UNA) initially started the tool library. Community Partnership (CPO)  absorbed several of UNA's programs, including the Tool Library, when UNA dissolved. 

The tool library in Springfield was reorganized in 2013 by CPO employee Amanda Stadler. Stadler wrote a few small grants for tool purchases and did a lot of research on how other tool library programs functioned. She also focused on marketing the library through neighborhood and community events to get memberships and grow the program to where it is today.

Tool libraries can be expensive to begin and maintain even with dedicated volunteers. Most tool libraries in the United States currently serve a community, not just a neighborhood.

Theoretically, a tool library could be created by partnering with businesses or running it from a neighbor's garage or shed. Sometimes, a sharing library might be set up where the inventory is posted online and neighbors respond.

If you want to cast a wider net, you can set up a borrowing group with a larger number of neighbors. You might have all the participants list things they're willing to lend and keep a master document or set up an electronic group with Facebook or an email list.

Neighbors could also go together to purchase more expensive and necessary yard and garden equipment to loan out, just like the lending of the proverbial cup of sugar.

The National Tool Library Google group was set up to provide a nationwide forum where those interested in founding tool libraries can get questions answered. 

Share Starter also has an impressive starter kit to help those trying to launch their own tool shares think through the process, including financing, staffing, outreach, and legal issues. Share Starter can be found online at https://sharestarter.org.

Tool lending can take place among immediate neighbors without a formal process. That is more of what I have experienced personally. But with some organization, tool lending can impact a larger number of neighbors.

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