Feature
The libraries lending drills, seeds and sewing machines
Book loans are flat and everything else is rising. Public libraries are becoming the last free room in town, and the busiest shelf is the one with the tools.
Editor-in-chief
8 min read
The tool shelf has a waiting list for the tile cutter.
The most borrowed item at the central library last year was not a novel. It was a cordless drill, taken out 214 times and returned, the staff say, cleaner than it left.
Libraries have been lending more than books for years. What has changed is the scale.
A library of things
Seeds in spring, sewing machines before the school term, a telescope that is booked through to March. Each collection started with a donation and a librarian willing to write a new catalogue entry.
People come in for the drill and leave with a library card. That was always the plan.
The numbers are small next to book lending, but they bring in residents who had not visited in a decade. Two branches report that a third of tool borrowers then joined a reading group or a repair evening.
Who pays for it
Budgets have not grown. Most tool libraries run on grants that last three years and on staff time borrowed from elsewhere. The councils that made them permanent did so after counting what residents saved.
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Clara Lindqvist
Editor-in-chief
Clara has led Pressio since its founding in 2019. Before that she edited the foreign desk of a Nordic daily for a decade.
