This post is adapted from a talk originally given by Gene Homicki at the Library 2.0 conference, for a public library audience on how Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things can support affordability, reuse, climate action, and community resilience.
Communities are facing a set of overlapping challenges: rising costs, climate change, waste, inequity, supply chain disruption, and the need to prepare for and recover from more frequent disasters. These challenges are often discussed separately, but many of the solutions that make communities stronger work across several of them at once.
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things are one of those solutions.
At their simplest, they allow people to borrow useful items instead of having to buy, store, maintain, and eventually dispose of those items themselves. A Tool Library may focus on hand tools, power tools, gardening equipment, or home repair supplies. A Library of Things may include those items as well as kitchen equipment, camping gear, sewing machines, musical instruments, assistive technology, event supplies, electronics, toys, games, or almost any other durable product that can be shared.
The model is simple: provide convenient, trusted access to products people need occasionally, without requiring every household to own everything individually.
The implications are much larger.
Why Shared Access Matters
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things can help communities make progress toward several goals at the same time:
- Provide affordable access to useful products
- Reduce unnecessary consumption and waste
- Lower the environmental impact associated with producing and distributing goods
- Support preparedness, recovery, and resilience
- Build community connections around sharing, repair, and skill-building
This is why these programs are not just “nice to have” community projects. They are part of a larger shift from individual ownership toward shared access, reuse, and local resilience.
A drill is the standard example because most households use one only occasionally. But the same logic applies to many other products: carpet cleaners, pressure washers, sewing machines, food dehydrators, ladders, tents, event supplies, repair tools, and adaptive equipment. When durable products are shared effectively, communities can get more value from fewer physical goods.
That reduces cost for individuals, reduces clutter and storage burdens, and can reduce the need for new production.
What Are Tool Libraries and Library of Things?
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things are a place-based sharing and reuse program where people can access products without having to purchase them. Tool libraries typically offer hand and power tools, while Libraries of Things tend to focus on a wider variety of items.
The items are typically owned or managed by a trusted organization, such as a public library, nonprofit, municipality, university, neighborhood association, or even an enterprise business. Borrowers pick up items when they need them and return them when they are done.
Some programs are free to use, especially when operated by public libraries or municipalities. Others use memberships, subscriptions, usage fees, deposits, or hybrid models. Some are volunteer-run; others have paid staff. Some operate out of a single community location, while others are part of multi-branch public library systems, municipal networks, regional reuse programs, or even enterprises.
Increasingly, programs are also experimenting with delivery, self-service pickup, electronic lockers, and other access models that make borrowing more convenient.
Libraries of Things often become anchors for related community activities: repair cafés, makerspaces, skill-sharing workshops, climate programs, home maintenance education, emergency preparedness efforts, and other local resilience work.
A Short History of Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things
While people have always shared goods informally, public and community institutions have played a role in formalizing shared access for more than a century.
One early example often cited is the Newark Public Library, which began lending framed artwork in the early 1900s. Public libraries have long understood that access can matter more than ownership.
The modern Library of Things movement is more directly connected to Tool Libraries.
One commonly cited early Tool Library is the Grosse Pointe Public Library tool collection in Michigan, which dates back to the 1940s. By the 1970s, a number of Tool Libraries had emerged in the United States. Many of those early programs eventually closed, affected by a combination of operational challenges, the rise of inexpensive consumer goods, and a broader cultural shift toward individual ownership.
But the underlying need never disappeared.
People still needed access to durable, high-quality tools and equipment. They still needed affordable ways to maintain homes, repair things, make things, and support local projects. The difference was that, for a while, the broader culture moved toward buying rather than sharing.
By the mid-2000s, a new generation of Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things began to emerge. Several forces helped accelerate this shift.
The financial crisis of 2008–2009 made affordability and access more urgent for many households. At the same time, cloud-based software, mobile computing, and online reservation tools made it much easier to manage shared inventories, reservations, memberships, maintenance, and communications.
That technology did not create the desire to share. But it did remove some of the practical barriers that had made these programs harder to sustain and replicate.
Since then, the model has continued to grow. Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things now operate across North America, Europe, Oceania, and beyond. They range from small volunteer-led neighborhood programs to public library systems, municipal initiatives, nonprofit networks, university equipment libraries, and circular economy pilots.
Why Public Libraries Are a Natural Home
Public libraries are especially well suited to this model.
They already exist to provide shared access to resources. They are trusted community institutions. They have physical locations, borrowing systems, staff experience, public missions, and a commitment to equitable access.
For many people, borrowing a sewing machine, induction cooktop, telescope, thermal camera, bike repair kit, or power drill from a public library is a natural extension of borrowing books, media, museum passes, or technology.
Public libraries also tend to be accessible, familiar, and noncommercial. That matters. A Library of Things is not only about product logistics; it is also about trust.
When public libraries offer access to useful physical goods, they are effectively helping create “product access as a public service.” This can reduce barriers for people who cannot afford to buy certain items, do not have space to store them, or only need them occasionally.
Tool Libraries, Affordability, and Equity
One of the clearest benefits of Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things is affordability.
For lower-income households, the ability to borrow rather than buy can be life-changing. While many tool libraries focus on people in need, the benefit is not limited to people in financial hardship. Many people do not want to purchase, store, maintain, or dispose of items they use only once or twice a year.
Shared access can be better than ownership when the product is expensive, bulky, maintenance-intensive, or rarely used.
This is particularly important for items that help people maintain homes, prepare for weather events, start small businesses, learn skills, or participate in community life. Access to tools, sewing machines, kitchen equipment, garden tools, or event supplies can help people do things they otherwise could not afford to do.
It can also keep value local. When communities invest in shared assets, those assets can serve many households over time.
Climate, Waste, and Consumption
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things are often described as waste reduction programs, and they are. But the bigger environmental opportunity is upstream.
The climate and ecological impacts of products do not begin when something is thrown away. They begin with resource extraction, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, warehousing, retail, use, maintenance, and disposal.
When communities share durable products effectively, they can reduce unnecessary purchasing. That can reduce the demand for new goods, especially for products that would otherwise sit idle most of the time.
This is why reuse and shared access are important parts of circular economy work. Recycling has a role, but keeping products in use longer and using them more intensively is often more powerful than simply managing waste after the fact.
A durable product used by many households can deliver far more value than the same product sitting unused in a closet, garage, basement, or storage room.
Resilience and Disaster Preparedness
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things can also support community resilience.
After storms, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and other disasters, communities often need access to tools and equipment quickly. Outside assistance may take days, weeks, or longer to arrive, especially in rural or under-resourced areas.
A community that already has tools, equipment, borrowing systems, local knowledge, repair skills, and trusted institutions is better positioned to respond.
Many commonly borrowed items — drills, saws, generators, air compressors, ladders, tarps, pumps, extension cords, safety equipment, and other repair tools — are relevant before and after disasters. These items can support preparation, mitigation, cleanup, repair, and rebuilding.
Public libraries have increasingly been recognized as important institutions in emergency response. They provide information, gathering space, internet access, trusted staff, and continuity. Adding a Library of Things or Tool Library function can expand that role by making physical resources available as well.
The most effective time to build this infrastructure is before disaster strikes.
What These Programs Need to Grow, Scale, and Replicate
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things often begin with enthusiasm, donated items, volunteer energy, and a strong local need. That can be enough to start, but long-term sustainability usually requires more.
To grow beyond isolated examples, these programs need durable infrastructure.
That includes:
- Sustainable funding models
- Convenient and trusted locations
- Clear borrowing policies
- Staffing or volunteer systems
- Maintenance and repair workflows
- Insurance and liability practices
- Good inventory data
- Reservation and loan management
- Reporting and impact measurement
- Partnerships with local government, libraries, nonprofits, funders, and community groups
Maintenance is especially important. Shared products need to be safe, functional, and reliable. A good Tool Library or Library of Things is not just a pile of donated items; it is a managed system for keeping useful products in circulation.
Technology is also critical. As programs grow, they need systems that can manage reservations, item availability, member rules, overdue items, maintenance schedules, payments or deposits, communications, reporting, and multi-location logistics.
The goal is not technology for its own sake. The goal is to make shared access easier to operate, easier to fund, easier to measure, and easier to replicate.
From Local Projects to Reuse Infrastructure
The next stage for Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things is not simply more individual programs. It is stronger networks and better infrastructure.
That may include public library systems offering shared inventories across branches, municipalities supporting reuse as part of climate and waste strategies, nonprofits collaborating regionally, locker-based access expanding hours and locations, and funders treating shared access as community infrastructure.
The larger opportunity is to move from “interesting local project” to “normal part of how communities access useful goods.”
That shift will require investment, policy support, operational knowledge, and better measurement. It will also require telling a broader story.
Tool Libraries and Libraries of Things are not only about borrowing tools. They are about changing the relationship between people, products, and communities.
They help people access what they need without requiring everyone to own everything individually. They reduce waste by increasing use. They support affordability by lowering barriers. They strengthen resilience by making useful resources available locally. And they create practical, visible examples of the circular economy in everyday life.
In a world facing climate, affordability, and resilience challenges at the same time, shared access is not a fringe idea. It is a practical model that communities can build on now.