Renting a sewing machine from the library | Hacker News Reader

Renting a sewing machine from the library

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349 pointssohkamyung228 comments

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!!!

The Washington County library system is excellent; I love that one card will get you access to the entire area.

That's my library system too! I go to tualatin and it has a dedicated room for their makerlab and have classes every day for all kinds of stuff. Whenever I go in its pretty well attended.

Our little town in Minnesota has some of these too (https://winona.lib.mn.us/library-of-things/) it's really cool! There's also a new maker space getting set up now which will have a tool library open to the community.

Libraries of Things are a thing now. The items that are most useful are those that lend things that you use from once a year to every couple of years.

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.

Auto part stores often will lend both weird and specialized tools, and relatively basic ones, too.

Usually the way it works is you "buy" the tool and then "return" it.

While I understand some people think this is clever, all it does is increase costs for businesses which ends up increasing costs for honest consumers. Worse yet: it tends to increase the cost for local businesses, or at least businesses employing local people, so it's giving the finger to your neighbours rather than to the man.

Many autoparts store have a formal tool lending program that is structured as buy/return. I know it sounds like @bombcar is suggesting some “lifehack” that is closer to stealing. But, no, this is an actual service provided by actual auto parts stores.

https://www.autozone.com/lp/loan-a-tool

If it is a formal policy of the store, then it's a different story. They could also manage it in a way to minimize costs. That said, I have run into people who are proud of "discovering" the lifehack version.

Ok, so they don’t call it a ’buy’ program.

It’s a lending program, for free. With a deposit for full value so it becomes a purchase if you don’t return it in time. Same structure but the phrasing matters.

Cool idea.

From the website it seems like they're expecting that some people will do this with the intention of renting, but then decide to keep or not get around to the return process.

The tools are almost always something they sell normally, and it keeps their accounting clean.

You'd be a silly goose to rent it and then never return it, however, as the rental tools have been used to heck and back.

They make money on the parts you buy. the tools are a loss leader

> a bicycle disc brake flushing kit

With the right gear, the job is still horrible. SRAM brakes give me an unlimited number of maintenance chores.

To be fair SRAM are particularly a pain to bleed. Shimano, Magura etc are much easier

Yeah, the SRAM ones require two syringes and seven hands to bleed. And DOT fluid is great at removing paint if you spill it. I haven't done any Magura ones, but the Shimano ones were clearly engineered to be maintained by someone who isn't an octopus.

I recently learned that if you live in a place where Citroën LHM is readily available, it's a less-expensive and compatible substitute for Shimano mineral oil brake fluid. Conversely, if you're in a place where LHM isn't available for love or money, you can substitute Shimano mineral brake oil instead of going on a wild goose chase of the Citroën product.

Wow wait, I basically live in bicycle land (the netherlands), but I've never heard of fluid breaks for bicycles. All I've ever seen are cable breaks. Fluid breaks on motorcycles, sure, but I'm pretty surprised they are used on regular cycles as well!

They came on to the downhill MTB market 25-30 years ago now, spread into XC and from there into road and gravel. Sadly, they've now made their way down to the mid-low end of the hybrid/city/comfort market as well. Low-end hydraulic disc brakes are a huge downgrade from cable-actuated brakes.

The components range from OK to outright crap and the labor to screw around with them easily adds up to a significant fraction of the cost of the bicycle. What would've been a 15-30 minute cable and housing job can easily turn into a 60-120 minute hose and bleed job. Assuming you have the parts on hand to terminate the hose on both ends, that is.

In 10 years, there will be an absolute glut of bicycles that are basically fixable except for their totally unsupported hydraulic brakes.

The braking performance ranges from better than the equivalent price-point rim brakes to absolute crap. I hadn't ridden my mountain bike for a while, and was pleasantly surprised to realize that the 20 year-old Avid BB-7 cable-actuated discs on it compare favorably to most of the hydraulic systems on the market.

I got back into cycling after 20 years off.

Good hydraulic disc brakes are just so good.

Sadly I need them more, I’m a chicken on the decent and there is a lot more of me to stop.

now that e-bikes are so prevalent, I wonder if we will see more regenerative braking.

i live in a place with large hills that have long descents over miles, and it would be nice to not be wearing out my brakes physically while controlling my speed.

To have regenerative braking, you'd need a hub motor or a bottom bracket motor with a fixed hub and the freewheel on the crank, which admittedly does exist, just not in conjunction with a motor in the bottom bracket AFAIK.

You'd also need some way of controlling the regenerative and friction brakes together. No, it cannot be separate levers. A lot of casual cyclists don't use their front brakes because they're worried that they'll go over the bars.

Whoa are they that different from a typical motorcycle brake? Because I never had a problem with those, all the way from 1990s japanese scooters. They are simple, reliable and don't require much maintenance. They even work ok on 75% water-dot mix on completely weared-out pads if you can't fix'em on the road. Worst thing that can happen is hose rupture, which is extremely rare, good hoses just work forever, brakes becoming a bit mushy after about 10-15 years, which you adapt to.

I think hydraulics are overkill for bicycles, but apart from that what's the problem?

They can be very very fiddly.

They get contaminated fluid - presumably from shit cylinder seals. They can be difficult to tune (too much travel, not enough). They can be fiddly to change pads. The pistons stop working on one side (binding up), they can leak, etc.

Combine all that with an electronic, wireless gear shifter that’s in close proximity and the roadside repair in the rain can be miserable.

Don’t get me wrong, I like them a lot but most my shop visits are for brake repairs. I have to work on them every few weeks as I go though pads in as little as 6 weeks.

I've never worked on a motorcycle, but I have worked on hydraulic brakes on several cars, including when I was recently given the opportunity to learn how to bend and flare rigid brake lines.

The problem on bicycles is that everything is small and light, and that nothing is really standardized at this point. You need a bleed kit for mineral oil, and a different one for DOT fluid. Each of those probably comes with a few different adapters for the various threadings. Barbs, olives, and flare nuts aren't standardized across manufacturers either. There are three or four different ways to just put a caliper on a fork or frame. There are a further three or four ways to put a rotor on a hub. That means you're stocking more hubs and pre-built wheels as well as rotors. There are easily a dozen common brake pads, probably many more if you start looking at the obscure stuff.

At the handlebars, the drop-bar brake and shift levers are super tightly packaged and integrated. At the high end of the market, you might be able to get rebuild parts, though I never had to do that. Otherwise you're replacing a pretty expensive component, assuming it's even available. The market is still moving pretty fast as we've gone from two-by to one-by drivelines.

Cheaper non-integrated flat-bar brake levers are relatively benign to replace if you have to, but you still have to chop and reterminate the hose and bleed them. On the flip side, you can probably forget about getting rebuild parts.

Compared to a car, and I assume a motorcycle, the tolerances on everything are tighter. The room for gaskets and O-rings is smaller so leaks develop more easily and water contaminates the fluid more easily. The size of the fluid reservoir is vastly smaller so there's less reserve if you have a small leak. You're moving less fluid overall, so the margin between mushy and useless is pretty small.

We've come from a world where you needed two types of cable (road and MTB), one type of housing, and generously a half-dozen kinds of pads for cable actuated rim brakes to this. It's all doable, but the amount of stuff and tools you have to have on hand in a bike shop has goddamn exploded.

Well I can see where excessive minituarization of hydraulics makes it a mess. One can't really lower working volume past some threshold, and the rest of system gets very fragile.

I don't really get why it's even needed, it's not like you need to drop 80km/h from a 150kg bike every other minute.

I didn’t know this - I’ve never had to work on my Shimano brakes, they just work.

I can hardly think of a worse thing than a bleed kit to lend out from a library. They're full of small parts to lose, and they'll never be clean once you use them. And you don't want people mixing up the DOT and mineral oil bleed kits.

I have worked in a bike shop as a mechanic, and we periodically ended up misplacing the various adapters. This is in a place where everybody using the kit is getting paid to do the job and has been trained. The librarians would go nuts just replacing O-rings and adapters that people had lost.

If you need one for your specific bike, you're probably as well off just buying the one you need from e.g. bleedzone.com [0]. Most of them are around or under $25, and if it's your kit, you always know who the last idiot to use it was :-)

[0] I haven't bought from them, but probably will when I need one. The shop I worked in has sadly closed.

The local library system has in addition to niche services like 3d printers and circuit card printers a humongous board game collection. You can reserve a board game online, it eventually appears at your local branch of the library and then you check it out for 2 weeks.

Really great way to test before you buy.

Do they have a fusion splicer ? I know it might seem random… but I feel like might come in clutch in the future

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.

That sounds so cool, are they building an entire fablab in there?

Yea, they built a new library near me a couple years ago and have a full makers space in a separate large room. I guess "check out" is the wrong term as you can't take the machines home. You just go there and use them or have the trained librarian operate the machine.

The Greene County Ohio Public Library (Xenia, OH) did something like this a few years ago and other libraries in the area (Dayton Metro and Troy-Miami County) started similar spaces, too. They all have a similar array of machines-- CNC, 3D printing, dye sub printing, laser engravers, vinyl cutters, sewing and embroidery, video and photo editing, etc. It's amazing to me that within a five year timespan all of this became available to anybody in the community for the cost of materials.

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.

Yes and no. I can stitch. I regularly do adjust clothes. I am a bad amateur. It's crazy what my neighbor does (She has a industrial sewing machine) and does piece finish work. It's a real skill.

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 bought a sewing machine a five years ago and I haven’t had to do any maintenance or repairs to it. What kinds of things are breaking on your machine?

I only use it a couple of times per year, and simply threading it is a genuine challenge for me. So is keeping a stich running. People who sew more or have good fine motor skill may just not remember the noob experience. I expect a lot of new renters to have a learning curve to climb.

it helps to have a good sewing machine - the difference between a poor quality one and e.g. a nice bernina is dramatic. even an old one thats been well maintained will give you many years of reliable use with minimal maintenance, and they're very affordable used

> even an old one

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.

In the United Kingdom, we learn (maybe past tense, I've no idea if the curriculum has changed) how to use a sewing machine at secondary school.

I’m almost 40 and educated in the UK. I don’t think sewing has been taught in UK schools for quite many generations now - although no idea what the state of affairs is today.

It might be you need to make a choice to choose it; I know that when I was at school in the UK I got to choose between "CDT" (craft, design, and technology) or home economics, which was sewing, cooking, & etc.

I picked woodwork, as 95% of the boys did, and about 80% of the girls picked the home-lessons instead.

I do recall doing some sewing lessons outwith the home-ec classes, but it was very irregular. I know I skipped some stuff because my grandmother had already taught me to knit when I was six-eight years old. Only at home did I use a sewing machine, never at school.

Interesting, it was indeed design and technology; we weren't given a choice - we did both for a a couple of lessons each (cooking, sewing, woodwork, electronics, metalwork and graphic design).

I guess it must have been dependent on the school then?

It was useful - I'm quite sure I wouldn't have gotten any exposure to those subjects without it.

Perhaps it varied on the school, or perhaps they tried to make it a little less divided on gender lines since my time. (I'm 50.)

Housework, sewing, knitting and stuff I'd been exposed to at home due to a pretty large family already. Though otherwise I would have probably benefited from it, and it did strike me even at the time that it would be best if we could do both classes, rather than having to pick only one.

Girls often do. But I never touched a sewing machine at school because I am male. I wish I had been because I do sew nowadays and wish I'd been taught to earlier. Clothing repair, basic electrics, cookery etc do have a place in school.

I bought mine 10 years ago, maybe longer. Never had to do anything. Super useful when we need it.

Opposite experience. I studied mine extensively when I got it. I rarely have problems. But it's definitely a mechanical wonder.

You have confused high maintenance with complex. Not to belittle sewing machines, which are very cool and not exactly simple.

Get yourself an old Singer. They're the Toyota of sewing machines.

Sewing machines are complex, but ive had experiences both ways with them. One model I had endless troubles with both getting to run and keep running well, but then ive had others that are seemingly bulletproof. At my family's cabin my great-grandmother had a foot powered one that to this day works flawlessly and has never seen any maintenance or repairs ive ever seen and she use to make tons of quilts on it. I don't use it much these days but I do squirt a bit of oil on it every few years and make sure it is still working.

Have you considered that maybe your sewing machine is faulty in some way? Either the model or the particular instance of it.

I’m also a complete sewing machine noob. We have a sewing machine at our hackspace, someone gave me a minute long tutorial and I had zero trouble with it afterwards. I think the whole “tutorial” was just: follow the arrows when threading it, don’t push down the pedal when your finger is under the needle. And it just worked as it should.

Maybe i just got lucky! But my experience was so different from yours that it made me think that maybe your sewing machine is either bad quality or has some hidden defect.

It depends.

We have a few sewing machines that are finicky. Tension goes off rapidly, binds a lot, lint buildup constantly has to be cleaned, clunks mysteriously sometimes. We also have a Singer manufactured in 1899 that just does what it's supposed to reliably (and you can still get parts for it!). Now mind you, it doesn't do fancy stitches or buttonholing or anything but straight stitching and a basic zigzag and you do have to keep the treadle properly lubricated but it even works during a power failure.

Sewing machines, like stand mixers and vacuum cleaners, in the end are power tools as much as radial arm saws, hammer drills, and routers are. It's great to have all the fancy features, but sometimes lowest tech is the best.

The sewing machine stays in that library so I’m going to make the assumption they have a bit of in house expertise for advice and counsel - they have a photo of the anecdote in question and it’s only a starting point on how Finland is trying to use libraries to promote society and democracy by providing tools and spaces and opportunities - you might be focusing too much on minutiae - one of the librarians speaks about the ways they work to increase library use. There’s a short contrast with the USA and UK closing libraries in recent years and one of the librarians interviewed moved to Finland from the UK - that may also be a reason the BBC went with this story.

Virtually every user-serviceable problem can be solved by one of the following:

Reading the fine manual and making sure the machine is threaded correctly.

Replacing the needle.

Adjusting the tension, starting with getting the bobbin tension grossly correct, then balancing it with the top tension. <- This is not hard; it's just that most people haven't been taught[0].

Removing the accumulated lint from the bobbin driver and feed dogs.

Lubricating the machine.

If none of those work, have it serviced. If the service person tells you the machine is crap, go to a thrift shop and buy a Singer 66, 99, 15 or equivalent Japanese clone for $25-$100. For a little more money, you can get a 201. A Featherweight is a joy to use and takes up no space in storage, but is much costlier than any of the above options.

Don't buy a slant shank machine (400 or 500 series); that was an evolutionary dead-end. If you absolutely need a machine that zigzags, ask the service person what they recommend.

[0] This is applicable to Singer class 15 machines and their clones, but the general principles apply to any lockstitch machine:

https://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/manuals/ha-...

If you have a transverse shuttle (you almost certainly don't) or a vibrating shuttle (you probably don't), you may need to look up information specific to your machine.

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.

You mean being asked for spare change makes you avoid that library? Why not just give them your change?

I don't have any change on me.

Do what I do: kindly tell them you have no change. Works for me every time

It's still annoying though.

Boohoo

Just say that then. Or give them a dollar.

Usually don't have dollars either.

Then just shrug and keep walking like 99% of the rest of humans

Which is what I do.

Sounds like you've got it figured out.

Sure, that's exactly what you want in library.

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.

You will encounter homeless people in libraries, because it's one of the few public spaces that won't kick them out. Your reaction to that shouldn't be to hate and avoid libraries though. It should be to appreciate them more.

The guy didn't said he hated it, you did. He just said he avoided it. I would too. The same way I wouldn't want to hang out at a homeless shelter (and why many homeless themselves avoid any places with many other homeless people).

I would avoid homeless shelters because I have no reason to be there. But I won't avoid libraries because I do have a reason to be there, and I know there's no reason to be scared of interacting with homeless people.

They're just people and the library is for them too.

They're not just average people, they're people with a particular condition which is more than likely associated with mental health issues, lack of social skills and several times more likely to be dealing with an addiction problem than a normal person.

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.

The bottom line is they have as much a right to be there as you do and you're free to ignore them or interact with them as much or as little as you want to.

That's not the bottom line, the law is the law nobody is arguing to kick anyone out. This thread was just about why someone might not want to go there and then being gaslighted that homeless people are somehow not a risk group in any way lol

It's up to you to do your own assessment but I don't see any reason to be fearful.

These are regulars at that library who never caused enough disruption to be banned, and aren't dangerous enough to be in jail. They also have more to lose by getting banned than housed patrons.

There absolutely are people which are fine and there are one's that don't. No need to create these specific scenarios.

That's the whole point of that post.

We're not talking about people being fine or not, we're talking about assessing the risk associated with homeless people patronizing libraries (which is effectively zero).

You are more likely to be attacked by a shark than a homeless person at a library and that should be obvious to anybody.

Nobody talked about attacks, we just said we'd avoid it. You at first escalated it to "hate" and now to "attacked".

And now escalating it to the attack which nobody except you even mentioned. Great. You, again just made something up... I don't see the point of this.

I don't go to libraries very often anymore because so often they're effectively homeless shelters. Should I not mind this? I don't know, 'should' is doing a lot here, but the truth is I used to love going to libraries, browsing books, and soak up the general scholastic atmosphere.

Homeless shelter just isn't that much fun for me. If I want to be virtuous and go to a soup kitchen or otherwise try to interact with and help homeless people, I'll just do that.

What people in general don't seem to realize by taking things that almost everyone likes (libraries, as one example) and requiring one to go through some virtue test to go is that in the end, public support for the good is going to collapse, it will lose funding, and then no one can have it.

I think we're going to lose libraries.

> I don't go to libraries very often anymore because so often they're effectively homeless shelters.

If someone doesn't go to the library because of homeless people, the problem is with the person who doesn't go to the library.

If someone doesn't go to the library because they are being harassed, the problem is with the library. Let the library know about specific incidents so they can handle it.

I'm not saying the situation is ideal. Yet plenty of homeless people go to the library to access the services they offer, or simply to have a safe place to read a book (even if the book part is incidental). If people sleeping in the library is disturbing, well, let's just say that library security would be kicking out a lot of university students in my area.

> Let the library know about specific incidents so they can handle it.

Library staff is not equipped to kick homeless people out for fear that it will cause a scene and possibly escalate to an aggressive situation. They will just call the police. So then the police will come and remove the person, but they will come back the next week, or maybe the next day. So then what happens? Call the police again? This time maybe they get charged with trespassing and put in jail? This goes on and on. The library is supposed to be a safe place but that also means that it is somewhat of a helpless place for staff and quiet citizens. And over time it slowly becomes more and more uncomfortable to the point that regular people just stop going.

It's nobody's "fault". It's just a tragedy of the circumstances.

Sounds safe: https://ciceroinstitute.org/news-media/more-than-50-of-homel...

"In 8 states, over 50% of unsheltered homeless individuals are registered sex offenders.

National average: ~13% when including those with “unknown addresses.” "

Buried lede: this is, in large part, a self-created problem. Many states set restrictions on where people who are registered sex offenders are allowed to live (e.g. disallowing them from living close to schools and day care centers), and those restrictions can make it much more difficult for these people to find housing.

(Anecdotally, I've heard of situations where these restrictions effectively ban sex offenders from living anywhere in a city, because the overlapping exclusion zones leave nothing uncovered.)

I could see that happening. This idea isn't perfect, but beats the alternatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Village

I hate and avoid homeless people. They're often in the library. Therefore...

I've had this idea for a business kicking around for awhile, basically a private library with membership fees. It would have all the accomodations you wish a library would have but that it can't have due to being public commons, like free coffee, private reading rooms, locker storage, and of course no vagrants.

This sounds like a good way to discover being a dick isn’t unique to the homeless.

I would but mine smells really bad because of the homeless :(

Indistinguishable from a joke

This is a sad state of affairs.

I hope wherever you live can pull out of the dive.

Libraries are amazing and I would say that the fact they are so under funded and eventually turn into little more than a place to sleep, is very unfortunate.

I have woken up so much, sitting in a library for days, reading, reading, reading ..

If it weren’t for libraries, I’d have only read 1984 and not Down and Out in Paris and London, nor the one about Aspidispira, works with gravitas which fundamentally changed my opinion about personal responsibility at a respectable age.

I wonder if any of those homeless folk get a chance to talk to the ghosts of those aisles. Probably the library worked, once.

Please critisize the harassment, not libraries for providing shelter to homeless people. A well managed library has a degree of supervision that allows the visitor to do something about harassment. This level of control is also important for homeless people, who are subject to harassment more than most. A reasonably well run library is also no place to consume alcohol or drugs in plain sight. In these respects libraries are so much more apt places than train/subway stations - something acknowledged by large user groups: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/diversity/librariesrespond/serv...

15 years ago I lived in East London, and when I came to borrow books (e.g. to the "Idea Store Whitechapel"), I felt some sort of proudness seeing homeless people hanging out there, listening to mp3, having a coffee in the cheap cafeteria or - yes! - reading: True inclusion seemed to work in so few places in the country - at least there it was tangible. I live in Marseille/France now and haven't noticed this here; but a homeless person is not necessarily obvious - next time I visit, I'll have a look!

> A well managed library has a degree of supervision that allows the visitor to do something about harassment.

Library staff in my city are instructed not to do anything themselves about homeless. If there's a problem then they just call the police, who are equipped to handle it. Same as the city bus drivers are not going to enforce paying fares or making sure no riders are causing problems. They just pull over and call the police.

Their is no polite "middle ground" where a librarian can just confidently ask a disruptive homeless person to vacate the library. 9 times out of 10 that confrontation will escalate into a full blown incident. That's why the rule is always just to call the police.

Seems like such a confident, exact number here.. How do you arrive at that? I've lived around and been friends with homeless people my whole life.. I can't even think of one thing 9 out of 10 of them shared beyond there general circumstances. They are just people, how can it be alright or even really rational to talk about them like this?

GP wasn't talking about a random sample of homeless people, but a sample of homeless people who have been so disruptive that they have just been asked to leave a public library.

I grew up in Santa Cruz with a large homeless population. From interacting with them, they had to deal with full blown incidents/abuse/violence way more often than the average person had to deal with from them.

The problem is not homeless peoples' reaction to the world. The problem is societies place for them.

Homeless people have always existed and likely always will. The problem is in the last 45 years we've built a brittle, zero slack society. We've optimized around a particular vision of middleclass life while steadily eliminating the margins that once allowed vulnerable people, those prone to homelessness, and increasingly young adults who just need a place to start from, to exist on the periphery without being put in constant crisis. We removed the pathways that allowed unstable people to find enough footing to maintain a place to live.

We've embraced an economic model that requires continual growth and ever more housing. We've destroyed via economics and regulation many of the housing options that once existed for the very poor such as boarding houses, residential hotels, man camps. Demanding that everyone fit into a middle class model at all stages in life is cruel. It's even crueler when we act surprised or judgmental toward people whom society has systematically left with nowhere to go.

In AI speak 'we optimized away the edge cases and then blamed the people who (always had/always will) lived in them'.

Imagine regulating that everyone must eat a meal individually prepared in an industrial kitchen, with a mandated recipe from the community (any missing ingredients and the meal can't be cooked) and approved by inspectors post cooking, and capped the total meal kitchen capacity. Not everyone would be able to afford that. For peoples' largest expense (housing) that is what we have done and today 50% of young adult Americans are living at home with parents because that is our current housing model. What happens to young adults that don't have parents to live with? In part, homelessness.

Do we live in the same town? That's been my experience exactly, many experiences have required walking briskly before a simple question becomes more than a yes or no answer and explaining why I don't have $20 or a meal on me. The times I do try to buy them a meal I've been lead to the most expensive restaurant nearby (be threw away my meal I got him at Subway).

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 ..

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

What kind of stuff do you make sewing? About the only think I've ever wanted to sew was a new pocket on a jacket

Throw pillows out of old t-shirts.

My family has one. I'm not sure we'd get one if we didn't already have it. With that said, I've repaired clothing, backpacks, and a fairly expensive musical instrument case. For the latter repairs, I broke a few needles, and had to work the mechanism by hand, a stitch at a time, because the motor wasn't strong enough, but it got the job done.

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.

Camping gear, hammocks, bags, any small change or repair. Strap breaks on a backpack, fix it. Pocket rips, fix it.

I started sewing because I wanted to make a Guybrush Threepwood costume for Halloween. I'm currently making a bag and the next items in the pipeline are a couple summer shirts and a custom cover for a camera lens I have. I also brought my sewing machine to a kid's birthday party to make small plushies with the kids.

I've also repaired a non-insignificant number of clothes from friends and family. I know I used to roll my eyes when people used terms like "upcycling", but I have to say that I've come around since.

Outdoor equipment, if you’re into that sorta thing. I didn’t know anything and I think my second backpack was nice enough to use.

Also laminated fabrics tend to be much easier to sew since they are so rigid

I made a hat - an old one was getting threadbare so I used a seam ripper to take it apart, drew around the parts onto new fabric, and sewed the parts together. The brim was a bit tricky and the stitching isn't super straight because of the thick canvas (also, I wish I'd made it out of thinner material) but I get a kick out of saying I made it!

Most of the things I've made are probably bags and covers or other containers for things. You can make the designs very simple with some thought and bespoke sizes are often useful and impossible to buy.

Upholstery would be really interesting, but it seems that materials I would like (tough, not plastic) are essentially impossible to find here. And I'm often tempted to see if I could make some simple plain clothing because it seems that the shop selections just keep getting worse every year. Either that or actually find myself a tailor.

Bags, wallets, etc are quite fun, and you can find lots of options from the easy "two rectangles and a handle" to some clever backpacks and custom bags to hold specific items.

It is quite cool to have a bag with custom pockets designed specifically for the things you actually own and carry often, in the color and fabric _you_ like.

Clothes are harder as you need to learn how to fit them. But doable.

And pattern construction (aka "drafting") is a whole separate engineering discipline. Check freesewing.eu for inspiration.

In my experience it will also make you appreciate aspects of physical production that don't apply to programming. For example, how precisely you need to cut fabric and join/pin/baste fabric together before you sew such that it looks nice. I'm glad I don't need to reckon millimeter precision on a ruler for my job.

working with your hands and developing physical craftsmanship is unbeatable

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.

That theoretical wait time doesn’t usually end up being so long. Between borrowers returning things early, people on the wait list giving up and most importantly, the library deciding that the current inventory is insufficient, the wait times usually are much less than that (I’ve observed this with books and other materials at my local library and the wait on in-demand times is never as long as the queue would imply).

Books yes, DVDs yes.

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 ...

Hmm, my library had a T-Mobile wireless hotspot available and the wait time on the hold was less than what was expected. It ended up being rather fortuitous as the first half of 2020 corresponded to the beginnings of the dissolution of my marriage and I spent that time living in a mostly unfurnished house with no internet and I got the hotspot just before everything shut down in March and it enabled me to have internet for a couple months while the library was closed.

In the equation there seems to be a typo;

103 - number of ppl in queue, 4 - up to X weeks per person, 2 - number of machines 12 - ??

Maybe you initially wanted to use full months for how long a person can hold an item, but then switched to weeks, and accidently still used number of months to get the number of years?

Anyway, for an imprecise number, you can do with months - 104*1/2/12 ~4.3y.

For more precise result, use seconds, as that's the unit used for the precise length of the year. Year is not 365 days. It's actually longer, quoting Wikipedia for (tropical) year,

> Approximately 365 solar days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds

That gives

  104 * (4 * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60) /2 /(((365 * 24 + 5) * 60 + 48) * 60 + 45)

Which results in 3.986 years. At maximum. Much less than 17!

Edit: getting asterikses * right

Why was this downvoted? The math checks out. Multiplying by 4 and then dividing by 12 is wrong.

Easy way to verify this: assume only 1 person in the queue and only 1 machine. Then the original calculation yields 4/12 of a year, even though the actual wait time is (about) 1/12 of a year.

These sorts of services do seem very dependent on the details of how they are organized.

I’ve had experience with two university libraries with 3d printers. They both advertise them similarly, and they were nominally similar services, ostensibly letting students and staff both 3d print and learn about 3d printing.

At one, the arrangement was that they’d show you around the machines, give you a link to a list of notes and rules, and then you could come in and use the printers. If you wanted to do something unusual or use an exorbitant amount of filament, they asked that you talk to them first. That service is what initially introduced me to 3d printing.

At the other, the library staff decided they’d rather handle everything themselves. You’d submit an stl, then they’d print it at some point, potentially weeks later. Random color pla only, no slicing and providing gcode or even requests for settings. In practice staff decided they would only accept links to popular stls online; submitting your own stl would be rejected. They printed at such bad settings that everything would come out horribly. The service was worse than useless, taught nothing, and may well have turned many students off 3d printing entirely, if they thought the results were indicative of what 3d printing could do. We essentially have to warn students that the service is not practically usable.

But both, of course, say they have 3d printers.

That doesn’t seem right - off the top of my head I think it’s more like 4 years? maybe it should be “103*4/2/52” (not “/12”) ?

… hopefully the effective wait time is considerably shorter if a long line is taken as a demand signal, leading them to buy more.

While the wait time to rent a machine may be long (I didn't even know Denver had this,) Denver also has the ideaLAB maker spaces at five branches, all of which are equipped with sewing machines to just drop in and use.

Some ideaLAB locations (like my local one) have fancy machines like embroidery, quilting, and industrial sewing machines. There's also lots of other tools, from basic hand tools to laser cutters and 3d printers (again, location dependent.) There's always staff on hand to help during open lab hours. All free to use. Really an impressive system that I use frequently.

https://denverlibrary.org/idealab

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.

The Deichman Library in Bjørvika, Oslo, Norway (they named their public library after a businessman/book collector who donated his books to the city) is basically a hangout space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1xI7SSdLo

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.

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.

I think musical instruments, especially digital ones like synthesizers or effects but also guitars and other acoustic instruments, have become a lot more affordable the last decade without severely impacting quality. You don't really need the expensive stuff anymore when you can record a quality recording with a second hand iPad and a below $100 microphone.

Rental of expensive stuff will always be expensive too due to insurance, maintenance and fraud. It's not really helping to make stuff more accessible, more a convenience for the pro's that need stuff for a gig.

There's still a lot of crap cheap guitars out there, and some truly dreadful cheap amps

There will always be crap sold to people who want a cheap gift or decorative item. But once you shop just a bit above the bottom price there are a surprising amount of decent instruments to be found.

I ran a music store dude i know what I'm talking about

Ah, the good old argument from authority fallacy? ;)

Running a music store means you'll want to sell the most expensive stuff with the higher margins so you have every incentive to convince people cheap stuff is crap. Why should I trust you?

Yes. But about 200+ currency units especially in used gear can get you something genuinely usable, if you know what to look for. But knowing and variety is a problem in itself.

Not so lucky if you want e.g. a sax bigger than an alto, a bassoon, oboe, french horn... Some instruments just don't seem to have dirt cheap versions.

(No, I don't have a problem. I can stop any time!)

Of course, some instruments require a lot of manual tweaking during fabrication and/or are too niche for manufacturers to invest in proper automation. Then there's the price of some raw materials (esp. wood and metal) which drives up the price.

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.

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!

How are you going about this? Asking because I thought about doing something similar (e.g., Makerspaces, hackerspaces, Fab Labs).

Luckily a few others here in Idaho have done it by way of a Friends of the Library official non-profit 501(c)(3), so I have a model to follow that works in our region and for our rural conservative conditions. The standard non-profit benefits apply: we apply for a lot of grants, we set up endowments, accept land or stock as gifts, take on capital projects like building a library. The public library can then lease from us (probably for $0) or if we put a large enough endowment fund together we would very much consider taking it all private vs just a purpose built building for the library.

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/

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 are some tool libraries where i live specifically for big or expensive stuff like ladders, power saws, etc; stuff most people need once every few years but don't want to keep in their apartment

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.

Noo, don't tell the major VC website about libraries.

I would love to have a place I could rent that kind of stuff. There are a lot of hobbies I'd like to explore, but I don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for equipment I'll never use again if I decide it's not for me.

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.

A relative used to drive the library bus where I grew up in. Getting a library card must be one of my earliest memories. Along with learning the alphabet and skiing.

Iowa has this too, the Des Moines Public Library has a Library of Things with over 50 items.

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.

The BBC Future website is not aimed at users in the UK, and features content produced by the BBC's commercial arm.

Users in the UK can read it without ads, but it's not generally promoted or linked to by bbc.co.uk

Ah that makes more sense then!

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

Tool libraries rock, i think this model could work really well for lots of things especially in big cities.

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

There's at least one in Melbourne, Australia (near the CBD) too: https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org

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.

Oodi is at least equally community / maker space and library, very distinctively and attractively designed, quite new, and in the middle of Helsinki, so there are a lot of non Finnish speakers visiting so there is a large English section.

Manufactured reality

70% of Finns speak English

Would you prefer it on a Finnish webpage?

https://oodihelsinki.fi/mita-oodilaiset-lukevat-syyskuussa/a...

There is lots of English/Swedish books in average Finnish library.

  Finland's investment reflects this commitment: in 2025, the country spent nearly €371m ($430m/£321m) on its public libraries – that's €65.78 ($76/£57) per person, compared to the average £10 ($13.5) per person spent in the UK, and a total public library expenditure of $15.2bn (£11.4bn ), or $45 (£34) per person in the US.

Are those numbers correct?

In San Francisco, the 2025 public library budget was over $240 per resident per year.

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 :)

Hey baby, wanna see my sewing machine? I can add a gusset anywhere you want.

Forget about gussets, I can offer pockets

Ha. Give a lady something she really wants and you’re in.

Cheese?

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.

The fact that libraries are not full of people doesn't negate their function. A hard drive doesn't need to be continually read and written to serve its purpose either.

> The fact that libraries are not full of people doesn't negate their function.

Is this what I said or even implied?

but nobody goes there.

Yes. You're implying libraries need to be full of people reading books all the time, when their main purpose is to store them.

Ah I see, then indeed we disagree about the point of a library. You see it as storage, I see it as a place for object, I see it as a place for people to meet, with the "excuse" o objects or via objects (e.g. books).

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.

I used to think this way too. When I was growing up, libraries were for books.

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.

I'm torn on this. Often I feel like the parent, but I recognize maybe I'm being stubborn.

You say libraries purpose is to help the community. If that's true, what you're saying makes sense. On the other hand, if their purpose is to promote literacy and reading, well, this is off mission.

I think of the former mission as more being a community center. My mother loves this form and spends a lot of time at her local library. I'm a curmudgeon and an intellectual snob apparently. I don't even like them having popular books, but I'm trying to be less rigid and more honest here and admit that some scope creep is probably healthy and the question is just where you draw the line.

> but I think it distracts from the actual purpose.

The purpose of a library is what it does.

They used to lend books, to promote literacy & education. For youngsters to explore fields of knowledge & discover what they're interested in. Offer a selection of newspapers & magazines nobody can afford on their own.

Fablabs, places for students to work on their laptop, workshops etc fit right into this.

But the community center aspect has always been a thing. These days that might be extended in hosting a repair cafe, puzzles / board games, whatever that local community regards worthwhile.

If you think that's a no-go, maybe public libraries aren't for you. Or just stick to the book area.

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.

In Japan there's a karaoke chain that rents sewing machine.

The Olive Free Library in the Catskills, NY will lend a fishing pole. (The Catskills is considered the birthplace of “American” Fly Fishing traditions).

I bought a sewing machine a few years ago. I felt really dumb having to spend (many) hours trying to set up the bobbin/thread.

FWIW this is somewhat happening in Lithuania as well. Two biggest libraries in the tiny country stock fablabs, recording studios etc.

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.

It's not books or things. It's (>90%) books and little bits of many kinds of other things.

> 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 live in Finland and even I am sceptical of this figure. Maybe that’s because I go once a year.

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.

On the return trip, you collect another set of books, making it a habit.

On the return trip, you collect another set of books, which you then also have to return in two weeks.

The report is deliberately misleading by the red-green government. If you read between the lines it is a poll among the library visitors.

I moved to Finland, and starting when my child was about three years old I took him to Oodi every weekend.

The soft-play area was heaven for him, and he liked flicking through the donald-duck comic books.

Even now, when he's nine, I go every month or two with him for an afternoon. He has no shortage of books at home, but he gets to run around, look at books, and play with other kids. He enjoys himself enormously.

I'm probably in the middle of the stat myself and know people from both sides. My first thought was also that a lot of parents and children visit libraries almost daily and pupils and students visit libraries on school breaks and after school alone or with friends.

On one hand, you have a lot of busy and tired adults and a lot of old people that might not use libraries (often), but you also have the massively active younger demographics. I don't know how that would balance out and how the stats were counted. Maybe they fit somehow.

This only works in a high-trust society.

I think society only works in a high trust society. Well, maybe something exists functionally in low trust society, but it sounds miserable.

your username is fitting.

There are also surveillance societies with social scores so when you break the sewing machine you lose points and cannot get to borrow it again

Ida Aukens prophecy has already come true. They own nothing and are happy about it...

You are being unfair to the spirit of the original quote.

Yes, the quote is naive in expecting a world where those who own share with those who rent without nefarious motives. But sharing, particularly in this context when profit is out of the equation, is a great idea. I don't have the money nor space for my own 3D printer, but thanks to my local library I own objectively more 3D printed stuff than I would without them.

Its a paper, much more than a quote

What?

I’d love to be able to borrow a sewing machine, tools, etc. I live in a small flat and I don’t need permanent ownership of those things. They spend 99.5% of the time sat taking up space. What good is that? For a lot of machines it’s not good to leave them idle, or sat in a shed collecting mould and rust.

It is exactly what the WeF meant too. The opposite world is one where we can own what we want at any point in time, kinda like in the past. They say that is unsustainabl... I just disagree-I think it would be great if each generation would be better of than the last.. You are happy in your tiny flat not owning that much... I'm not disputing that. I just say that is what the wef predicted would happen. That is all. I'm glad you at happy like that... If you continue reading Idas Aukens prophecy, she goes on to talk about a society outside of the happy own-nothing-living where people live a different life... I just hope there will be room for both.

I think it makes a world of a difference who owns the stuff people only borrow. This article is about public libraries, socially funded through a democratic will to do so, to ensure the broadest and most affordable access to anyone, particularly those who couldn't otherwise afford to buy or rent these things. Very similar to informal pools of people lending each other stuff to save money.

The quote you're referring to, or at least that interpretation of it, as I understand it, is about for-profit entities restricting ownership by only renting out their products, maximizing the amount of money they can extract.

Those seem like two almost polar opposites. I'd bet the "owning class" is not very happy about the existence of libraries. (See, for example, Hachette, Wiley, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House & Co.'s legal efforts to get rid of them.)

The idea I was referring to is that of the great reset.

I don't disagree that it is great that poor people can borrow things.

But it scares me that people see it as an ideal.

It is a symptom of acceptance of a poorer quality of life. It is fine that individuals pursue minimalism and so on but our next generation should not be forced to grow up in that mentality.

cries in Great Britain

Lucky to even find an open library with books now.

South SF library has sewing machines

SFPL used to have tools until it got ruined.

Berkeley had a very cool tool lending library

"Had"?

Has. I can confirm.

For me it is just media. No things.

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.

Finnish libraries still have books (and other media) and a very efficient system of moving them around the country to anywhere people want to borrow them.

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.

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

Too bad the title got censored.

cool

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

I know this is supposed to be sarcastic, but This is actually a great framing for why we should love our libraries.

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.

Hilarious. Tool libraries exist and are quite successful here in capitalist US of A (and, apparently, in capitalist Finland. You didn't think they were communists or something, did you?)

It may lead to less demand for things like sewing machines which in turn may lead to less competition to less productivity, the producers innovating less, less GDP less happy people... Where have we seen this type of thinking before... In socialist States... I agree... But how do we create supply and demand? Letting China produce cheaply and open our boarders for a couple of decades, maybe... Maybe we are in a doom loop where we need a poorer generation or two before people turn around... It is interesting times. The most interesting is how people view the same things completely opposite. Some are super happy about the trend others super frustrated... Imho it is a part of the great reset and the big debt cycle. Maybe an attempt to soften the blow?!

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.

Agree, and I also don’t see why government should be involved in book rental. Why books and not say, car rental? What about jetski rental?

(If the argument is that subsidizing books helps the poor, I’m all for it, a nonprofit or a charity would be a much better framework)

This is the public sector M.O, instead of admitting something is obsolete they grab more scope and funding.

My local post office now sells iPhones. And why shouldn’t they? Nobody stopped them when they just sold SIM cards, and then cases and chargers. It’s like a law of nature.

Because being able to read book is good for society.

> a nonprofit or a charity would be a much better framework

Why?

I do agree that libraries (in the UK at least) have mostly failed to see the writing on the wall and diversify. I used to live near a library that was on the edge of a super popular park. They had a "give us improvement suggestions" thing and I spoke to them about taking advantage of the park - it would have been a prime spot to open a cafe attached to the library. They actually couldn't comprehend that idea. Like, that's not what libraries are.

At least in EU, private book/media rental is not legal without special licensing from copyright holders, while public libraries have exception for this.

In the US, there's not much demand for media rental any longer (RIP Blockbuster)--which has been largely replaced by licenced media streaming--but there are certainly private libraries of various types.

Libraries are so unfair to Mr. Bezos. They should obviously be demolished. But I'm concerned that their demolition would be an expansion of government "doing things". It would be best if interested parties simply be allowed to demolish them at will without interference from the state.

Speaking as a co-founder of a large community hackerspace, we don't have the volunteer bandwidth to manage the additional overhead of tool lending. Please, please, please let the libraries offer more alternatives. It's exactly their mission.

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.

Libraries might not be a business but they still have to compete for funding. If those funding them think they are no longer relevant, the alternative is to slowly lose funding and die. People don't care about books anymore, so if the library must dangle an enticement to keep people engaged enough to retain the instilled indeed that knowledge should be freely available instead of siloed (and the other benefits of libraries), so be it.

Adapt or die is the way of life.

Andrew Carnegie funded 2,500+ public libraries and many were built with lecture halls, auditoriums, and meeting rooms on purpose. The public library was a civic institution from day one.

Libraries have been renting non-books for a long time. Different communities have different needs. It's not a big deal. Some libraries in the Los Angeles area lend sewing machines, bike tools, and other useful stuff. The main branch library has 3d printers and other tech stuff ordinary folks can't afford. And of course, they have various workshops on numerous topics for adults and children.

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.

The Los Angles Public Library lends an amazing variety of tools -- https://lacountylibrary.org/tools/

- glue gun

- Crikut cutter

- pots and pans

- tape measure

- bike repair kit

- bolt cutters

- musical instruments <3

It’s easier to take time to pick up a book and learn something if your life is going smoothly in other areas. If all your clothes need mending it can make a barrier of embarrassment to go to a public place like a library. With the hollowing out of the middle class, people live in smaller housing and move more, lose their inter generational resources. If there’s a trusted social institution that is knowen for borrow and lending, and people have a need to borrow tools for their everyday life it seems not such a deviation from the purpose of libraries

I'd argue the opposite: because they are focusing on knowledge acquisition they are trying to separate the medium (the books) from the objective.

40 years ago books were the only way to obtain knowledge. Nowadays even those who come for the books do so with a laptop for taking notes. If I were a librarian, it would be naive of me not to ask the question "if all the books are online, then why are we here?"

Anecdotally, on the topic of "knowledge acquisition", I used to run a drawing group. Finding a place to do so was a major problem because nobody wanted to invite strangers home and not everybody could afford the ~$20 it would take to stay at a cafe for long. A library with a meeting room would have been our dream solution and perhaps would have kept the group from dissolving.

As others have said, reference is something we can do easily on the internet. But I would add that sitting down and studying a text with others is something best done in person. It’s a nice social experience and better achieves the goal (also gets lazy nerds like me out of the house).

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