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This is not what the article discusses but the title made me think it would: why do we only have libraries for books? Why haven't we made libraries for other us

This is not what the article discusses but the title made me think it would: why do we only have libraries for books? Why haven't we made libraries for other useful resources? It makes sense from a perspective of evening the playing field, as libraries are supposed to, but also from a sustainability perspective too. There are so many things that people will buy and only use once or twice a year, if even that often. We could save ourselves a lot of productive effort and resources by putting a few versions of these things in a library for hundreds of people to make use of. Things like say power tools, or any fairly specialised tool in general. I think you can take this idea really far, like even having clothes libraries - you could have all new clothes all the time and someone else could have new clothes when you're tired of the ones you've been wearing.

trumped 9y ago
Lyft/Uber are like libraries for cars...
andrewl 9y ago
Stores that rent formal wear for weddings and similar events are clothing libraries of a sort, although you pay the "library" directly instead of through your taxes.
tokai 9y ago
I have been to libraries that have things like toys, hardware tools, and umbrellas that the public can lend. Got a plug-in power meter for 14 days, to estimate the power cost of my aquarium. They also provide a service where you can "lend" a person to chat with. I once worked at an university library (which is also open to the public), where we had a collection of historical artefacts of graphical design. Most of the documents are things like cigarette packages, typefaces, shopping bags, etc. So in my experience libraries are pretty open to a broad range of resources, even non-informational ones. The concept of a document, is in the library science literature, often understood as very inclusive.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Briet#Impact_on_information_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Briet#Impact_on_inform...
briandear 9y ago
There are already places that rent tools. And some of us buy power tools because we want to have it easily available for use. A well cared for, high quality tool will last a lifetime, so just because I might not use it every day doesn’t mean that I am not going to enjoy years of use. As far as tools that are actually rarely used (a trench digger for example,) that what rental shops are for. Why should government get into the rental business? There are already those types of businesses in place and they’re great: people that care about renting power tools can pay to rent power tools without requiring literally the entirety of society to support their ability to rent power tools. As far as clothes — there are already resale shops that are really efficient at this. If you want to further improve sustainability, then provide tax cuts for those types of businesses to provide them incentives to keep operating and to be able to provide lower prices. The point is that everything you describe already exists in the private sector.

trumped 9y ago

Lyft/Uber are like libraries for cars...

andrewl 9y ago

Stores that rent formal wear for weddings and similar events are clothing libraries of a sort, although you pay the "library" directly instead of through your taxes.

tokai 9y ago

I have been to libraries that have things like toys, hardware tools, and umbrellas that the public can lend. Got a plug-in power meter for 14 days, to estimate the power cost of my aquarium. They also provide a service where you can "lend" a person to chat with. I once worked at an university library (which is also open to the public), where we had a collection of historical artefacts of graphical design. Most of the documents are things like cigarette packages, typefaces, shopping bags, etc. So in my experience libraries are pretty open to a broad range of resources, even non-informational ones. The concept of a document, is in the library science literature, often understood as very inclusive.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Briet#Impact_on_information_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Briet#Impact_on_inform...

briandear 9y ago

There are already places that rent tools. And some of us buy power tools because we want to have it easily available for use. A well cared for, high quality tool will last a lifetime, so just because I might not use it every day doesn’t mean that I am not going to enjoy years of use. As far as tools that are actually rarely used (a trench digger for example,) that what rental shops are for. Why should government get into the rental business? There are already those types of businesses in place and they’re great: people that care about renting power tools can pay to rent power tools without requiring literally the entirety of society to support their ability to rent power tools. As far as clothes — there are already resale shops that are really efficient at this. If you want to further improve sustainability, then provide tax cuts for those types of businesses to provide them incentives to keep operating and to be able to provide lower prices. The point is that everything you describe already exists in the private sector.