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!!!

This is the Charleston County library system.

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 ..

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

some of the libraries I've seen have morphed more into like makerspaces and/or meeting spaces rather than just places to get books

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.

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.

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.

Maybe someday.

Also it's an incredible women magnet :)

SFPL used to have tools until it got ruined.

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.

These are just echoes of Soviet Era "Cultural Palaces" aka "Folkets Hus" in Socialists-run Sweden. For the "Culture" no one wants to pay their own money for.

I visited it only once, using the Toilet. Kinda Scary. It was gender-free, consisting of large locked cubicles, which were mostly occupied as kiosks for drugs and sexual services. Romanian Romas also had permanent presence there. But sadly this gender-free dream was destroyed by the order of the Nazi Polizei.

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.