There are many ways to share

A Library of Things may or may not be a great fit for your local library, but every community can share things! Here at CML our Library of Things (LOT) was made possible by and continues to evolve due to a huge team effort: leadership that is willing to try out innovative ideas, community members that support it, staff that make the lending happen and so much more. Here are some resources for those of you interested in learning more about sharing models that may work for your communities. Please join us! Libraries are free and open to all, and we value you! Together our communities can help each other.

Looking to start a library of things?

Anyone is welcome to join our LOT Mutual Aid Group. This is most useful for creating a LOT in or with traditional (public, academic, specialty and school) libraries. Join us: https://sites.google.com/view/lotmutualaid/home  

Remember, this CML LOT started in an itty bitty network closet on a cart. Anyone can share in a way that fits their communities needs and there are MANY diverse and successful models to learn from. Join the email group to get access to all the free templates and FAQs. There is a YouTube channel with interviews of LOTs around the world every month. All are welcome. We’re here to help!

There are also great examples of Libraries of Things outside the traditional library system. Sharable has a great toolkit for creating a nonprofit library of things: https://www.shareable.net/library-of-things-toolkit/ Hazel spoke about working with public libraries. You can watch that portion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p02MCcrD1s0

Many other types of lending libraries also have resources to help you get started. Check out your local tool library https://www.toollibraryalliance.org/, seed library https://www.seedlibrarynetwork.org/, gear library https://www.mainegearshare.org/maine-gear-library-network, toy library or repair team https://www.repaircafenc.org/repair-economy-open-zoom. Here at CML we work with or want to work with them all! Remember, libraries do a lot. You may find that in your community it could be better for a public library to lend a pass to these sharing libraries that may be located and run by a different community organizations. Every region’s sharing ecosystem can look different.

Interested in what to do with with a library of things?

We share many of our sustainability, resiliency and community-sufficiency programs featuring our Library of Things tools with the Sustainable Libraries Initiative and MECollab.

Rachel and Hazel also gave a PLA webinar on this topic: https://www.ala.org/pla/education/onlinelearning/webinars/ondemand/things

Lisa, Rachel and Hazel spoke a bit about LOTs and disaster response here: https://nhsl.libguides.com/NortheastSummitonClimateAdaptionResources

We also have a few tutorials at the bottom of our LOT page: https://curtislibrary.com/library–of–things/

Need help?

Reach out to get help (helpdesk@curtislibrary.com) if none of these are the right fit. We’re working on other ways to help, and we want to hear from you. Together, we’re all going to level each other up!