LIBRARY OF THINGS – Borrowing Beyond Books

Obtain a Curtis Memorial Library card to borrow from our Library of Things. This collection can be browsed by category below or seen throughout our Nonfiction shelves. Oversize items can be fetched by staff and you may reserve Things for checkout just as you do a book. A listing of all kits is available in Minerva. By checking out a Thing you agree to the Borrowing and Use Guidelines.

**Some items in our Library of Things are referred to as “Specialty Items”. Speciality items can only be checked out by our 18+ patrons due to legal and/or safety concerns.  For a listing of these Specialty Items, see here.

Let us know what else we should lend, share how you want to use an item, learn how to share your consumables and repair your items, or browse more of our community’s ideas at our registry. If an item does not circulate in a year, we give it to another library. Learn where else you can borrow items, why we have a Library of Things, how we support the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how you can do so too, by exploring our videos at the bottom of the page. We want to help. Get in touch: helpdesk@curtislibrary.com

Thank you to our many generous community members, including the following organizations:

Why lend Things?

Libraries of Things, Tool Libraries, Gear Sharing & Rental Spaces, and other community sharing tools exist both locally and all over the world. Think about your hierarchy of ownership and consider sharing beyond at our library with distributed models including: a timebank such as the Hour Exchange, neighborhood resource sharing, and more. Neighborhood resource sharing can be as easy as a bulletin board or spreadsheet. This may be a good option for items our library has (an electric woodchipper) or items you wish we had (an electric lawnmower or snow blower) that can be used by many people but do need to be stored. Here is a sample spreadsheet you can adapt. We also have a number of books such as the NOLO publication, The Sharing Solution, which can provide you with legal agreement forms for sharing of housing, good, food, care, transportation or work. Cooperative sharing can also be supported through participatory processes and structures. You may want to check out the Universal Methods of Design, Inclusive Conversations, the Empowerment Manual, a Feild guide to Human-Centered Design, and Design as Democracy, or many others for inspiration when designing your sharing solution. You can always ask our help desk for other recommendations.

We participate in the LOT Mutual Aid Group, Sustainable Libraries Initiative and MECollab (shared library programming) to improve our offerings and share our lessons learned. Join us!

Learn how we support repair and reuse with our consumable swaps, classes and repair cafes on our repair page.

Learn more about the importance of sharing, how to create a Library of Things in your community, and more with these videos: Repair Economy Summit 2024, PLA Webinar 2024, Sharable Library of Things Colab, 2023 Library of Things Tour, Libraries & Sustainability – Why Partner with Us, Lending a 3D Printed Cello, Library of Things FAQs, 2022 Maine State Library Conference – How to Create and Run a Library of Things: A Case Study from a Maine Public Library, 2022 Maine Climate Discussion, Things for English Literacy, Library Program Ideas to Support the Sustainable Development Goals, Lending Beyond Books at the 2021 Maine State Library Conference, Plant Library Videos, and the 2019 Minerva Innovation Award – Transportation and more.