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.

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!

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.

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)

Edit: getting asterikses * right

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Adapt or die is the way of life.

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 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.

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.

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.