The history of lending non-book objects in public institutions is older than the modern Library of Things movement suggests. As early as 1894, library patrons in St. Louis, Missouri, could borrow tennis rackets and board games, and framed paintings were available for checkout in Newark, New Jersey, as early as 1904 (Ewing & Sapon-White, 2016). In Germany, a parallel tradition developed through the Ludotheken—toy-lending institutions that have been known since the 1970s—and through the Artotheken, which allowed patrons to borrow works of art (Stengel & Ameli, 2017). These institutions established in German cultural life the idea that publicly accessible lending need not be confined to books, laying a conceptual foundation on which the later tool and object-lending movement would build.
If you’re planning some home improvements, we’ve got you covered with a solid lineup of power tools, including an electric drill, circular saw, and jigsaw. For those outdoor tasks, you can borrow our garden tools, shovels, or a broom to keep things tidy, and we have an extension cord or even a power station if you need to take your electricity on the go. Of course, since we are part of this movement, we always have a pump ready for your flat tires. If you need to get across town or haul a few bags of groceries, you can even borrow one of our sturdy city bikes, which come equipped with an integrated basket for easy transport.
We also love a good reason to get outside and play. You’re welcome to borrow our basketball or ping pong set for some friendly competition, or grab our mobile speaker and some chairs to set up a comfortable spot in the sun. If you’re leaning toward a cozy night in, we have plenty of books to get lost in, a projector for a backyard movie night, and even Wi-Fi if you need a reliable connection.
We are constantly adding more items to our collection as we find new ways to be helpful, so keep an eye out for new arrivals! To keep everything organized and easy to find, we use Pumpipumpe to manage our inventory. Feel free to check there to see what’s currently available and reach out if you need to borrow something. We look forward to seeing you around the neighborhood!
Origins in the United States
The earliest documented tool lending library in the United States dates to 1943, when the Grosse Pointe Public Library in Michigan created its first tool lending collection. Its initial inventory of approximately 25 tools was donated by the Boys’ Work Committee of the local Rotary Club, who contributed the items to “encourage manual dexterity in the younger generation” (Brennan, 2021). The Rotary Club adopted responsibility for maintaining and repairing the catalog, and the Grosse Pointe Library remained the only known tool library in the country until the mid-1970s (Brennan, 2021). The second known tool lending library in the United States was formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1976, established by the local city government to provide free tools to homeowners and renters (Brennan, 2021).
Despite these genuine antecedents, much of the popular literature long credited the Berkeley Tool Lending Library (BTLL) in California as the founding institution of the movement. The BTLL was formed as an extension of the community’s public library in 1979, originally housed in a portable trailer, staffed by a single employee, and stocked with 500 tools for lending (Brennan, 2021). Brennan (2021) notes that one author praised the BTLL for its supposed “outsized impact on national and international culture,” though more recent archival research has complicated this narrative by revealing the earlier Grosse Pointe precedent. There were at least a couple of dozen tool libraries operating by the late 1970s, but many closed due to the difficulty of managing them manually, the rise of consumer culture, and the availability of cheap imported products (Gunnels & Green, 2018).
The German Movement: Leihläden and Bibliotheken der Dinge
The pivotal founding moment in Germany came in Berlin with the establishment of Leila (short for Leihladen, or “lending shop”), founded in 2010 on Kastanienallee in the Prenzlauer Berg district (Leila Berlin, n.d.). Nikolai Wolfert formalized the project by 2012, putting the idea of the sharing economy into concrete practice: members bring an item, borrow something they need, and return it clean and intact, with each object tagged with a loan number—functioning essentially like a library (Wolfert, 2012, as cited in Ameli, 2020). Leila’s guiding principles are “use instead of own and hoard,” “reuse instead of discard,” and “share instead of social division,” and it was awarded the Werkstatt N sustainability label by the German Council for Sustainable Development in 2011, 2012, and 2013 (Leila Berlin, n.d.).
Scholars Oliver Stengel and Najine Ameli have argued that the transformation of classical libraries into Bibliotheken der Dinge—where written materials continue to be lent alongside everyday objects—“represents the greatest revolution in the millennia-long history of libraries” (Stengel & Ameli, 2017). From its beginning with Leila, the movement spread to fifteen locations across eight European countries (Ameli, 2020). German cities including Leipzig and Heidelberg developed their own iterations, and public libraries also adopted the model.
Revival and Global Expansion
By the mid-2000s, only a few of the original American tool libraries remained in operation. Two developments converged around 2008–2009 to spark a revival: the global financial crisis put millions of people out of work, and the declining cost of cloud-based software made administering such libraries more feasible (Gunnels & Green, 2018). Institutions such as the Sacramento Library of Things in California and the Chicago Tool Library in Illinois opened during this period as part of the broader “tool-lending movement” (Brennan, 2021). Between 2013 and 2015, the number of tool lending libraries in the United States grew from approximately 40 to more than 60 (Brennan, 2021).
The Library of Things: Broadening the Concept
The concept of the Library of Things eventually expanded far beyond hand tools to encompass kitchen appliances, gardening equipment and seeds, electronics, toys and games, art, science kits, craft supplies, musical instruments, and recreational equipment (Ewing & Sapon-White, 2016). The term “Library of Things” was popularized in the United Kingdom by a grassroots experiment started in London in 2014, itself inspired by the Toronto Tool Library; in the United States, a librarian in Sacramento arrived at a similar name and concept independently in 2013 (Ewing & Sapon-White, 2016). Najine Ameli (2020) argues that sharing through such libraries can reduce society’s energy and resource consumption without threatening material prosperity, and that Libraries of Things demonstrate how the gap between people’s stated willingness to share and their actual behaviour might be bridged. Research on the German context has found that the primary motivations for participation are cost savings, convenience, and social interaction (Ameli, 2020).
Taken together, the parallel trajectories of the American and German movements reveal a shared logic: that the traditional library model—free, communal access to resources—can and should extend to the material world. Whether understood as a sustainability intervention, a response to economic precarity, or simply a pragmatic community service, the Library of Things has emerged as one of the most significant institutional innovations in public librarianship of the past half-century.
Our inventory at pumpipumpe.ch →
References
Ameli, N. (2020). Die neue Share Economy: Bibliotheken der Dinge. Gemeinschaftliche Nutzungen für eine nachhaltige Stadtentwicklung. transcript Verlag.
Ameli, N. (2017). Libraries of Things as a new form of sharing: Pushing the sharing economy. The Design Journal, 20(sup1), 3294–3304.
Brennan, S. (2021). What’s mine is yours: The history of U.S. tool-lending libraries. School of Information Student Research Journal, 11(1). scholarworks.sjsu.edu/ischoolsrj/
Ewing, C. J., & Sapon-White, R. (Eds.). (2016). Audio recorders to zucchini seeds: Building a library of things. Libraries Unlimited.
Gunnels, C. B., & Green, S. E. (2018). Models of service in an age of acceleration. In J. M. Matarazzo & T. Pearlstein (Eds.), The Emerald handbook of modern information management (pp. 289–314). Emerald Publishing.
Leila Berlin. (n.d.). About Leila. Retrieved March 23, 2026, from leila-berlin.de
Stengel, O., & Ameli, N. (2017). Nutzen statt Besitzen in Leihläden lokal gestalten. In O. Stengel (Ed.), Digitalzeitalter – Digitalgesellschaft. Springer.
