How to Start a Library of Things / Tool Library: A Practical Guide

I started a Library of Things by cold-calling one in Toronto and asking if I could sleep on their sofa.

The director told me later that people email him all the time saying they'll come visit and learn, and almost nobody actually shows up. I showed up. I crashed on his couch for a week and watched how they ran the place: how they handled volunteers, how repairs worked, how items came in and went out. That week taught me more than months of reading had.

So that's my first piece of advice, and it sets the tone for the rest: go and see one, talk to people who've done it, and don't try to invent everything from scratch. What follows is what I wish someone had told me before I opened the Reykjavík Tool Library in 2018. It's not the exhaustive manual. It's the honest version.

First, get clear on why, and who it's for

Before you think about shelves or software, answer one question: who is this for, and what problem does it solve for them?

I didn't start with a grand plan. I started because I'd moved to Iceland, couldn't afford a drill to put up a shelf, couldn't afford to rent one either, and realised that if I was stuck like that, plenty of other people were too. That was the whole thesis. It was specific and real.

Yours should be specific too. "A library of things for the city" is too vague to build. "A place where people in this neighbourhood can borrow the tools and equipment they only need once or twice a year" is something you can actually start. Get specific about your community and their real needs, because every decision after this, what you stock, where you put it, how you fund it, flows from that answer.

Build a small team early

Don't do it alone. I know the temptation, because I'm annoyingly persistent and used to trying to carry everything myself. It doesn't scale and it wears you out.

You want a handful of people with different strengths: someone practical who's good with tools and repair, someone organised who likes systems and admin, someone who's good with people and community. You don't need a big team. You need a few committed people so that the whole thing doesn't live or die on one person's energy.

Getting the stuff

Here's some good news: people have more things than they know what to do with, and many are delighted to give them a second life.

Our very first donation came from someone who called and said he had "a couple of boxes" for us. I said great, bring them over. The floor ended up completely covered in boxes: over 500 items in one go. Most of what filled our early shelves was donated or rescued, cleaned up, and repaired.

So put the word out locally before you spend a penny on inventory. Ask for donations. Check what's being thrown away. You'll be surprised. The one thing I'd add: don't accept everything. Broken beyond repair is not a gift, it's a disposal cost you've just taken on. Be a little choosy, keep what your community will actually borrow, and have a plan for the rest.

The space

You need somewhere to store and lend from, and this is often the hardest practical piece. During COVID we had to move our tool library five times, which taught me not to over-commit early.

Start smaller and cheaper than you think you need. A corner of an existing community space, a room in a library, a shared spot in a co-working space. Partnering with somewhere that already has foot traffic and a lease is far easier than signing your own. The item you lend is only half of it; the other half is a location people can actually get to.

The decision that makes or breaks you: volunteers or paid staff

This is the one I feel most strongly about, because I've watched it sink good projects.

Most tool libraries run on volunteers. It seems like the obvious choice when there's no money. But here's what happens: a library has opening hours, it makes demands on people's time, and sooner or later volunteers burn out, or get hurt in the process, or quietly start to feel taken advantage of. I've made this mistake myself, running things on unpaid people, and watched good people walk away exhausted.

From the start I did it differently and paid people. That's harder to fund, and I won't pretend otherwise. But it's the difference between something that lasts and something that limps.

If you can't pay people yet, at least design around this problem honestly from day one. Which brings me to the thing that changed everything for us.

Manual or automated

For the first stretch, we ran everything by hand: staff checking items in and out, keeping track on the systems we had. It worked, but it ate people's time, and people's time is the scarce resource.

During COVID I called two friends and asked a slightly mad question: could we automate this into a self-checkout system, so people could borrow and return without someone standing at a desk? We built it. That first prototype is still running in a library in Kópavogur today.

That's genuinely why the Circular Library Network exists now: to let a library automate the boring, time-eating parts, the inventory, the bookings, the payments, the 24/7 access, so the humans can spend their energy on the parts that actually matter, like repair cafés and workshops and community. You don't have to build that yourself the hard way like we did. That's the whole point of what we make.

A quick word on funding

Funding deserves its own post, and it's getting one. For now, the single most useful thing I learned: don't apply for the whole thing at once. Chop your project into small pieces and fund them one at a time. Grants aren't free money, they come with reports and deliverables, and smaller asks are easier to win and easier to deliver. And when you get a "no," go and ask for the feedback. I'll cover all of this properly soon.

Where to go next

If you want the exhaustive, every-detail checklist, the team at Shareable have built a genuinely excellent Library of Things Toolkit covering governance, legal structure, operations, membership, and everything else, in far more depth than one blog post can. Start there for the full roadmap.

And if you'd rather not run it all by hand the way we did for years, that's exactly what we build. Have a look at what a library of things is, our software and hardware, or the complete solution. Setting up a station should be about as hard as installing an IKEA kitchen, not building a company from scratch.

Start small. Get a few good people. Beg and rescue your first shelves. Pick the sustainable option even when it's harder. And go see one in person, someone will probably let you crash on their sofa.

Anna De Matos, Founder & CEO, Circular Library Network