How about some good news for a change? News that has nothing to do with Donald Whatzizname. News you might even use.

It’s about “The Library of Things,” a real library, but different. Just as our public libraries share a wealth of publications – this one in Brunswick, Maine, also maintains a wealth of tools, devices, equipment, and other “things” for people to check-out, use, and return.

Hazel Onsrud, a creative, can-do spirit on the staff of Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library, initiated this commonwealth of some 1,500 products that locals can borrow for free. The New York Times reports that residents are flocking to this pragmatic, beneficial resource for the common good. And why wouldn’t they? After all, not everyone can afford a $350 KitchenAid mixer of their own, and a roto-tiller you might use once a year could be shared by many. Also, a bullhorn, a grain mill, a ukulele, an embossing machine – seriously, we should borrow, rather than thinking each of us must buy and store these things… or do without.

This concept reduces each family’s expenses, waste, and accumulation of “stuff,” while advancing cooperation and community. And the public library infrastructure is already in place to make it available.

This idea is not new, nor is it unique to Brunswick. In fact, America’s progressive populist movement of the 1870s built an entire economic alternative to corporate monopoly around this very concept. And today, some 2,000 “libraries-of-things” are already functioning worldwide, giving ordinary people a grassroots way to avoid profiteering, corporate consumerism.

Hazel Onsrud has issued a challenge to us: “If a few of us can do this in Maine,” she says “anyone can.” And you and I are the anyones to do it.

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