Maker Spaces And Tool Libraries As Shared Resource Models

Some baseline data on what we're actually doing:

The average power drill in an American home is used for a total of about 13 minutes over its entire life, according to oft-cited figures from product-as-a-service literature. The figure is approximate but the order of magnitude is right — most household power tools live their entire existence in storage.

A circular saw retails for $80 to $300. There are roughly 80 million single-family homes in the U.S. If half of them own a circular saw, that's 40 million units, mostly idle. The aggregate manufacturing footprint of those tools — the steel, the copper for the motor, the plastic, the lithium for the cordless models, the shipping from Asia, the packaging — is enormous. And almost none of that capacity is being used at any given moment.

This is true across the entire category of household tools and equipment. Pressure washers, lawn aerators, tile saws, sewing machines, post-hole diggers, chainsaws, ladders. The duty cycle is essentially zero. We have built a parallel industrial economy whose primary purpose is to occupy garage shelves.

It is one of the clearest examples of how individualist consumer culture leaves us, materially, worse off. We pay more, we store more, we throw out more, and we still end up with worse access to tools than our grandparents had through neighborhood networks of borrowing and lending.

A tool library is a circulating collection of tools, lent on the same model as a public library lends books. The defining features:

- Free or low-cost membership. Many are funded through municipal libraries and free to residents. Others charge $30–$100 per year. - Hand and power tools suitable for home use — drills, saws, sanders, plumbing tools, gardening tools, automotive tools, sometimes specialty equipment like flooring nailers and tile saws. - Loan period of a few days to a few weeks. - Volunteer-staffed in most cases, sometimes with one or two paid coordinators. - Skill sharing on-site. Most tool libraries also host classes — basic tool use, home repair, bike repair, sewing.

The Berkeley Tool Lending Library is the U.S. archetype. Founded 1979 as part of a Community Development Block Grant. Houses over 3,500 tools. Operates inside a branch of the Berkeley Public Library. Free to anyone who lives or works in Berkeley. Has been continuously open for over 45 years and has been replicated as a model worldwide.

Other long-running examples: - Northeast Portland Tool Library (founded 2004), volunteer-run, over 4,000 tools, completely free to residents. - Chicago Tool Library (founded 2019), pay-what-you-can membership, over 5,000 tools. - Edinburgh Tool Library in Scotland, founded 2015, now with multiple branches and a related youth bike repair program. - Toronto Tool Library, which expanded from a single tool library into a network with attached maker spaces. - Sacramento Library of Things, which goes beyond tools to include musical instruments, kitchen equipment, and outdoor gear.

The expansion into "library of things" is the next chapter. Why limit it to tools? Sewing machines, telescopes, pasta makers, video projectors, board games, camping equipment, musical instruments — all candidates. The Sacramento Public Library lends GoPro cameras and ukuleles. The Hillsboro Public Library in Oregon lends seeds, sourdough starter, and pickleball paddles.

A maker space is a step up in commitment and capacity. The defining features:

- Membership-based, typically $50–$200 per month, with day passes and class fees as alternatives. - Permanent dedicated facility — often a warehouse, sometimes a former factory. - Heavy equipment beyond what could be loaned out: CNC routers, laser cutters, milling machines, welders, kilns, large-format 3D printers, full woodworking shops, electronics labs, screen printing setups. - Required safety training before access to any major piece of equipment. - A community of practice. People hang out. People help each other. People form project teams.

The defining U.S. case studies:

TechShop opened in Menlo Park in 2006 and grew to ten locations across the country before declaring bankruptcy in 2017. Its failure mode is instructive — it tried to scale on a venture-backed expansion model, took on too much real estate, and couldn't generate enough membership revenue to cover the burn. The model itself worked. The capital structure didn't. Many of the local TechShops were reopened within months by member groups under new names and structures, and most are still operating.

Artisan's Asylum in Somerville, Massachusetts, was founded in 2010 and is now one of the largest community maker spaces in the U.S., with over 40,000 square feet of shop space, hundreds of members, and a long-running model of nonprofit governance. Their members include sculptors, robotics teams, small manufacturers, and hobbyists.

MIT Fab Lab Network. Started by Neil Gershenfeld at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms in 2002. The Fab Lab is a standardized package of digital fabrication equipment — laser cutter, CNC mill, vinyl cutter, 3D printer, electronics bench — that can be set up in any community. There are now over 2,500 Fab Labs in 125 countries. Many are inside universities. Many others are in libraries, community centers, and rural development programs. The Fab Foundation maintains the standard.

Pumping Station: One in Chicago, NextFab in Philadelphia, Columbus Idea Foundry in Ohio, HeatSync Labs in Mesa, Crash Space in LA, Noisebridge in San Francisco — every major U.S. city now has at least one significant maker space, and most have several with different specialties (woodworking, metals, electronics, biotech, fashion).

The international scene is even bigger. The hackerspace movement out of Germany — c-base in Berlin, the Chaos Computer Club's network of spaces — predates the U.S. maker space wave and has a more political character. Hackerspaces in Europe tend to emphasize digital sovereignty, repair culture, and explicit anti-consumerist politics in a way American maker spaces often soften.

The intellectual foundation for understanding tool libraries and maker spaces is the work of Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her empirical demonstration that the standard "tragedy of the commons" model — popularized by Garrett Hardin in 1968 — is wrong about how communities actually manage shared resources.

Hardin's argument was that any shared resource will be over-exploited because each user has incentive to take more than their share. The conclusion was that commons must be either privatized or government-controlled.

Ostrom's life work, documented across decades of fieldwork on irrigation systems, fisheries, forests, and grazing lands, was to show that communities all over the world have managed common resources successfully and sustainably for centuries — when they're allowed to develop their own governance rules. Ostrom's eight design principles for successful commons:

1. Clear boundaries — who can use the resource, who can't. 2. Local rules that fit local conditions. 3. Collective decision-making by users. 4. Monitoring of use, by users themselves. 5. Graduated sanctions for violations. 6. Conflict resolution mechanisms that are accessible and cheap. 7. Recognition by higher authorities of the right to self-organize. 8. Nested layers of governance for larger systems.

A well-run tool library or maker space is an Ostrom commons in miniature. There are clear membership rules. Local governance — usually a board of members. Collective decisions about which equipment to buy, which classes to offer, which behavior to tolerate. Peer monitoring (everyone notices when somebody leaves the table saw a mess). Graduated sanctions (warning, suspension, expulsion). Cheap conflict resolution (the board talks it out). Legal recognition (nonprofit status). And nested governance when the space is part of a larger network like the Fab Lab Foundation.

The point isn't that tool libraries are some kind of utopia. They have politics, drama, and burnout like every other human institution. The point is that the standard story — "the only way to avoid tragedy is to privatize everything" — is empirically false. People can govern shared resources together. They have done it for thousands of years. They are doing it right now, in the building down the street with the laser cutter in it.

The research literature on maker spaces and tool libraries has grown substantially over the last decade. Some of the consistent findings:

Cross-generational learning. Maker spaces are one of the few remaining venues where retirees, working adults, and young people share equipment and skills directly. Studies of maker space populations consistently find an age range from teens through 70s, and consistent patterns of older members teaching younger members. This is in stark contrast to most adult social environments, which sort tightly by age.

Skill transmission outside formal education. A growing body of work on informal learning shows that maker spaces are an effective vehicle for transmitting practical skills (welding, electronics, woodworking, fabrication) to people who would never enroll in a traditional vocational program. The barrier to entry is lower. The teaching is peer-to-peer. The credential — a finished project — is intrinsic.

Reduced consumption and increased repair behavior. Members of tool libraries and maker spaces report fixing things they would otherwise have thrown out, and not buying tools and equipment they would otherwise have bought. This is one of the cleanest behavior-change interventions documented in the sustainability literature — give people access to repair tools and they will repair more things.

Mental health and connection. Members consistently report that the social aspect of maker spaces is as important as the equipment. The European hackerspace literature in particular has focused on the role these spaces play in providing structured social environments for adults — especially men, who in mainstream culture have very few non-bar, non-sports venues for casual socializing around a shared activity.

Local economic development. Maker spaces incubate small manufacturers and craft businesses. The Etsy economy, the hardware startup scene, the small-batch food and design economy — all draw heavily on maker space infrastructure. Cities that invest in maker space infrastructure see measurable returns in small business formation.

The American labor movement is starting to recognize tool libraries and maker spaces as labor infrastructure. A few angles:

Apprenticeship pipeline. Skilled trades are facing a generational crisis as boomers retire and the next generation has had little exposure to tools. Maker spaces are doing some of the early-stage exposure work that high school shop class used to do before it was cut. The IBEW, the carpenters' unions, and others are increasingly partnering with maker spaces and tool libraries to recruit.

Lifelong learning for working tradespeople. New techniques, new materials, new equipment — maker spaces are venues for continuing education that aren't tied to one employer.

Worker cooperatives and small contractors. A lot of cooperative trades businesses use shared maker space infrastructure to keep startup costs down.

The political case is stronger than the policy case so far. There's no national infrastructure program for community workshops — yet. But the alignment between labor, environmentalists, urbanists, and the maker movement is real and growing.

This is where the conversation goes if you take it seriously: the way a society organizes its tools is a statement about what kind of society it is.

Atomized private ownership of every tool implies — and produces — atomized private people. Each in their own garage, each in their own house, each watching their own screen, each doing it alone. The tool industry does not exist to make sure you can do the project. It exists to sell you a tool. The two goals are different and sometimes opposite.

Shared tool infrastructure produces a different kind of person. Someone who knows their neighbors. Someone who teaches and is taught. Someone who repairs instead of replaces. Someone who can imagine working together with people they didn't pick.

This is the unglamorous, ground-floor work of rebuilding civic life. It is what Robert Putnam was pointing at in Bowling Alone when he documented the decay of the institutions that used to put Americans in regular contact with each other across class and age lines. It is what Wendell Berry has been writing about for fifty years when he talks about the difference between an economy of community and an economy of extraction.

The premise of this entire book is that human beings are capable of cooperating at scale — that if everyone said yes, the worst problems we face would yield. The scale of "world hunger ends, world peace achieved" sounds impossibly distant from a converted garage with a circular saw in it. But look at the structure. A tool library is a small, working, replicable proof that people can share resources, govern themselves, and take care of each other without it falling apart.

Build enough of those proofs and the unimaginable becomes obvious.

The five things you need:

1. A space. It can start very small. A 200-square-foot storage room in an existing nonprofit. A corner of the public library. A donated garage. The space grows with the collection.

2. A starter inventory. Tool drives are how almost every tool library begins. Put out a call. People bring tools out of their garages. Sort by function, not by donor. Aim for 100–300 tools to open.

3. A checkout system. Software like myTurn (specifically built for libraries of things) handles membership, reservations, late fees. A paper binder works for the first six months.

4. A legal entity. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, or a fiscal sponsorship through an existing nonprofit. This gets you insurance, donation receipts, and protection for volunteers.

5. A core volunteer team. Usually three to five people who will commit several hours a week for at least a year. Without this, you don't have a tool library, you have an idea.

Operating budget: Most all-volunteer tool libraries run on $5,000–$25,000 a year — rent, insurance, a small operating fund. This is achievable through pledge drives, small grants, and local business sponsorship.

Significantly bigger. The threshold:

A larger space, usually 5,000+ square feet, with industrial power (240V), ventilation for welding and woodworking, dust collection, and ceiling height for big equipment.

Significant capital for equipment. Even a modest woodworking and electronics setup runs $50,000–$100,000. A serious facility with metal shop, laser cutter, CNC, and 3D printing is $250,000+.

Membership of at least 100 people at $50–$150/month to sustain the operating budget at scale.

Paid staff, usually starting with one or two coordinators, for safety, maintenance, training, and member services.

A governance structure that survives founder transition. Many maker spaces have died because the founders burned out and there was no one to take over.

The Fab Foundation provides startup support and a standardized equipment list for Fab Labs. Existing maker spaces are usually generous with advice — most welcome visits and questions from people trying to start their own.

For individuals. Inventory your own tools. List the ones you've used in the last year. List the ones you haven't used in two years. Look at the second list — that's the over-purchase. Donate them to a tool library if there is one nearby, or sell them and use the money to join a maker space.

For neighbors. Start informal sharing on your block before you start a library. Group text. "Anybody have a tile saw?" "I have a pressure washer if anyone needs it." Seed the social infrastructure first.

For organizers. If your town has no tool library, find three other people who would commit to running one. Visit a tool library in another city. Talk to the founders. Then start.

For institutions. Public libraries can host tool collections at very low marginal cost — they already have circulation systems, staff, and a building. Faith communities have basements. Schools have shop classrooms that sit unused after 3pm. Look at what your institution already has and what it could share.

For makers. Join your nearest maker space. Take the safety classes. Make something. Then teach a class. Members who teach are the ones who keep maker spaces alive.

- Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990). The foundational text. - Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science (1968). The argument Ostrom dismantled. - Cory Doctorow, Makers (novel, 2009), and ongoing essays on the politics of making. - Mark Hatch, The Maker Movement Manifesto (2013). Founder of TechShop's account. - Neil Gershenfeld, Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop (2005). Origin of the Fab Lab concept. - Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (2000). The civic infrastructure context. - Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (1990). The deeper philosophical case for community-scale economies. - The Tool Library at toollibrary.org for resource directory. - myTurn at myturn.com for circulation software built for libraries of things. - Fab Foundation at fabfoundation.org.

The thing about a tool library or a maker space that you don't get from reading about it: walking in for the first time changes what you think is possible. You see the rows of saws and welders and 3D printers. You see the people using them. You see somebody your age who didn't know how to do this six months ago and can do it now.

The wall between "people who can build things" and "people who can't" turns out to be a thinner wall than you were told. It's mostly a wall of access and a wall of knowing somebody who'll show you. Tool libraries and maker spaces are in the business of dissolving that wall.

Find your nearest one. Walk in. Or — if there isn't one — start one.