Tool Libraries: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 14:09, 7 February 2010
Description
"The city's first nonprofit tool library, founded in 2004 in North Portland, is up to 2,300 members. Its second, in Northeast, has already drawn 800 members in 16 months and just expanded to a far bigger space. A third, in southeast Portland, is scheduled to open this spring, which would make Portland the only U.S. city with a trio.
The volunteer-run tool libraries offer low-cost home and garden lessons as well as tools. They help people save money and connect to their community.
And they promote recycling and reuse.
About 900 of the more than 1,100 tools at the Northeast Portland Tool Library were donated, helping give the library a hardware store's worth of inventory.
"The whole idea is everybody doesn't have to own a power drill or a post-hole digger," says Tom Thompson, a 58-year-old remodeling contractor who serves as volunteer toolmaster for the northeast tool library. "We wanted to be able to help out the environment and help out people, especially with the economy the way it is today."
The first modern tool libraries started in the 1970s, with libraries in Berkeley, Calif., and Columbus, Ohio, among the pioneers. Informal Web lists put the latest U.S. total at about 25, including five in California and one in Seattle." (http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/01/portland_ratchets_up_volunteer.html)