Loud library
Facility enables members to borrow tools to get jobs done
Ian Froude isn’t just the founder and executive director of the St. John’s Tool Library, he’s also a client.
Case in point, earlier this week, he needed a scroll saw to work on a sign for his business, The Bite-sized Farm. Having a specialized tool was part of the impetus behind establishing the membership-based Tool Library.
“I didn’t have the tools to do it, so I borrowed from friends, my dad, my brother, but not everyone has people around them that have that,” says Froude. “It gives me and, hopefully, hundreds and hundreds of people in the city access to the basic tools they need, or specialized tools.” The concept is fairly simple. For an annual fee ranging from $50 to $150, members can borrow up to 10 tools from the library’s inventory of about 300 tools — everything from screwdrivers to circular saws and lawn mowers — for a period of between three and seven days, depending on membership level. When you’re finished with the job, simply return the borrowed items.
Members will have to sign a liability waiver that indemnifies the library and protects its interests and the tools. “These tools are donated, but we’re not a non-profit and it costs a lot to operate in maintenance, rent and tool purchases, so we can’t let our tools be beaten up,” explains Froude. “We have to care for them while balancing being an accessible place for as wide a group of people as possible.”
But he insists they’ll make every attempt to be flexible where damage to a tool is concerned.
“We want to be a place where people feel comfortable coming and not feel like, ‘This is my first time using this tool, I might break it, am I going to have to give you $200 to pay for it again?’ We don’t want people to feel like that coming in.
“If you were careful and broke something, we probably won’t make you pay for it, or we won’t penalize you in any way, but if you were negligent, then you’re going to have buy the tool for us again.”
About 80 per cent of the tools in the library have been donated, but Froude says they’re always looking for more, especially with the seasons about to change and more people setting about small jobs around the house and yard.
He knows the tools are out there. In many cases people purchased a specific tool for a specific job and since that time it’s been gathering dust on a shelf or stored away in a shed.
While some big-ticket items like a mobile planar are on the library’s wish list, they’re also keen to add more mundane items in an effort to fill tool boxes that people can borrow.
“So if they’re moving into a new house and have to put up pictures on their wall, they’ll have the gear to be able to do that, or if they’re just doing basic work around their house. Not having to come in and pick out individual screwdrivers, just take the kit and go, but we don’t have the inventory to be able to do that.”
While higher-end brands are preferred, Froude insists they’re not picky and don’t expect a lot of the library users will be, either. “A portion of the people who are going to be using the library are going to be firsttime users and they don’t care whether it’s a lowerquality brand versus a higherquality brand,” he contends. “More important is, what do you want us to have? What projects do you have in mind and what tools do you need for them, and we’ll working on getting them. We want to be useful.”
They’ve sold about 70 memberships so far, a number of them coming through a crowdfunding campaign that started last fall. Most of them, Froude says, are people from outside the province who have relocated here but left their tools behind, or have availed of similar libraries in another city.
In order to be financially stable, he says, a few hundred members will be required and he’s confident they will surpass that in the first year. He’s been told that compared to cities of comparable size where tool libraries exist, the St. John’s location can expect up to 1,200 members by the end of Year 2.
“There’s a lot of people who don’t want to own because either they don’t want to spend the money on this and they don’t have the money to spend on tools or they have an environmental reason for not wanting to own a bunch a stuff,” Froude says.
“The manufacturing pollution and the shipping of all these things from all over the world to here and the Styrofoam, the plastic and the cardboard all has to go to Robin Hood Bay. If we can reduce that flow of goods in by sharing, I think we can make an interesting impact and I think a lot of people are interested in that.”
And Froude wants the St. John’s Tool Library to be about more than sharing tools. He hopes it will become a place where ideas and knowledge are shared by users and volunteers, some of whom are certified tradespeople.
“We want those sorts of things where people can feel like they come and meet here, but we’ll also have seminars and workshops on basic household plumbing or how to understand your home electrical system.” As such, Froude and company hope to bolster their staff of volunteers with more tradespeople. “People are going to come in and say, I want to build a bookshelf, what do I need to do that? Or, I want to install a new toilet in my house, what tools do I actually need to do that? Some people are going to be brave enough to take on that task themselves, which is awesome, but they’re not necessarily going to know how to go about it.” Learn more about the library or sign up at stjohnstoollibrary.ca.