Toolshed Exchange (Tool Lending Library)

What is it?

Toolshed Exchange is a tool lending library that provides Hudson-area residents access to tools and training, promoting a culture of collective stewardship and empowering neighbors to build and maintain more resilient and equitable communities. It is located at 110 South Front Street in Hudson, New York, on the campus of Basilica Hudson. It lends tools free-of-charge to members, including nonprofits, and membership is sliding scale.  

What does it do?

Toolshed Exchange’s main goal is to become an infrastructure for sharing that supports the good work already happening in Hudson and the broader Hudson Valley. Like a multi-use tool, the tool library can do a variety of things, depending on what’s needed. Here are just some of the things Toolshed Exchange will be used for:

• Education— supporting skillsharing and training in practical applications
• Workforce development—offer support for small, independent entrepreneurs and cooperatives, or training that can lead to employment
• Community empowerment—individuals and communities can accomplish more with shared assets, and things you didn’t know you could do until you had the tools to do it
• Resilience—bank of quickly deployable tools to meet unexpected needs
• Equity—makes tools affordable and accessible to those who need them most

Who is it for?

Toolshed Exchange serves anybody who wants to try new things and/or lacks some tool that can help realize a project or job who can get get to its physical location. (Expanding to other locations and/or initiating delivery or travel are in the long-term plans). A key constituency is existing nonprofits. As such, its role is to listen closely to members, to the broader community, and to partners, to determine needs. Toolshed Exchange will seek to share its methods and lessons learned with others through the larger Toolshed platform.

What inspired and informed the project?

There has been a proliferation of tool libraries in many cities across the US and globe in recent years, connected to movements around equity and sustainability, fixing and right-to-repair, the “Library of Things” movement expanding the scope of traditional libraries beyond books and media, and real sharing economies. Toolshed Exchange actually returns the idea to its birthplace, a local tool library in the basement of the public library in nearby Cohoes, NY. In  the 1970’s Cohoes Public Library was an early tool library, which later inspired the Berkeley Tool Library in California that went on to influence hundreds of others. Timothy Furstnau, the initiator and first librarian of Toolshed Exchange extensively researched and interviewed existing tool libraries throughout the United States. Furstnau also initiated conversations with more than 25 area nonprofits about tools they felt their constituents might need. Toolshed Exchange was also also strongly influenced by ideas around reclaiming the commons. (See for example, Peter Limbaugh’s Stop Thief! or Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons as starting points for research on the commons).

Who worked/is working on it? 

Timothy Furstnau and Sayler/Morris started it, also working closely with Basilica Hudson, which serves as the physical location and fiscal sponsor for the project. (Melissa Auf der Maur, Jennifer Patton, Allison Young and David Szlasa at Basilica Hudson have all worked on the project in crucial ways). The Toolshed Exchange’s first formal local partners beyond Basilica Hudson are the Hudson Area Library and Hudson Valley Repair Cafe. The Exchange looks forward to expanding local partners in the coming months. The Toolshed Exchange has been generously supported by Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley, The People and Planet Fund, The Berkshire-Taconic Community Foundation, William’s Lumber, Herrington’s, and Stewart’s Shops. Clay Rockefeller, Matthew Stinchcomb and Robert Dandrew have been close advisors.

What specific tools does it employ/create?

MyTurn is a great software for tracking members, borrowing and inventory. They have a great deals and work with nonprofit initiatives in a very open and understanding. Direct mail flyers and lots of community outreach have been the tools to drive interest and membership so far.