FROME’S Library of Things has re-opened post-lockdown with a brand new click & collect service.
The organisers report, “Anybody can register and reserve online (sharefrome.org/things) to borrow a plethora of items. Collection and drop off is available between 10:30am and 4pm on Monday and Friday, allowing three days for items to be safely placed in quarantine before being borrowed by the next person.
“SHARE has been offering its unique service to Frome for over 5 years, but it was just before lockdown that the ‘Library of Things’ movement really started to take hold across the UK, gaining plenty of national coverage and entering deeper in to the public consciousness.
Launching the new service SHARE manager, Sam Attard said, “Now that we have been able to open our doors again we find that the world outside is vastly different to the one we inhabited before the pandemic. Appreciation for a slower pace of life has risen dramatically. The urgency of the need to reduce our impact is widely recognised. People are spending more time at home: spending more time on hobbies, DIY, gardening and the like, but often with tighter financial constraints at the same time.
“Pre-Covid 19, SHARE had wrestled for 5 years with a dominant mindset of consumer culture yet we still managed to consistently increase our membership and usage and prove to be a success. We now inhabit a world where Libraries of Things are a necessity and we envisage that we will see increased usage of SHARE in the coming months.
“Those who were familiar with us before the pandemic will know that people could come and browse inside the shop and choose their items. We hope we’ll be able to return to that sort of borrowing before long, but while the virus is still around we’ve had to adapt our model in order to safeguard our users, staff and volunteers. The model now is very simple; browsing can be done online, where you can search directly for the item you are after, book a collection slot and then come and collect it from us at your chosen time. Full details of the process are on our website.
“For those who haven’t heard of us before you’ll want an idea of the sorts of things you can borrow. We have close to 1,000 items split in to ten main categories: arts & crafts, baby & children, DIY, events, gardening tools, household items, kitchen equipment, leisure & camping, music, media & audio visual and sports & games. Anything you can think that might fall in to one of those categories we’ve probably got it. If there’s something we don’t have that you would like, let us know and we’ll endeavour to source it. Some of our most popular items are tents, projectors, wallpaper strippers, carpet cleaners, hedge trimmers, pressure washers and all of the DIY power tools.”
The group added, “Using SHARE has environmental, economical and social impacts. By shifting from an economy founded on individual consumption and ownership to one based on community sharing we reduce waste, reduce pollution, save money and cultivate community.”
