On a visit to any library, there are still plenty of books and DVDs hanging around. The newest items available for lending at the Brooklyn Public Library are tools.

Brooklyn Public Library's Greenpoint Environmental Education Center branch is the pickup spot. How does this work? It’s similar to borrowing a book from another branch. 

What You Need To Know

  • The Brooklyn Public Library is lending tools from its Greenpoint Environmental Education Center branch

  • The tools can be found in the Brooklyn Public Library’s Digital card catalog. There are more than 130 available

  • New Yorkers with an adult library card from the Brooklyn Public Library can borrow a tool

“You see that it’s available, and you put it on hold, and once you get an email that says it’s available, you have a week to pick it up, and then you have a week to borrow it,” Acacia Thompson, environmental justice coordinator at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Greenpoint Environmental Education Center, said.

The tools can be found in the Brooklyn Public Library’s Digital card catalog. There are more than 130 tools available now, and more on the way, with a community survey underway to find out what tools people are interested in that they don’t already have in the catalog.

Thompson said the tool lending goes along with the mission of the Environmental Education Center, which opened in October 2020 and features a rooftop garden.

“As the environmental education center, we are dedicated to sustainability, and having people rethink about the relationship with the objects that they own, and if they can repair themselves,” Thompson said. 

Thompson said they want to offer more workshops to teach people to take care of the things they already own.