4.2 Enabling patrons to ‘try something new’
The core aim of many of these organizations was to make the collection accessible to enable individuals to gain new skills.
4.2.1 Making items and skill-building accessible.
Almost all our participants (N=22) discussed how the aim of the collection was to make skill-building accessible, and to remove barriers to accessing the collection. One of the ways of making the collection accessible was through teaching individuals how to use items in the collection. For example, at the tool libraries, individuals often consulted with the volunteers for advice on what they would need for a project rather than browsing the collection:
“Somebody comes in and they’re like ‘I want to do this thing that I’ve never done’ and we get to talk to them about it, figure out the tools, and teach them how to do it. Then they go off with the skills they need, and you know, maybe some YouTube links to get some more ideas, and then go do the thing” (P8).
4.2.2 Spaces for learning.
The tool libraries especially either had makerspaces or workshops (see Figure
3) where individuals could learn those skills with volunteer support:
“It was always very important for us that we not only provide access to the resources, but also to knowledge and skills, so we always had envisioned a space where we can teach workshops. We now have what we call the workspace. Other tool libraries sometimes call it the maker space, or the workshop, so it’s very similar in essence”. (P6)
The other collections also worked to support skill building through events like “repair cafes” (P3, P4, P6, P7, P15, P16), as well as events for specific collections such as “basic gardening” (P3), and “how to use a sewing machine” (P4). The musical instrument collections within public libraries focused on providing educational material on the collection. P23: “Not only can they pick up a ukulele, but then they can pick up a book about how to learn to play the ukulele”. At the same time, many of the public libraries also received requests for, and wanted to provide, more hands-on support for instruments beyond books. Similar to the makerspaces in tool libraries, several of the instrument libraries wanted to offer spaces such as recording rooms or sound rooms for individuals to use the library’s space if they could not do so at home.
The collection also helped to alleviate potential issues with individual storage space as they “allow people to either try things or use things that take up a lot [of] space” (P5). This is especially important in urban areas where individuals might have smaller living spaces, and this came up as an issue with patrons – “people are always like ‘this is great, but you know I live in a condo’” (P6). As P14 describes the lack of affordable housing: “a lot of us are going to be renting for a while and living in smaller apartment spaces. Space is a big concern, so it doesn’t really make sense to have like a tent lying around your house”. This was another benefit of makerspaces and music rooms where individuals could not only try the items but also have a space to do so.
4.2.3 Financial accessibility.
Our participants wanted to make the collection financially accessible, and collections with membership fees discussed the tension that arose between wanting to make the collection as accessible as possible (and removing financial barriers) while also bringing in enough income to survive as an organization. To do this, the libraries our participants worked at offered subsidized memberships, different levels of memberships, sliding scale donations as memberships, volunteer or service trades for memberships, or free memberships.
Libraries of Things aimed to make object exploration affordable by enabling individuals to “try out” an object. This was especially true of the instrument libraries within public libraries, where it is unlikely that an individual would learn an instrument in the average three-week loan period. This aspect of being able to try out objects before purchasing them also aimed to reduce waste and individuals purchasing items that they won’t need or use long term. P4 described this feature as part of the value thing libraries provide so patrons can try out “something that you’re not quite sure you want to buy yet”.
Overall, the combination of access and affordability was valuable for what it enabled patrons to try, make, or do:
“People get all excited ‘I planted my own garden, I tilled the soil, I built the bed, I did all of it’, and they’re so excited or ‘I finally got to try doing this’ and that’s the thing you’ve empowered people to do. They may have thought they couldn’t do, and really, it’s just as simple as making the tools accessible and affordable”. (P7)
4.3 Iterating to find and define ‘shareable’ things
Through their experiences running tangible collections, our participants offered recommendations on what they have found to be the characteristics of a shareable item.
4.3.1 What makes an ideal item for a thing library.
The collection categories our participants discussed were broad, especially for the five general ‘thing libraries’ we interviewed. Collections included categories of things such as: arts and crafts tools (like a sewing machine), gear (like snowshoes), kitchen and catering, entertainment (like board games), garden (like a lawn mower), construction (like a saw), and musical instruments. In line with the aims of the collections (to learn new skills and help individuals avoid purchasing rarely used items) the items that were most useful for the collection were targeted to these purposes. For example, all of the musical instrument collections (N=8) discussed how an ideal item was for beginners – “entry level instruments” (P9). “Our most popular instrument is the ukulele. They are great for us because they’re actually not expensive. They’re light, they’re portable. They’re perfect for a lot of beginner programs” (P17).
The other category of items that did well in collections was rarely used items. Some of our participants (N=8) described ideal items as items needed for one-off tasks: “There’s tons of things that we need just once – why do you need to own it?” (P7). Ideal items that get used once can be used for novelty, for example, party supplies: “One of the libraries has a cake pan collection. That’s such a great idea. People aren’t going to walk off with a cake pan. You want to do a Kermit the Frog cake one year; you’re not going to do a Kermit the Frog every year” (P17). Another area is items used for large one-off jobs – like carpet cleaners: “big–expensive–complicated– cleaning or DIY tools that you would never bother buying” (P18).
4.3.2 Managing and filtering donations.
All of our participants had at some point accepted donations into their collections, but there was a clear distinction between what was donated and what had to be purchased. The musical instrument libraries we interviewed had sponsored collections where most items were purchased but the occasional item was donated from the community. Our other collections were almost entirely created from community donations of goods.
Managing donations was described as a massive undertaking, and most collections received an excess of donations based on what their space could manage. “It’s a big challenge and effort for us to keep up with the donations and then to decide which donations we keep” (P1). One of the public libraries decided to stop taking donations due to the time and effort needed to manage and filter through donations. Many of our participants made policies or rules for what they would accept “because we want to make sure that whatever it is we’re gathering is going to be shareable and we don’t want [to become] a dumping ground for people’s junk” (P5).
Exclusion criteria that made an item unsuitable for a thing library included:
•
Safety: Safety items like helmets, ladders, or scaffolding were not accepted through donations and had to be bought new, or excluded from the collection, for safety purposes. “So the only things that I can think of that we definitely don’t include are like safety items, because we did get a few donations of like safety hats like hard hats and harness equipment and we’re like wait we don’t wanna be liable for this” (P4). Gas powered items were often excluded due to safety requirements for storage.
•
Excess wear or broken: Items that arrived needed to be useable. This was related to the safety concerns mentioned above: “We want to make sure that things are in good shape, you know relatively good shape” (P20).
•
Maintenance or cleaning: Items that required high maintenance were either excluded from the collection or often had an additional cost to pay for maintenance. The musical instrument libraries in public libraries did not include wind instruments in their collection due to the need to clean them for sanitation purposes. Other collections decided not to include specific types of kitchen equipment due to the risk of it coming back dirty. Tools that required consumables or replacement parts like sandpaper often included an added cost.
•
Expense: Expensive items were often more valuable for the collection to sell to fundraise for collection maintenance or to buy less expensive items. Especially for the musical instrument collections, specific “fashionable” or easily re-sellable items such as electric guitars tended to be the ones that would go missing and were more useful to the organization as an item to sell for fundraising. Our gear libraries discussed how they didn’t include items like golf clubs or other gear that required extra memberships or added expenses to participate.
•
Oversize items: Due to their own space constraints many collections excluded items that were oversized. “We’re not going to collect anything that’s overly large, it has to be able to fit in somebody’s vehicle and they have to move it themselves” (P5).
There was at times a mismatch between what was donated and what the collection needed. For items that were not suitable for the collection many of our participants (N=16) had methods for moving those items ‘downstream’ rather than throwing them out. The most common method was using the item for fundraising: “If it’s not really suitable, we will sell that, and you know get 80 or 100 bucks or so for it, which helps us buy a more suitable tool” (P3). If they can’t resell the item, they will give the item away to their community members or other charitable organizations: “We allow our volunteers to have first crack [at picking items]” (P1).
4.3.3 Iterating collection based on community.
Our participants discussed how their collection changed over time and how they iterated it based on their community. “I think it’s just like very important to be flexible, because you never know what people will really like and what’s going to be in circulation” (P10). Many of our participants (N=10) only had informal methods of getting feedback that included asking individuals about their experience when they returned an item. “When people return items, we always ask them like ‘How was it? How well did it go?’ so there’s that kind of informal feedback” (P14). A smaller number of participant (N=7) received formal feedback through methods such as surveys to members, or surveys that were included with the borrowed item.
Participants also used data to inform their collection (N=17), such as keeping track of high volume requests or long waitlists. For example one Library of Things discussed moving away from construction tools to more craft tools and entertainment due to what the community borrowed: “I found that in [this location] our tools aren’t as popular as the other locations” (P4). Long waitlists made collections less convenient to use, so our participants made adjustments to their collection by either getting more of the item or shortening wait times with shorter lending periods. If wait-lists got too long then participants might just buy the item instead: “They like the idea of the tool library, they would love to use it, but they just needed to get these things done” (P1). To iterate on their collection participants (N=9) did community call outs for specific items: “we get requests, and so we have a wish list on our website” (P4). If the item did not come through a call out then they would often buy that item: “If an item that people have requested has never been offered to us, we just go and buy it” (P3).
4.4 Each type of collection requires new knowledge, training and skill sets
More than half of our participants (N=14) discussed speaking with other Library of Things projects before starting their own either through having “conversations about managing rental systems” (P13), or through online support groups such as Google groups for tool libraries – “it’s a phenomenal resource” (P6). One of our participants worked at a traditional library before joining a Library of Things and described the benefits of being on support groups:
“I know for me personally I’ve learned a ton. Having worked in traditional libraries, like I said, we’ve always had non-traditional library items in almost every library I’ve worked in, so the concept wasn’t new to me, but having a library that’s dedicated to this has really been interesting in communicating and connecting with other people who have already done this. It’s worldwide so people are sharing in a Google group. You can post your questions there, [and] somebody from Hawaii or Denmark or wherever is going to respond”. (P5).
Beyond speaking with and learning from other collections, developing a thing library required training staff, human resources, and new types of skills such as technicians or ‘fixers’.
4.4.1 Training staff on collection.
Participants who ran independent collections, such as the independent tool libraries or musical instrument libraries often had experience and expertise in the area of their collection. In contrast, in our interviews with participants who worked within the public library system, the musical instrument collection was outside of the area of expertise of their staff (i.e. library and information systems). One of the challenges in incorporating this new collection into the public library system was training staff on how to work with, explain, and provide information on musical instruments. Initially library staff felt “a bit of trepidation at the beginning that there was going to be some expectation that they would [need to] know about the instruments” (P12).
To support staff during this process teams had to create training material on the collection. Libraries created and sent “a data sheet to all of our frontline staff and our branch so they knew all the details and can answer basic questions” (P19). Having a central document helped ensure that the teams could explain the collection and lending expectations to patrons. One library had someone with musical instrument expertise come visit the library “to talk to staff before we launched to show them all the instruments that we had, and just to get familiar with them” (P20).
Though training started with how to manage the circulation of the collection, maintenance was often harder and ongoing. Our participants described how it was a challenge to “train up staff to know how to evaluate damage on an instrument as opposed to a book, and how to make sure instruments are tuned. How do you train up people to tune various types of instruments? That’s an ongoing process, even now, it is six years later and we’re still training. We have so much stuff and so many people who don’t work in our department all the time. So how do you have that sort of training implemented?” (P21).
There were also limits on how much training individuals can be expected to do because of defined roles. “We’re in a unionized environment, we don’t take volunteers, so it’s not like we can get a volunteer from the community to help us accept the instruments. Also, there are very clear job classifications for people, so we had to be very careful about like what kind of work we assigned to different job classification schemes” (P22).
Though training for a specific collection (musical instruments) was manageable for the libraries, the challenge would exponentially increase with the addition of different categories of items. As one of our participants summaries: “If you’re a library and you’re adding another item, how do you maintain it, how do you explain it, how do you educate about it, how do you make processes? If you are [a music store] and you’re renting out instruments, then you already have that expertise” (P22).
4.4.2 Large amount of human resources required.
To run a Library of Things requires a wide variety of roles, especially for independent libraries which required a lot of volunteer effort. Most of our participants (N=14) with independent libraries relied on volunteers, and they discussed how this is a trend across the non-profit sector of Library of Things — “they’re almost all run by volunteers” (P5). Our participants recommended gathering “a network of volunteers” (P3), “gathering your allies” (P8), because without a critical mass of volunteer support the team gets “overwhelmed and burnt out” (P1).
“It’s not a solo job. The only two libraries I know of [that tried to do it solo] did not succeed. They were like one or two people. Something happens, you have a health crisis, you move, [and it] all falls apart. I would say make sure you’ve got a group” (P3).
When the independent libraries started many of them recruited volunteers by seeing what their community could offer: “You know we’re trying to get this going, let us know if you want to help us [and] how you want to help us. Are you a marketer? Are you [a] fundraiser? Do you know anything about tools? So, people could sign up and register how they would like to volunteer with us” (P6).
At a certain point the collections found that they needed more structure and often hired a paid employee to oversee things: “You get to a point where you can’t just do stuff with the odd volunteer anymore. [You have to start] building an organizational infrastructure and volunteer coordinators. A big part of that is someone who is overseeing things, like an office manager and a project manager” (P3).
Though many volunteers had an interest or background in the collection, they still required training on how everything is organized and protocols for interacting with patrons during the lending process. “Volunteers are sort of the front face [of the library]. They run the counters, they’re the librarians, so we have to train them and have quite a rotating roster of librarians” (P3). For example, when volunteers were starting, they could be matched with a more experienced volunteer: “if someone was training, we would have them working with one of the seasoned volunteers” (P4). Volunteer recruitment and training were ongoing tasks due to the expected turnover of volunteers. “It’s a lot to ask for volunteers to be consistently there” (P16).
4.4.3 Maintenance technicians or ‘fixers’.
All of our participants discussed maintenance as an ongoing challenge with tangible collections. Due to the often-donated collections, half of our participants (N=11) thought it was normal that items would occasionally break down, and all our participants found that the vast majority of patrons were respectful of the collection. Our participants discussed how consumer items are not built for constant use. Donated items included “consumer grade tools and equipment so that doesn’t necessarily speak to regular use and durability” (P1). Since most items were already on their second life, breakdowns were not unexpected: “Considering that most of our items are second-hand, they’ve already been used, and you know, unfortunately, that’s how it works. Especially nowadays things are not made to last” (P18).
Based on the challenges of donated goods and consumer grade items, maintenance was “the biggest challenge in keeping the service running. Things need replacing and there’s lots of maintenance” (P16). Maintenance occurred throughout the life of an object. For example, most donations had to be inspected by a technician to ensure they were in working order before going into the catalog: “when instruments come in, [the technician] inspects them, gets them ready, puts stickers on them with numbers, and all that kind of thing” (P9). Rather than preventative maintenance, most of our participants put items into maintenance mode based on feedback from patrons returning items: “We track when a member brings back the tool and they report a problem. We track it for our fixer team so that when they come in, they have an easy job looking at this tool that [is] sitting in the in the tool hospital […] so they can focus on the issue right away” (P1). The problem with reactive maintenance is that sometimes patrons would get frustrated when they took home an item and it didn’t work: “the biggest thing is when the devices aren’t up to the job” (P16). This is especially important because individuals using the items are likely novices: “This might be something somebody has never put their hands on before, like you can’t have a violin going out that somebody needs to tune themselves” (P12).
As a result, several of our participants were starting to build “maintenance plans for things that will need to be sharpened or oiled or cleaned or [to] make sure they’re still working” (P5). “It’s something that we are looking into – setting up a schedule, because we were so new and then all of a sudden now it’s kind of the time”. (P4). Items that needed a lot of maintenance or supplies came with extra maintenance costs embedded into their fee or on top of membership costs. “There’s a couple of tools we charge really minimal for but it’s not significant enough to call it a revenue stream because it’s like mostly just takes care of those tools. Pressure washers they break a lot [so] we asked for $10 per reservation of pressure washers just to kind of keep those in working order” (P8).
To handle the maintenance work, almost all of our participants (N=21) had team members dedicated to maintenance with roles called technicians or “fixers”. For the musical instrument libraries (N=8) they had external contractors (technicians) who they would send the musical instruments out to, or who would come to the library to fix the instruments. “They require maintenance, especially the stringed instruments. They come back, people aren’t necessarily musicians and set the strings badly, tune the strings, this string snaps, they’ll be in the wrong order, you never know what you’re going to get, so we also have to hire a part-time technician who comes in” (P17). Repairing the instrument collection was a unique skillset that was difficult to teach to public library employees due the variety of instruments: “It takes obviously a unique skill set to be able to repair instruments. Book repair is not that hard to teach someone, we can have people at any branch trained to help put a book back together when pages fall out” (P19).
In contrast to the public libraries who had contracted technicians for repair and maintenance, many participants in independent libraries had in-house volunteer “fixers” or “tool doctors” (N=14). These volunteers came in regularly and usually as a team so they could collaboratively problem solve and work to fix the items. These volunteers either worked reactively or proactively. Reactive fixers responded to issues brought up by patrons: “We mark things as in maintenance, we put it in the back room and then every Wednesday night we have three or four people who come in and they are volunteer fixers” (P3). The few proactive fixers would work on maintenance schedules, though this was much less common than reactive maintenance: “They get together regularly where they meet and they say, ‘Okay today we’re maintaining all the angle grinders so let’s go pull them off the shelf [and] let’s see if they work and are sharp’” (P6).
Due to the process of setting these items aside and volunteers fixing them within the space, these collections often needed ‘a fixer room’. For example, P8 stated that: “During our open hours, [the fixers] just hang out back there and fix the broken tools, because there’s always broken tools”. Fixer volunteers tended to have backgrounds in engineering, tool use, construction, or were hobby fixers. The team relied on them for their expertise to “answer some of the more technical questions that maybe myself or other volunteers don’t know about, because they’re just like a lot of the retired engineers or retired contractors. We rely on them to tell us what’s needed”.
4.5 Manual intervention throughout the borrowing cycle
One of the greatest challenges our participants experienced was the amount of manual intervention that was needed throughout the borrowing cycle.
4.5.1 Library software and cataloguing ‘things’.
To catalogue items the majority of our participants used My Turn
1 (N=14), and one used Lend Engine
2. These two platforms were developed specifically to support Library of Things projects. The musical instrument libraries all used public library software (N=8), and the same one that is used to catalogue books and other traditional library materials.
My Turn was used by the independent collections we interviewed, and many of them discussed how it was the most common software used by these types of collections – “many tool libraries globally use My Turn” (P3). My Turn provided the collections with features such as a back-end for their catalogue (with useful categories for thing library collections), for checking out and returning items, and building automatic reports as well as reminders for patrons (such as delinquent items). On the front end – they also enabled patrons to purchase memberships, browse the collection online, and view their loans and renewals. For human resources, the software had scheduling features so teams could manage shifts. Our participants particularly valued the automatic reporting features that enabled them to see data such as memberships numbers and items borrowed, and being able to share that with their team “I love giving actual data” (P4).
To connect their catalogue on My Turn to individual items a few (N=3) used barcoded items, but the majority (N=10) wrote numbers on each item by hand (“just black magic marker with a number on everything” (P2)) or with a label maker (N=1). Though marking each item manually was accessible and easy, it also caused issues with maintaining the catalogue: “Volunteers use this software a lot and change the inventory in wrong ways, things get checked out or things don’t get returned, numbers get rubbed off the tools, so the inventory is a little skewed” (P8). This occurred especially with tools due to natural wear: (“you know you mark it [the number] on a shovel and people are holding the shovel with oily hands and it rubs off” (P8). Some of the collections in thing libraries were multiples of small items where making individual entries and numbering items wasn’t useful such as with tennis balls (“we’ll give you the tennis ball but it’s not a certain one” (P14)) or screwdrivers (“we don’t put individual numbers on screwdrivers” (P15)).
For public libraries they had teams specifically for cataloging the collection, but thing collections were unique compared to the traditional collection. A tangible item is “a little different than cataloguing a book that has an ISBN [number]. It doesn’t have an author. [These are] some of the things that we normally catalogue things by” (P17). They also had to catalogue items with both enough and not too much specificity with consideration for what characteristics a user or patron might find important. “When you catalogue something you don’t want to make the record so specific. You want to keep it general like ‘nylon string guitar’ so then it doesn’t matter what kind of nylon string guitar they get. So how you classify and organize them so they’re retrievable and broad enough so that they capture like a range of things. You have to balance that with your user who [might] want a very specific item” (P22). The instruments were also catalogued with items that were not individually tagged – “none of the instruments themselves have like a barcode on it” (P23). Instead, the case had a luggage tag on it, and the items within the case such as the instrument, tuners, and accessories were all untagged. This meant that librarians had to oversee and manage returns to ensure that everything was within the case.
4.5.2 High-touch collection.
Most of our participants (N=21) described thing collections as requiring manual intervention throughout the borrowing cycle. Most membership registration begins with an identification (ID) check, and –even for traditional libraries– accessing the instrument collection also required an ID check due to the relative high value of each item. For tool libraries this included liability waivers: “there’s a waiver for the tools and there’s a waiver for the workshop” (P1). For musical instruments, the process also included signing agreements that individuals are responsible for the instrument if lost or damaged.
Checking out and checking in items had to be done with a member of the collection team, rather than through automatic checkouts. This was to ensure that all parts of the item were there, and to check its condition to make sure it’s safe to use. “They go through with the library staff that all the parts are in there, that everything’s in good condition and looks good [...] and then, when it’s returned, we go through a reverse process of checking that all the parts are there” (P17). The lack of self-checkouts added to the librarians’ workload: “There’s just more we touch with the instruments, much more than when someone passes a book through the book shoot [and] you don’t even touch it, and then it goes to the automated handling machine, and it’s all done. There’s just so much more staff time involved [with instruments] because you can’t use the self-checkout machine for it” (P23).
Due to limitations in storage, many of the musical instrument collections were not available on the circulation floor, and had to be requested through the circulation desk. This meant that librarians had to continually go back and forth from the front desk to the back storage: “We keep it behind the scenes. That’s in part because of just not really having a great space on the floor to put them. You wouldn’t be able to browse stuff here anyway” (P19).
4.5.3 Circulation management.
Many of our participants (N=16) discussed the challenges of managing the circulation of items in the collection, and the ways the collection differed from book collections. The most difficult challenge was opening hours and when individuals could return tangible objects. Unlike traditional libraries with after-hours book drop slots, the tangible collections we interviewed could only accept returns during opening hours (N=23). Our independent collections often had limited hours in order to make efficient use of their volunteer and human resources (e.g. being open only a few days a week). But these limited hours made borrowing less convenient, and if an individual could not return an item on time, it would then be late and cause delays on other requests. The most common request our participants received was for longer opening hours – but this felt unattainable: “I wish we could be open more hours, but then we need more and more volunteers, so that limits us” (P3). One participant we interviewed was trying to manage this challenge by offering hours as a fundraising goal: “We wanted to open more hours, but we kind of needed more members to justify more hours. So, we said if we can get 120 new members this month, which is like a little more than double what we usually get this time of year, we will open up Sunday shifts, which is what most people want. It’s been nine days and we’re halfway there” (P8).
Along with returning items during opening hours, all but one of our collections with multiple branches or locations required items to be returned to the same branch (N=7). This was due to objects like instruments being harder to transport than traditional objects like books:
“There was no way to safely transport the items between libraries, [so] they couldn’t be part of a regular delivery system” (P23). For libraries with large networks this limits who can access the instrument collection:
“We were talking about trying to expand. Right now you can only pick up and drop off your instruments downtown at the big central library, so that doesn’t make it accessible” (P22).
4.5.4 Browsing, navigation, and retrieval.
All of our participants (N=23) found cataloguing, sorting, and retrieving items from a tangible collection to be difficult. Compared to collections of books, with Libraries of Things
“the physical space is definitely a consideration. It takes up physical space. These are large items” (P12). Due to the expense of space, thing collections often required an initial investment, or relied on inexpensive, under-used, spaces they were able to find. When asked why teams chose their current space, the most common reply was:
“The rent is cheap” (P9). Finding space was often the
“most expensive part” (P4) of running a thing collection due to the amount of items that they need to store, and yet
“every tool library would like their space to be bigger” (P8). They described putting items anywhere they could find as:
“hanging from the ceiling” (P6) or
“in every nook and cranny” (P8), see Figure
4.
Space limitations impeded their ability to make the collection browsable. “We’d love to have more space. We’re a little room full of stuff rather than a beautifully presented, inspiring shop” (P16). “It would be nice to have a bigger space [where] we can have more stuff and be organized, more browsable. Not like a bunch of stuff shoved in a drawer” (P4). All our participants had issues with “stuff management” (P8) –– keeping the space clean. “Cleaning up the shop — it’s the screw that keeps coming loose […] it’s a hard one to stay on top of” (P11). The main concern was not being able to find or locate items in the collection when they were requested by a patron. To manage this, our independent libraries had “inventory management teams” of volunteers that continually worked to keep the space organized: “It’ll be a permanent task” (P3).
There were a variety of ways of managing their space. Items were organized by category: “the space is divided up - acoustic guitars are in one spot the corner, we have electric guitars on one wall, and we have the percussion table it’s overflowing with stuff” (P9). Some organizations created visual “maps” of where items were that corresponded to labeled physical storage – “we’ve just kind of coded the walls A, B, C, D. We have a volunteer now going through and making sure every item is in the right place” (P2). This was especially helpful for collections that had items of a wide variety of sizes – such as small items that had to be in drawers and larger items that had to be oversized shelves – where the category of item couldn’t dictate where it could be located.