On Sat, 3 Dec 2011, Daniel Jitnah <djitnah@greenwareit.com.au> wrote:
Instead of a "library: being carted back and forth", it may be possible to achieve similar result by having some kind of online exchange coordination application with features such as:
if one has something they can lend out, they can register their items if one wants something, they can request from the list, or make a new item request if they can agree to pass on they can organise to meet at a LUV meeting (or elsewhere) and exchange
That would work for larger items such as full size desktop PCs and servers.
(Any coder? - I'd do it if no one wants to, but it wont be until sometime next year)
A Wiki would do.
Although, for hardware items, I'd think items would tend to be more long term usage than a book. Once a book has been read and the info gathered, the book can be passed on. But its not necessarily the same for hardware items.
The essential part of a library is that it is a collection, a repository, not necessarily something about returning items. For such a hardware library there would be no expectation that items be returned, it just wouldn't make sense. There would be an expectation that people try to donate something useful if they take things. Like the stuff in a Geocache. On Sat, 3 Dec 2011, Jiri Baum <jiri@baum.com.au> wrote:
Hmm, I suspect it would require some curation effort in order to hit the point where the items are of negligible value yet still useful.
You want negligible value both for acquisition and for giving out - nobody's going to be comfortable taking an apparently-valuable item out of a library. No problem for a mounting screw that's worth a fraction of a cent, but for RAM or a hard disk, people are going to feel uncomfortable. For those things, you'd probably want more of a swap-meet arrangement...
RAM has negligible value for people who do much computer work. The hard part is getting RAM of the speed you need when you need it. Also getting the larger sizes is difficult. http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/10/27/donating-old-hardware/ But recently I got a 3GB of RAM from a machine on a pile of e-waste. So even 2GB DIMMS are regarded as waste by some people. Hard drives are also of little value in the smaller sizes. Dell has quite unreasonable prices for hard drives, so the best strategy is to buy Dell desktop and tower server systems with the minimum size drive and then install new disks after receiving it. That sort of thing contributes to unused disks. Now as the smaller sizes of hard drive correspond to the size needed to store a Linux distribution and about 100 ripped DVDs (as just one example of what might be stored on a disk) it seems that most people could do nicely with one of those disks. Also for decommissioned systems, I've got a pile of 40G IDE disks which are still quite usable (for a test system you don't need any more than that). As for people not wanting to take apparently valuable stuff, over the years I've given away lots of complete systems to LUV members and no-one has shown any sign of discomfort. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/