Last Christmas, a woman came into the Sint-Pieters neighbourhood library in Bruges to make use of its new library of things – locally called the Geriefbib, a distinctly West Flemish word that translates to ‘material bank’. Her family was coming together for the first time since a difficult divorce, and she wanted to mark the occasion with one of Belgium’s favourite Christmas Eve traditions: sharing a teppanyaki grill. The library’s €20 annual membership made borrowing the necessary equipment simpler – and an awful lot cheaper – than buying one. She came back to return the grill a few days later full of gratitude: her son had been so overcome with emotion during the meal that he cried, telling her that “the library of Sint-Pieters helped bring us together.”
These are the kinds of stories that make Lieselot Vancoille, library manager at Sint-Pieters, passionate about libraries continuing to act as a resource for the whole community – whether people come for a chat, to borrow books for their children, tools for their home and garden, or cooking equipment to bring their family together around the table. And the Geriefbib is a natural extension to help the library continue to expand its service offering and its place in the community.
Where the Geriefbib started
This theme of serving the community is also present in the way the Geriefbib came about. Rather than a top-down initiative, it was borne directly out of a need in the community.
Starting in June 2025, the community centre that is attached to the library had begun informally lending out equipment to members who asked to borrow them. This included gardening tools, DIY equipment and more. But over time this became more difficult to manage, with items sometimes coming back broken, dirty or not at all.
That’s where the library stepped in with what it already had: a membership system, loan tracking, automated reminders, and staff. The infrastructure for a library of things was already there, it just needed things. And so in September 2025, Bruges’ first library of things was born, showing how quickly it’s possible to move from idea to action when community need is matched with the infrastructure to support it.
How it works
Membership costs €20 a year, which also covers full library membership, including books and magazines. Members can borrow up to two items per week during its opening hours (Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons, and on Saturday mornings). Everything in the Geriefbib is brand new and volunteer-checked to make sure they are in working order.
The catalogue of items include garden tools, power tools, kitchen appliances, and more. This means that items that are rarely worth buying and storing, such as a pancake maker for one birthday party or a roof box for one summer trip, suddenly become accessible to everyone.
The challenges
The Geriefbib isn’t without its complications. Liability is the most significant – when lending items like power tools, municipalities need a clear framework that sets out responsibilities on both sides. Bruges currently requires members to sign an agreement before borrowing, and only stocks brand new items to avoid any questions about condition or warranty. It’s a cautious approach, and one that’s currently limiting how widely the service can be promoted across the city. But it’s a solvable problem: other models, including Sweden’s Fritidsbanken network and various UK-based Library of Things branches, have navigated this successfully, and are available to share their learnings and insights with similar services, like the Geriefbib.
There’s also the question of stocking secondhand items vs. new. Accepting donated items would reduce costs and expand the catalogue, but introduces complexity around quality control and liability. For now, the Geriefbib sticks to new stock, but that may well change as the model matures.
Next steps
Lieselot and the team have big ambitions to take the model they started in Sint-Pieters across the city and beyond. Bruges has 13 neighbourhood libraries, each serving its own corner of the city, and Lieselot hopes that in time each of them will offer their own item lending service.
The goal is simple: make it as easy and convenient as possible for Bruges’ 130,000 inhabitants to borrow what they need, save money, and strengthen their connection to their local community in the process. For Sint-Pieters itself, the immediate priority is expanding the Geriefbib’s catalogue to serve a wider range of needs.
It’s an exciting vision, and one that points to a much bigger opportunity. If a single neighbourhood library can build something like the Geriefbib in just a few months, think what could be achieved if others were to follow in Sint-Pieters’ footsteps.
Key learnings on how to transform a library of books into a library for everything and everyone
As the Sint-Pieters Geriefbib story suggests, public libraries can act as natural homes for a library of things – already having the infrastructure, systems, knowledge and community trust in place that can help the service kickstart. Across Europe there are more than 65,000 public libraries, imagine if every one of them also offered the opportunity to borrow tools, equipment, games and more, alongside books.
Here are the top tips that emerged from our conversation with Lieselot on making a similar transition work in your local community:
- Start with what’s already there. A library already has membership infrastructure, systems, staff, and crucially, community trust. Look at what spaces around you offer some or all of these things, and think about how to build on that foundation rather than building a new space or concept from scratch.
- Let community need drive the catalogue. The Geriefbib started with people asking for gardening equipment. Pay attention to what your community is already trying to borrow informally, and start there.
- Lean into the human element. Libraries of things aren’t just a practical way to lower household bills or advance a city’s circular economy ambitions, they’re also a genuine way to rebuild a sense of community in places that can feel increasingly anonymous. At the Geriefbib, there is always a staff member present for tool loans, not just for practical reasons, but because that personal connection matters.
- Tap into the global access economy network. Build on the learnings of those who’ve launched sharing and rental services before you. Our team at the Access Economy Alliance can help connect you with the right peers to work through the details around liability, insurance, budgeting, and launch logistics.
- And finally: don’t wait for the perfect system. The Geriefbib started as a pile of tools being lent out on an ad hoc basis and, over the space of a Summer, it transformed into a fully functioning library of things. When trialling relatively new infrastructure and ideas like sharing libraries, sometimes the best thing you can do is get started and iron out the details as you go. Reach out to our team if you need hands-on assistance on where to begin with this process.
The Access Economy Alliance is Europe’s first network of public authorities, businesses and researchers that pools together resources, collaborations and knowledge to deliver a circular economy through access-based services.