By Liam Curley
Oakland Local

Maybe it’s the cold weather or the leaves piling up, but the Temescal Tool Lending Library in North Oakland is bustling with weekend warriors borrowing rakes, saws, and hammers. You can tell when Oakland’s feeling industrious: Outside the library, the horseshoe-shaped bike racks are yarn bombed. Temescal is one of the busier branches, a clinker brick Carnegie library on the corner of 52nd Street and Telegraph Avenue. The tool lending library is tucked at the back of the building, a neat mishmash of repair manuals and wound-up tools hanging from pegboards.
It’s a small space for such a busy operation. Ty Yurgelevic, the library’s manager, thinks they can do better but stays positive. “Right now, we’re dealing with success.”
The fact is, the tool lending library is long overdue for a bigger space. This month, Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan and the Director of Library Services Gerry Garzon are working with the Friends of the Tool Lending Library to draft a budget request to expand and relocate the facility.
The tool lending library started in 2000 with a city Community Development Block Grant of $81,000. In its first month, the library checked out 51 tools in its first month. This October, it checked out 4,500. The library has seen a 32 percent increase in usage in the past year, with 175 new registrations each month on average. Yet Yurgelevic is the only full-time employee, along with four part-time workers and many volunteers. While the library has better systems for tracking the tools and putting tools on hold, it’s running at capacity. Take weed-whackers, the most in-demand tool. Typically, there's a wait list of 50 people trying to get their hands on one of the library's 18 to 20 weed-whackers.