The Stud Finder Has a Waiting List: A Field Guide to Borrowing Everything but Books
You can borrow a telescope from a public library in Luverne, and it is a genuinely decent telescope. That sentence surprises people every single week, usually right after they ask whether we still have the cake pans.
We do. We have nine cake pans, two pairs of binoculars, a sewing machine, a metal detector, and one stud finder that has a waiting list. Welcome to the Library of Things, the part of the collection that has nothing to do with reading and everything to do with the fact that you need a 10-inch springform pan exactly once a year.
What's Actually on the Shelf
The collection started small and has grown by donation, by request, and occasionally by staff enthusiasm. Right now it breaks down roughly like this.
Kitchen. Character bundt pans (a barn, a rose, something that may be a castle), a 10-inch springform, loaf pans, a 12-cup muffin tin, a cake carrier, a cookie press, and a set of graduated biscuit cutters that gets borrowed hard every November.
Outdoors. Two pairs of binoculars, a monocular that lives in the case with the cracked lid, a trail camera, and a metal detector that has found exactly one silver dime and forty pounds of pull tabs.
Tools. The stud finder. A cordless drill with two batteries. A socket set. A laser level. A small wet/dry vacuum that has been returned cleaner than it left, twice, by the same guy.
Machines. A sewing machine with a foot pedal and a printed guide for people who have not touched one since high school.
Party and yard. A projector, a karaoke microphone set, cornhole boards, bocce, and giant Jenga, which is stored in a bag that is heavier than it looks.
Tech and health. Mobile hotspots, a Roku stick, a kill-a-watt electricity meter, a USB turntable for digitizing records, and a blood pressure cuff that gets steady, quiet use and no jokes from us about it.
The Five Most-Borrowed Things in the Building
As of this writing in November 2026, the leaderboard looks like this.
- The stud finder. Fifty-eight checkouts this year. It is a $20 object with the cultural weight of a rare book.
- The 10-inch springform pan. Cheesecake season is real, and it starts the week before Thanksgiving.
- The binoculars. Sandhill cranes in spring, backyard birds year-round, and one memorable February when a bald eagle sat in a tree off the highway for four days.
- The hotspots. Less funny, more necessary. This is the item we would fight hardest to keep funded.
- The karaoke set. Graduation parties, mostly, plus one wedding reception that staff still talk about.
How We Decide What Gets In
Every suggestion runs through four questions, and the answers have to be four yeses.
Can we store it? This kills more items than anything else. We have shelves, not a warehouse. A kayak needs a wall we do not have.
Can we clean it? A chocolate fountain was approved for about three weeks and then unapproved during a conversation about the word crevice.
Can we afford to replace it? If losing it would mean losing the program, it is too expensive to lend.
Would we hand it to a stranger? This is the liability question, and it is why nothing with a blade bigger than a hand tool makes the list, and why nothing you sit on and steer ever will.
We also ask whether the item is genuinely hard to get. If it costs $12 and ships in a day, borrowing it does not save anyone much. If it costs $90 and gets used once, that is a library item.
The Requests That Almost Made It
We keep a running list of suggested items. Some are pending. Some are not.
- A wedding arch. Genuinely under consideration for 2027. Storage is the only issue, and the answer may be a folding model.
- A stand mixer. Popular suggestion. Storage says no. Storage is usually right.
- A crockpot. Approved, added, currently on the shelf next to the vacuum.
- A goat. Suggested, we assume, as a joke. We treated it as one.
- A chainsaw. No. Never. Please stop asking, and also, we like you.
- A taxidermy deer. Offered as a donation. Declined with real regret.
- A kayak. We said no; a local outfitter now rents them, which is a better outcome for everybody.
The Rules, Which Are Fewer Than You'd Expect
Things circulate for seven days, renewable once if nobody is waiting. There are no overdue fines — we got rid of those — but an item that goes missing long enough gets treated as lost, and you will get a bill for the replacement cost.
Everything must come back clean and dry. Cake pans especially. We will not be weird about a little butter, but please do not return the springform with the cheesecake still in it. It has happened.
Anything with a cord or a lens comes back to a person, not the drop box. The drop box is an eighteen-inch fall onto concrete, and the projector has already survived one of those, which is one more than it should have.
Holds work the same as they do for books. If you want the telescope for a specific weekend, put it on hold now and pick it up Friday, not Saturday morning.
How to Borrow One in 2026
Search the catalog for Library of Things, or just ask at the desk — the front-desk staff can tell you what is in the building without looking it up, most days. Bring your card. If it is your first time borrowing something with a motor, a cord, or a lens, ask for the two-minute walkthrough. Nobody has ever regretted the two-minute walkthrough.
And if you break something, tell us. We would so much rather know than discover it in the bag. The stud finder is currently spoken for, but it will be free by the weekend.
