from Restoring Mayberry blog (Ireland). Excellent article on how communities can "share the wealth" by sharing books, tools, etc. Also see this about sharing tools in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Even more useful than the books or activities, though, is the principle behind libraries, that we and our neighbours can pool our resources and hold things in common that all of us occasionally need. Most of the Western World, however, adopted this principle for books and then stopped, never extending it to other obvious areas of life.