Proposal talk:Lending

Untitled 1

Resolved: See the rationale section. Most businesses offering things for rent already have specific tags (e.g. car rental, hotel) so the distinction is already there.

Wouldn't library:lending make more sense, because it could later be used for other non-profit organisations as well (with a clear distinction from commercial rental)? User 5359 (talk) 10:23, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

What member of public

Resolved: In practice, all libraries have some restrictions on lending, and this tagging scheme attempts to generalize them. Actual policies related to geographic restrictions vary significantly, so it would be hard to standardize them in OSM.

It's not clear why lending=yes should be set at the level of municipality. Personally I prefer the historical access=public for different reason, and treat *=yes as unspecified positive. Then eg *:public=local / *:public=municipality / *:place=municipality can be used to specify this. There's is another recent question resembling this. Talk:Key:access#How_to_add_a_store_only_accecible_to_those_with_an_e-ID
—— Kovposch (talk) 17:52, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Public Comment 3

Resolved: Changed value "private" to "restricted"

Proposed tag makes sense to me and seems like value added information for libraries to be tagged with! Maybe it should be lending=restricted instead of lending=private? Lending=private might be misleading because it could incorrectly imply something like access=private (no entry at all). For libraries, we’re usually trying to capture who can borrow materials, not whether the building itself is physically accessible. - MappyArianna 20:35, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

Why did you edit others' titles?
—— Kovposch (talk) 05:07, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

First of all, this refers to lending=* only, not access=* . *=private is an accepted meaning for students. On the other hand, *=restricted is not clear how restricted it is, and "restricted" can mean Template:* .
"individuals who have purchased a membership to the library" should be eg lending:membership=required . If everyone can become a member, it is *=yes in access=* .
—— Kovposch (talk) 05:03, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Terms

At least one user has expressed concern with the key 'Lending' (being associated with money, like a loan). I wonder what others think of using the key 'Borrow' instead...?

I personally find some of the proposed values a bit lacking:

• 'yes' - When used with other OSM keys, 'yes' is typically used as a generic value when a more specific one isn't known (e.g. Tag:building=yes - "used when someone is unable or unwilling to tag it more specifically"). For when the general public can borrow all/most items, I'd suggest using the value 'public' instead.
• 'restricted' - This seems too generic. Who's it restricted to? Paying members, staff/faculty? I think this value should be separated into new values that specify these groups a bit better.

--GuardedBear (talk) 10:46, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

• lending=* : It's the term used in library operations ("lending services"), and the opposite of research/reference libraries or special collections ( Lending_library ). I do prefer it. Is "borrowing" not the same for borrowing money? In fact, "borrow"/"borrows"/"borrowing" (area) is a term used for soil excavation and dredging in construction and engineering, meaning it can be used for land geographically.
• *=yes : It's in the sense of access=yes , while I personally like the deprecated access=public more. As mentioned in content there, and discussion above, there are some particularities for residents, besides the common status of some material. Therefore unspecified positive is fine too.

—— Kovposch (talk) 08:39, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

As there are more comments about rental=* , I would like to note that service:*:rental=* from service:bicycle:rental=* has been discussed in Proposal:Power_Bank_Rental , to be a general service:*:*=* format. I'm cautious towards the continued treatment of it as renting. It could be service:*:lending=* equally.
—— Kovposch (talk) 07:04, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

To compare, there's already books=* , so to me, books:*=* could be considered. But also recycling:books=* , thus *:books=* more recognizable in some sense.
—— Kovposch (talk) 08:25, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Renting/renting out and borrowing/lending are two distinct activities. I don’t think we should conflate them by considering lending to be renting free of charge. After all, many libraries rent out meeting rooms for a fee, and some university libraries operate textbook rental (not lending) services. I do agree that this terminology becomes challenging without a namespace, as we already have shop=money_lender using a very different meaning of lending (certainly not free of charge). Anything other than a library would potentially need different values. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 19:15, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, I forgot about the horrific US prices, and countering by rentals. For the sake of argument, the renting side is implying eg rental:books:textbook:fee=yes (+ rental:books:fee=no ). It would still be awkward, and become increasingly unwieldy with more items.
From me, I wondered now whether complimentary services of on-site loans eg laptops and tablets should be included in OSM. For both sides, there's a question of whether deposits (cf trolley:deposit=* , mass-added rental:deposit=* ) be considering renting or borrowing. Also assuming minor conditionally free situations are considered renting, as there's a rent and pricing system.
—— Kovposch (talk) 07:56, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Didn't realize there are free Chromebook checkout for outside use now. Unrelatedly, does have 1 rental:laptop:fee=no exactly (may be limited to inside use). Be aware laptop=* has been used for whether they are allowed in a facility.
—— Kovposch (talk) 08:37, 11 September 2025 (UTC)