These days, books aren’t the only thing that you can find at your local library. Emily Ruffell is the labs librarian at London Public Library, and she says they’ve got tons of tech available too.
“We have two design stations and our Creativity Lab. We have one PC and one Mac that come equipped with Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro and GarageBand. We have a vinyl cutter, which is a Cricut; so that’s a digital die cutting machine that can cut through different types of materials. Vinyl or cardstock are pretty popular.”
But that’s not all that the library has to offer. Inside the Creative Lab, you’ll also find the Memory Lab. Ruffell says that this is where you can digitize analog media. “If you have a VHS cassette, photographs, negatives, photographic files, you can digitize them. You can save them to a USB and then it should be compatible with current technology.”
For your more hands-on creative needs, Central Public Library offers a sewing machine and 3D printers. “We have a sewing machine available to the public, it’s available by appointment. It’s a Singer sewing machine that can be booked for up to two hours.” As for the 3D printer, Ruffell says it’s a machine that you can do just about anything with. “Anything from a doorstop to a frame for a drone project. Currently, I’m making little plant pots. You would submit your file to the library, the files are printed from an STL or G code format. It’s done on a first come first serve basis with a one-dollar flat fee and then it is going to be ten-cents per-gram of filament. “
You can even find a button maker at the library that you can use to make your own pins and magnets. And all you need to have all this tech at your fingertips, is your London Public Library card.
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