The 3D printers revolutionising how people use libraries

Oct 26, 2023

Scott Burgess does this “terrible” thing on holidays now. No matter where he is, he’ll always pop into the town’s library to check it out.

He’s the digital librarian at New Plymouth’s Puke Ariki, and says libraries are an “interesting space to be in” right now.

No longer are libraries just about checking out books, finding an old photo of your grandparents in the newspaper, or renting a DVD, now one can get a part to fix their campervan awning, or print figurines of their favourite film characters.

And all of it can be achieved using 3D printers. They were first introduced into Puke Ariki in 2018, and in South Taranaki libraries in 2017.

Burgess said it had been “encouraging” to see all age ranges come in and use the printers, with some of the designs being “quite cool”.

He described one man in his 60s who came in to learn how to use the printer. He came back a week later with a design for a part in his concrete mixer that had broken.

“We 3D printed it, as strong as we could … and he put it in his concrete mixer, and it worked.”

Burgess said it was going to cost the guy “a pinch” to get one fabricated, and with the library only charging 20c per gram of filament used, it was more cost-efficient to make the part.

He had another person come in with a design to recreate a broken part on their campervan’s awning.

“There’s a broad spectrum of stuff, like 3D printers and that kind of thing, that are all part of the [library] package. We have some robots here, and we can teach coding classes, things like that,” Burgess said.

Part of Burgess' job was looking after the tech, and on his most stressful days, he said he got to play with Lego robots.

There was always something new coming along, he said. He was currently getting a resin 3D printer ready for public use.

Puke Ariki was one of several libraries around the country to adopt the new technology. Palmerston North City Library had 3D printing as part of its Blueprint Makerspace, which featured an array of fabrication technologies, design software and creative tools.

Staff member Zac Millar said the Makerspace was exactly what it sounded like.

“It’s a space where you can make things, and the only difference between us and your kitchen table is that the equipment is here, you don’t have to go and get it first.”

The Blueprint team found permanent residence at the library in 2019.

Millar and his team-mate Harley Bell said they were able to give advice and support the creative process, as well as help people use the Makerspace equipment, which included laser cutters and engravers, craft and vinyl cutters, sewing gear, electronics and a woodworking area.

They had people wanting to make their own jewellery, screen print their own t-shirts, or even bringing in broken electric guitars to fix.

“A lot of people either don’t have the space, the time, or the money for this kind of tooling, so they can come in here and use it,” Bell said.

Library manager Linda Moore said the Makerspace was largely cost-free to reduce barriers for people to learn. A good day was when someone came in with an idea, and the team got to help them bring it to life, she said.

“We’re only at the start of the journey that this could be for our city, and I think what we want to do in the library through this Makerspace is to support curious critical thinking kids, through to all ages, stages, abilities and mobilities.”

In Marlborough, librarians Pam Vallender and Luke McPhie said their 3D printer, in the new $20 million Te Kahu o Waipuna library in Blenheim, was brought in to get the wider community thinking in the 3D space.

“It’s not so much the actual printer itself being the important part – it’s an education tool, an opportunity for people to see one in action, and maybe have a crack at designing your own thing,” Vallender said.

Marlburian modellers were making their own drones and printing the parts. They also had a person building a toy submarine through the printer.

McPhie said they often had print jobs where he could tell someone had designed the model themselves, and most times they would come back with design updates a week later.

“It’s good to see that sort of design process from people in the community.”

Owning a 3D printer was “very expensive”, McPhie said, and one of the best things about having them in a library was removing that barrier of entry so that all parts of the community could experience using one.

The printers ranged in cost from just over $100 for some models to over $10,000 for others.

The Blenheim library also invested in VR headsets, coding robots and a sewing machine.

Vallender said bringing in new tech was a “matter of seeing what the community wants, as we go forward with this new space”.

Learning and sharing the technology with the public was “fun”, Vallender said, but being a librarian now required that extra kick of curiosity.

“If you don’t have that curiosity, you could get left out of the loop,” Vallender said.

Invercargill Public Library’s team leader of customer service Donald Cunningham said librarians had quite a “broad” skill set nowadays and needed to be able to learn things quite quickly.

As technology changed, librarians had to change a little bit too, to help members of the public, he said.

Invercargill library’s 3D printer had been in the library since 2018 and Cunningham said if there was anything that surprised people about the printer, it was the length of time it took to print an object.

It was not unusual for a print job to take up to 24 hours to print a single object. The printer laid the design down layer by layer, so it could be “quite time-consuming”, Cunningham said.

Cunningham was a big believer in libraries levelling the field for those who couldn’t afford the technology themselves.

“That’s exactly what we’re here for.”

He had people design their own flight simulators, some have made small architectural designs, while others had designed prototypes for machine parts that were broken.

Cunningham said he believed the future of library collections would branch out to include more tech, with things like a 3D printer considered part of a library's collection.

“We’re very much about helping you not just access information and content, but helping you to create and modify content yourself.”

At this point in time, the Nelson Public Library did not have any 3D printers, nor did the Timaru Public Library – but perhaps it wouldn’t be long before they did.