By Brendan Ulmer
I love good value, and I hate spending money. When I was in college, I would not buy meat from Dillon’s unless it was marked down, I would not buy video games that weren’t on sale, and I wouldn’t buy clothes that weren’t used. This love of a good deal — among many other reasons — is why I love the library. For just a few dollars a month, I co-own more books than I can fit in my house, hundreds of movies, and five 3D printers.
As a member of the Tribune news staff, it is wise for me to have a library card so I can access newspaper archives and cross-reference information about local and national events. This was the perfect reason to do what I wanted to do anyway, which was check out what kind of stuff the Hutchinson Public Library has. I had heard great things, and great things are what I saw.
I started in the basement to check out the maker space, which I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of. Immediately, you are greeted with a 3D printed “open” sign, where the letters — placed on gears — can be spun back around to say “closed”. If you are a creative, crafty or industrious person, and you have never been to the Hutchinson Public Library’s maker space, I could not recommend it more. They have the 3D printers I’ve been alluding to, embroidery and sewing machines, a book press, a soldering machine, computers for 3D design and coding, and that’s only listing the stuff that has stuck with me personally — they have even more equipment than that open to you and me.
It stuck out to me how much of an opportunity a place like the maker space would be for a gifted child. A child with an early knack for engineering and design likely does not have a 3D printer at home, not only because of the cost of the printer itself, but also the software needed to operate it and the constant expense of refilling the machine with plastic. Having public access to cutting-edge equipment allows the young folks in our community to have a leg up when it comes to sharpening skills that are only going to get more valuable as they get older.
I then went upstairs to the bookshelves and was once again confronted by the uncomfortable fact that I do not know how the Dewey Decimal System works.
I was looking for something by Don Delillo, and Google led me to believe that the Dewey Decimal system would classify his books as 813.54s — do not believe everything you read on the internet. In reality, the book I was looking for was classified under D, as in D for Delillo, or D as in “Dewey Decimal Systems don’t cover fiction books in most libraries, Dummy”. The dummy in the previous sentence is me, not you, if you also didn’t know that. I’m supposed to know things; I work for the newspaper.
The Library has something for everyone. I know that’s a cliche, but I really mean it. If you don’t like to read, go check out their large selection of movies and CDs. If you even just need a place to be for a few hours, you can sit down, crack a book, play on a computer, as long as you’re keeping it quiet, the library is a place where all are welcome.