The Librarian I Want To Be
Article • 551 Words • Libraries, Career, 2026 • 06/13/2026 • View in graph
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Thinking about libraries + makerspaces and teaching/helping people create things.
There are 553 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 3 minutes to read it.
This article was published 2026-06-13 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.
I was riding the Metro the other day when an ad for the National Children’s Museum caught my eye, “Explore interactive exhibits that spark curiosity + joy through playful learning”. A definite shout-out to whoever the copywriters were for that ad who were able to distill such a complex idea into a great tagline. This sentiment met me at the right moment as I am currently preparing to enter my first year of a Masters in Library Science. Stripping away the idea of exhibits or a museum, this captured most if not all of my creative goals/practice, and my future career, if I play my cards right.
Out of the potential “tracks” for the Masters program, I was most drawn to Youth Experience because that is where my most of my experience lies, but I realized that I don’t want to “just” be a youth librarian. I’m interested in educating all kinds of age groups about creating things. Older adults, emerging adults, anyone really who wants to learn something new, it’s about starting a new passion for art and design, for creating things. And think libraries are the best place to do this for a lot of people because they are free and already in the community.
The most likely way this would manifest would be if I were able to work at a library with a hacker/makerspace. I’m no stranger to STEM education or creating educational tools, but as I get older I feel like STEM was focused on jobs, while something like STEAM was more focused on the idea of creation. I think art, design, and engineering are doing a lot of the same thing through different lenses.
My entire life I have been working in the digital realm of software and only recently have been stepping my toes into creating real, tangible things, and I must say that has been quite addicting. With that being said, I’m so new! I don’t know CAD, have no experience with 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC milling, etc. But that’s okay, I still have time to learn it, but also what if in the makerspace, I am a peer, a collaborator? I don’t always want/need to be the teacher, I want to be someone who provides the time and space for working together with someone to solve a problem. I could learn alongside the other people as they bring in different projects.
With advances in LLMs and MCPs, I could definitely see 3D modeling getting a lot easier with the ability to describe the kinds of changes you want to make to a 3D model in plain language. I’m not suggesting everyone skips learning CAD, but I am a strong proponent of the sentiment that you should never do anything that you don’t want to do. If you want to make something should you have to learn how to 3D model? I think that it would be very helpful to understand what is going on, make small changes yourself, and to understand technical limitations, but I think it depends situation to situation. 3D modeling is of course extremely difficult even for humans, so I do not think that the models are quite there yet, but it is a magical future to be able to use language to change reality. Like literal magic.