Last week, I missed my deadline and there was no Hamilton Public Library column. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with a lack of things to talk about, regardless of the fact that the previous column waxed poetic about writer’s block. Again. The truth is, I was sick. And then, as Friday evening came along and my weekend with my kids began, my four-year-old son had a case of “I’ll have what he’s having” and so began another three days stuck inside constantly cleaning any potentially soiled surface (read: all of them), preventing me from working on the column at home. Eventually I accepted that this would be one of those rare instances of no HPL column. My apologies.
So now I’m back and luckily last week I had some notes before I fell ill… let me see… “New story room i can’t even see because i’m sick.” Wait, that’s it? I guess I WAS sick. So while I was out, we had some cabinets installed in our story room, thanks to the Friends of the Library. This is part of a larger project to convert what amounts to a secondary meeting space into a fully-functioning-but-don’t-call-it-a-makerspace-school-aged-kids’-program-area. We have yet to decide on a name. Because of the lack of a name, it’s something I’ve been avoiding discussing in this column, regardless of how exciting it is and how much I want to talk about it.
So why am I talking about it? Well, as mentioned above, it is starting to look like a whole new area. And also the renovations and changing of our room reservation policy are eliciting some public confusion. How do I know this? Because people have been reaching out to me asking what’s going on! While we have yet to decide on a name for the space, we do know what it will be used for. Here, we will combine state-of-the-art STEAM technology with specialty crafting hardware for a variety of age groups. Programs utilizing this new technology will serve as an introduction to coding and computer science, to name a few, and it will be open to the public.
So hopefully this gets you a little excited about what we and the Friends of the Library have been working on for quite a long time. Thanks for reading, and if you have any ideas on what to name this room, email me at tolivera@midyork.org!
