UMFK Blazes A Trail
For Public 3D Printing
By The University of maine at Fort Kent
In a small corner of a publicly accessible computer lab
in the University of Maine at Fort Kent Blake Library
is a gray cube that has students talking all across the
campus.
Foundation. At the annual UMFK Foundation
meeting in 2015, Bernstein appealed to the board to
fund the printer and scanner by proving the printer’s
usefulness as an enrichment tool.
Students, staff, and faculty were taking trips to that
special corner to watch a 3D printer, which is about
the size of a dorm refrigerator, as it slowly created a
detailed replica of a human hand.
He pointed out that libraries need to take in mind
the modernization of society when considering their
future. “I have a device in my pocket, through which
I can access more information than any library can
hold, within seconds,” Bernstein said, referring to
his mobile phone. “The value of libraries no longer
lies within the stacks, it lies with the ability to
offer communities direction from, and curation of,
information found elsewhere. Part of the mission of
the modern library is to offer tools communities can
use to enhance their lives and capitalize on ideas and
create beautiful things. So, when someone gets an
idea, rather than go to a library to research it, they do
their own research and go to the library to make their
idea a reality.”
The 3D printer, a 3DSystems CubePro, is the first
time the University of Maine System has placed the
new technology in a library and made it available to
all students, staff, faculty, and community patrons.
3D printers have been around in one form or another
for many years, and other UMS campuses have
installed the devices and made them available to
specific departments or programs. UMFK has made
the technology, which can be prohibitively expensive,
available to any patron who comes to the library.
The library also has a portable scanner which allows Associate Library Director Sofia Birden said she has
people to record objects in three dimensions which started preparing her staff to manage the printer. “The
the printer can later create.
staff have been very excited, and a little trepidacious.”
She is excited the printer has become a part of the
The process of printing a 3D object occ \