The New Jersey AI Hub spent its first year building partnerships with community colleges, universities and startups. Now it’s heading somewhere a lot more familiar to most people: the public library.
The AI Hub marked its one-year anniversary this week with a Statewide Innovation Showcase at Rutgers New Brunswick. Joined by Gov. Mikie Sherrill, it used the moment to announce its next phase: bringing practical AI training directly into communities through libraries, while also building a system to track how AI is actually changing jobs on the ground.
“For the past year, the New Jersey AI Hub has helped ensure New Jerseyans from every community can access the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly changing economy,” Sherrill said. “As New Jersey continues to lead in innovation, we are committed to expanding opportunity and preparing our residents for the technology of the future.”
The community college piece of that work, AI Ready NJ, was already announced last week. This new push goes further into the community and gets more specific about employer demand.
The centerpiece of the new announcement, the NJ AI Library Learning Network is a partnership between the NJ AI Hub, LibraryLinkNJ, the New Jersey State Library and the Garden State Employment and Training Association.
The idea is simple: most people don’t walk into a community college to learn a new skill, but they do walk into a library to do so.
“When people are exposed to a new technology and unsure what it means for their lives, libraries are their place for exploration, discovery, and learning,” New Jersey State Librarian Jen Nelson said. “This partnership gives libraries a way to help New Jerseyans build confidence with AI through practical skills they can use for work, learning, business, and daily life.”
The network will train library staff and bring AI literacy, jobseeker training and small business education directly into communities — covering everyday uses like job searches and business operations rather than abstract AI theory.
“If we want more people to benefit from AI, we have to bring practical training to the places people already trust and use,” Liat Krawczyk, executive director of the NJ AI Hub, said. “Public libraries are one of the most powerful access points we have — for residents, jobseekers, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and community organizations.”
Ralph Bingham III, executive director of LibraryLinkNJ, said the model is built to spread on its own.
“Train library staff, support them with strong materials and a peer network, and help them bring useful, responsible AI learning to the public,” he said.
The other new piece is less visible but arguably more useful long-term: the AI Employer Signal Pilot, a partnership with GSETA that will have selected local workforce development boards gather real, employer-validated information about how AI is actually changing jobs and required skills.
It’s a response to a real gap. Workforce systems often build training programs based on guesses about what employers will need — this pilot tries to replace the guessing with direct employer feedback, county by county.
“The workforce system needs better real-time information about how AI is actually showing up in workplaces,” said Samantha Pfeiffer, executive director of GSETA. “This pilot will help selected counties identify the AI-related skills and training needs employers are seeing on the ground.”
The showcase itself, meanwhile, doubled as a check-in on the Hub’s broader ecosystem.
The event included the first expo day for the Hub’s startup accelerator, operated by Plug and Play, along with founder pitches from its first cohort. In the afternoon, hundreds of faculty and academic leaders gathered to review data from the Hub’s newly launched Intelligence Project, which has mapped more than 200 AI initiatives across 36 higher education institutions in the state.
N.J. EDA Chief Economic Transformation Officer Kathleen Coviello tied the announcements back to the bigger picture.
“New Jersey’s AI economy will be strongest if residents, workers, and small businesses have practical ways to participate,” she said. “These partnerships help move AI readiness closer to communities while giving the workforce system better insight into employer demand.”
A year in, the Hub’s pitch has been consistent: AI readiness isn’t just a university or startup problem. It’s a library card and a community college and a local workforce board problem too.
