Milwaukee Makerspace at the 2011 Frolics Parade by plural on Flickr. CC-BY-SA.
A few days ago, there was a great essay in Publisher’s Weekly by Brian Kenney about makerspaces in libraries. From the article:
What’s radical about maker spaces in libraries? Pretty much everything. Maker spaces are messy in a library world that values order, disruptive in a culture run by schedules, chaotic in a profession that did, after all, develop the Dewey Decimal System.
Maker spaces also utilize STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, and math), skills that public libraries are notoriously poor at supporting. Traditionally staffed by a bunch of English majors … STEM makes us anxious.
And maker spaces are inherently intergenerational in institutions that make rigid distinctions—about place, access, and behavior—based on age. Just how comfortable will most libraries be with an environment in which a fifth-grader collaborates with a 40-year-old?
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But whether maker spaces thrive or die isn’t the issue. The point is that, letting our communities in and allowing them to shape—or reshape—our institutions, is yet another great survival strategy.
I really appreciate that Kenney talks about the messy and multigenerational aspects of makerspace culture, as well as the sense that makerspaces harness knowledge distributed throughout a community.
Sometimes, when I talk with folks about makerspaces, they envision a very tidy set of classes. Maybe some knitting thrown in? And certainly, knitting can be making, but it’s only a slice of a community’s population (and, often, the slice that’s already using makerspaces). The real challenge for librarians is to create a makerspace culture that welcomes in new faces.
Makerspaces are more than tools: they’re a culture of inclusion and welcoming. And oftentimes, they’re a culture of, “What if?” As we’re fond of saying around here, “A makerspace is more than a 3D printer.”