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The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association, is collaborating with IBM to help teens learn new technical and professional skills using IBM’s Open P-TECH platform at participating libraries. The free digital learning platform features interactive, multi-part courses on topics including artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, data science, blockchain, and design thinking, as well as resources for teachers and librarians for each topic.
As library buildings close, library workers are finding ways to help communities mitigate the COVID-19 crisis—including utilizing maker space tools and tech to create much-needed personal protective equipment.
In July, the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, University of Massachusetts–Amherst Libraries, and University of Nevada–Reno were jointly awarded a three-year, $241,845 National Leadership Project Grant, “Maker Immersion: Developing Curriculum Design and Assessment Skills for Academic Makerspace Course Integration,” from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
This spring, the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library took the term “Maker space” to a different level—more specifically, out of this world—when an unmanned spacecraft flew parts of a project created at its Madison branch to the International Space Station.
Broward County Library, FL, has begun loaning out augmented reality / virtual reality headsets at nine of its 38 branches in a new pilot test with MERGE Labs, a tech startup focused primarily on the K–12 education market.
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik on Monday extended a ban on the online publication of digital blueprints that can be used to manufacture guns with 3-D printers and computer numerical controlled (CNC) milling machines. Since a growing number of U.S. public and academic libraries provide access to 3-D printers and CNC milling machines as part of Maker spaces and fab lab workshops, the case has drawn attention from the library field.
From the Smithsonian Libraries “Unbound” Blog: Museum in a Box (MiaB) is the newest project that is allowing the Smithsonian Libraries to bring their artifacts and images into the hands of young students all around the nation.
A longtime LJ video reviewer (and 2004 Video Reviewer of the Year), Ellen Druda is best known on Long Island for her decades of work as an ever-adaptive, always innovative technology specialist. Although Druda earned her MLS in 1976, her career began in media, first at CBS News and then at the upstart MTV network. “I loved all the cameras and editing equipment. I remember feeling bristly at being the only female in the tech area!” she says.
There was a clear need for collaborative and creative community spaces in the branches of Ontario’s Hamilton Public Library (HPL). We had two objectives: provide customers with the services and technology they couldn’t easily access at home and support the city’s growing arts and innovation community.
As librarians, we are always on the lookout for opportunities to improve the user experience. When you have a great idea and time to plan, focus groups can help uncover attitudes, experiences, and opinions through group discussion.
Chromebook deployment, targeted Maker spaces, open source disruption, and improving institutional social media practices were among the other topics discussed during the Library Information Technology Association’s Top Tech Trends panel at the American Library Association’s annual conference on June 25.
As Maker spaces in libraries become increasingly common, often backed by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—and Maker activities without a dedicated space even more so—anyone who follows the professional literature and conference presentations is surely aware of the buzz around Making. But just how much does that buzz represent widespread practice, and of what precisely do these offerings consist?
Erik Berman subscribes to a “teen run, teen led” mentality, according to senior librarian Sharon Fung at San José Public Library (SJPL). “He works tirelessly to get to know his teens, build their confidence, and guide them into taking an active role in the library.” Hand in hand with local teens and professional designers, Berman is responsible for the creation of the new teen center, TeenHQ, in San José’s central Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library.
Before December 2014, when she stepped into the new role of San José Public Library’s (SJPL) technology and innovation project manager (now innovations manager), Erin Berman launched SJPL’s first Maker faire, which introduced 200 people to after-school STEM [science, technology, engineering, math] programs. She believes Making can empower her community and help close the digital divide. Statewide, 25 percent of Californians in 2014 lacked broadband Internet access at home, according to a Field Poll. “When someone walks into one of our libraries and says they want to learn something, we don’t just hand them a book; we hand them the tool and teach them how to use it,” Berman says.
As a new teen specialist at Meridian Library District in 2011, Nick Grove drew on a disengaged after-school crowd to grow program attendance by 233 percent in three years, partly by buying teen-relevant technology, such as six 3-D printers. Grove capitalized on those purchases: when he challenged a bored teen to read a chapter in a book, the teen read three and was rewarded with a 3-D version of the book’s logo. “We struggled for two months together,” says Grove, “to figure out how to print the logo; the teen became an advocate for library programs…and a bigger advocate for the book.”
A finalist for School Library Journal’s 2014 School Librarian of the Year Award, Colleen Graves has made her mark developing top-notch Maker spaces at Lamar Middle School in Flower Mound, TX, and her current school, Ryan High School, in Denton, as well as lesson plans and other resources applicable to many Maker spaces. When Graves began her career in education 14 years ago, though, it was as an English teacher.
The maker movement and 3-D printing technology catalyze innovation and promote entrepreneurship by emphasizing “making” over “consuming” and facilitate experiential learning and rapid prototyping. To many, library Maker spaces are also often the only facility within their reach that offers open access to 3-D printing and scanning equipment. For these reasons, creating a Maker space for patrons is often an attractive project.
Can I take this home? is a question I would hear every day while in the Hotspot at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s (FLP) Village of Arts and Humanities. The “thing” in question was a MaKey MaKey, and the answer was always, “No, but you can take home what you are plugging it into!” Working with youth aged seven to 18 years old we were creating computer-connected mazes with Play-Doh, homemade Dance Dance Revolution dance-pads using copper tape, and novel game controllers operated by licking ice cream.
It isn’t surprising that 3-D printers are often mentioned in the same breath as library Maker spaces. “Additive manufacturing” technology is about 30 years old, but as it becomes more refined, as well as more affordable, its growing importance to engineering and prototyping appears to be inevitable, as well as its use in everything from medicine to haute cuisine. Meanwhile, during the past few years, dozens of small desktop units have become available, most priced out of reach for casual users but within the means of many libraries interested in offering their communities access to new technologies.
In a move that will help the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) expand Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM)-based Maker space programming to multi-generational audiences, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on October 23 awarded a $500,000 National Leadership Grant to FLP in support of the library’s Maker Jawn initiative.
The Westport Library's ongoing efforts to support its Maker Space, including Maker in Residence programs and the recent acquisition of two programmable robots, have helped establish a virtuous cycle in which residents have begun working on their own projects and helping one another independently.
How often do librarians find themselves trying to explain that the library’s mission is not about books but about information? This public misunderstanding about what we are doing and why leads to a community misconception of what we should be doing in the future. The reality is that we as librarians make the same mistake all the time. We know intellectually that informational flow and access are our main missions, but our decisions and our hearts often put the focus on books. Books, in many cases, remain by far the best delivery vehicle for information, but there are many subject areas where other informational vehicles would be more effective, even if implementing those vehicles might mean less money spent on books.
In the latest in our series of interviews with 2014’s Library Journal Movers & Shakers from academic backgrounds, sponsored by SAGE, we talk to University of Alabama (UA) librarian Vincent Scalfani. With a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Colorado, Scalfani now serves as the Science and Engineering librarian at UA, where he oversees programs like the university’s 3-D printing studio, while also teaching classes in the chemistry department to help graduate students better understand the research tools available to them, as well as how to more effectively communicate their work in journal articles and presentations.
Makerspaces, open source platforms, and other library rebuilds were the touchstones of this year’s Computers in Libraries Conference. The attendee statistics for the 2014 Computers in Libraries Conference, held April 7- 9, are identical to those of a decade ago: 2000 attendees from 46 states and 13 countries. However, the number of speakers had doubled, to two hundred. And, with approximately a third of the presenters making their CIL debut, there was a palpable sense of excitement vibrating through the halls and conference rooms of the Washington Hilton.
Nine-year-old Matthew is the owner of a brightly-colored prosthetic Robohand that was created in the MakerSpace of the Johnson County Library in Overland Park, KS.
At the University of Oregon (UO), staff at the Science Library have only had an in-house 3D printer for a few months, but have wasted no time putting the new equipment to use. At the beginning of January, the library printed a 3D model of a rare fossil in the UO paleontology department’s collection—the remains of a 5-million-year old saber toothed salmon.
Madison, Wisconsin’s struggling public access TV station, WYOU, has a new lease on life, courtesy Madison Public Library. The station, which has been limping along since a 2010 state law cut its funding, has been welcomed into the new Madison Central Library branch. Library staff and station volunteers described the new partnership as a win-win situation that lets the station eliminate its rent costs and take advantage of the library’s media lab and equipment, while the library gets a batch of potential new volunteers and media teachers with years of experience, and the chance to experiment with serving as an incubator for community-produced media.
Make It @ Your Library, in collaboration with Instructables.com and the American Library Association, has finally launched its searchable website, makeitatyourlibrary.org, for librarians seeking maker space ideas and projects. Make It @ Your Library—an initiative developed through the ILEAD USA program over the past year—aims to help librarians realize maker projects in their own communities at low cost.
The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) has awarded the Round Rock Public Library System a grant of $49,500 to build Innovation Station, an after-school maker space and program that aims to engage middle schoolers in project-based science, technology, engineering, mathematics, art and design activities. The grant is part of a total $1.6 million in awards that TSLAC is distributing in fiscal 2014 to Texas library programs.
Two library service prototyping spaces, in two very different places, have a remarkable amount in common. Nate Hill runs and operates the 4th Floor in Chattanooga, a large public library loft space operating as a flexible community makerspace and event space. Jeff Goldenson co-ran and operated Labrary, a 37-day design experiment occupying a vacant storefront in Cambridge.
In what must certainly rank as one of the least expensive plans ever proposed to replace a library’s aging online public access catalog terminals, White Plains Public Library (WPPL) will soon roll out terminals built in-house using $49 APC or $35 Raspberry Pi computers.
Ongoing efforts by trade and scholarly publishers to demand higher prices for their digitized content and the growing, if flawed, perception that new technologies have made the information function of libraries obsolete have put librarians on the defensive. New devices and methods to deliver the entertainment and information people want have rekindled ancient debates about the mission of the library.
Facebook is in many ways an anti-model for libraries, but from this one action libraries can learn much. On May 24, 2007, Facebook became a platform: a set of resources — services, data, tools — that enable independent developers to create applications. Interesting possibilities open up if we think of libraries as platforms...open platforms. A library platform would be about developing knowledge and community, not primarily for developing software. Still, like an open software platform, it would:
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