More Thoughts on Makerspaces in Libraries

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Make It @ Your Library is an initiative of ILEAD USA, in collaboration with Instructables and the American Library Association.
Thinking more about makerspaces in libraries:

My caution about makerspaces is rooted in my sense that we’ve turned to them largely due to this ubiquitous fear that libraries will become irrelevant. The fear that if we don’t change, if we don’t innovate, if we don’t disrupt, then we’ll go the way of the dodo. We latch onto all sorts of ideas that promise to prove our continued relevancy and adaptability to people.

But this fear of irrelevancy is unfounded. For the past decade and more, pretty much every public library in the country has seen their usage rise. The data is clear – door counts, circs, and the use of library resources across the board are going up. More people use public library systems now than ever before.

Why are we so concerned about bending over backwards to prove that we’re relevant? It’s clear that we’re more relevant than we’ve ever been. The data is there for all to see.

Makerspaces serve useful purpose in our communities (absent more formal vocational training opportunities) and that’s great.

But I worry that we’re jumping on the makerspace bandwagon mostly because we’re depending on them to keep us relevant. And that’s the wrong reason.

Libraries change by their very nature. Culture and society evolve and the needs of our communities change. Makerspaces are an innovation that offer useful services to patrons and we should explore that.

But I worry that we’re turning to them—along with other innovations—because we’re in a panic. That’s not a solid foundation on which to build a successful service.

Library Makerspaces

Make It @ Your Library logo
Make It @ Your Library is an initiative of ILEAD USA, in collaboration with Instructables and the American Library Association.
I understand why makerspaces are all the rage in library-land lately. They present an opportunity to educate members of our community in a range of useful hands-on and productive skills.

So why am I wary of them?

Too often, I see library makerspaces that are really nothing more than glorified carpentry or mechanic shops.

Too often, I see patrons using 3D printers and other technology to make nothing more than trinkets and tchotchkes. I have to question the long-term value of this.

In all such cases, though, these makerspaces let the library teach useful skills to people. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

So what’s the problem?
Continue reading “Library Makerspaces” →

Jaron Lanier on the Future of Libraries

I love Jaron Lanier’s take on the future of libraries:

The question of what should happen to libraries is a hard one…. Not all libraries are the same,” he said. “Some libraries have a particular culture of scholarship around them and that’s what they should be about—that culture. Some libraries have an urban culture around them or a community around them, and they should be about that…. I think the thing to do is to not think of the library as an abstract category, but to look at what [a specific library] is actually achieving and how it matters to people, and try to understand that. What in that should be preserved or should be a seed for what comes next?

(This is the last paragraph of the article Computer Science Pioneer Jaron Lanier Discusses Big Data, Privacy at NYPL by Matt Enis, posted on The Digital Shift on October 15, 2013.)

The End Of The Library?

I just read this post on TechCrunch:

The End Of The Library by MG Siegler (posted on October 13, 2013)

Obviously, this post is generating huge reactions among some librarians. There’s not a lot for me to add to the discussion on the future of libraries that I didn’t say in my post Another Librarian’s Response to “What’s a Library?” and in my response to Terry Deary when he suggested that libraries are no longer relevant.

In particular:

He doesn’t see our research resources, our literacy initiatives, our job search assistance, our government documents collections, or our social services. He doesn’t see our partnerships with local school systems and cultural institutions. He doesn’t see community use spaces and safe places to for people to hang out. He doesn’t see a champion of informed democracy and self-improvement. He doesn’t see librarians as curators of information, experts to guide people through society’s myriad information resources.

Continue reading “The End Of The Library?” →

Print, Ebooks & Reading Comprehension

I’m not gonna lie—I do experience a wee bit of a thrill when I get to say I told you so.

OK, this isn’t really an “I told you so” moment… but this is something I’ve been saying for the past several years.

Paper Versus Pixel by Nicholas Carr (posted on Nautilus Quarterly, 2013)

This doesn’t really offer any new ideas. That print offers better reading comprehension than ebooks is something that’s been shown by quite a lot of data recently. The telling quote for me is this:

Some scientists believe that our brain actually interprets written letters and words as physical objects—a reflection of the fact that our minds evolved to perceive things, not symbols… The differences between page and screen go beyond the simple tactile pleasures of good paper stock. To the human mind, a sequence of pages bound together into a physical object is very different from a flat screen that displays only a single “page” of information at a time. The physical presence of the printed pages, and the ability to flip back and forth through them, turns out to be important to the mind’s ability to navigate written works, particularly lengthy and complicated ones. We quickly develop a mental map of the contents of a printed text, as if its argument or story were a voyage unfolding through space.

I told you so.

Internet Censorship: A Global Perspective

Given the blog I posted yesterday about CIPA, I think this is an important perspective to keep in mind:

A Map of the Countries That Censor the Internet by Casey Chan (posted by Gizmodo on August 13, 2013; found via Stephen’s Lighthouse)

This is not in any way to mitigate the irreducible importance of the freedom of information in our democracy. But the larger reality is that we’re far better off on this front than many other people in throughout the world. If anything—this makes upholding our own freedom all the more important, as an example of the benefit to society that it engenders.

CIPA, Censorship & the EFF

For the past few days, this article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been making its way through the library sphere:

The Cost of Censorship in Libraries: 10 Years Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act by Rainey Reitman (posted on September 4, 2013)

There’s much excellent material to go over in this piece. I have many reactions to it. The first and most important being this:

It’s not a library’s job to police people.

It’s not actually our job to act in loco parentis. This is one of the big differences between public libraries and public schools, and it’s something that many library patrons misunderstand. It’s not a library’s job to judge any patron’s information needs—it’s not even any of our business why they need it.

It is our job to provide access to information and to help people learn how to handle it in useful and healthy ways.
Continue reading “CIPA, Censorship & the EFF” →

5 Myths About the 'Information Age' by Robert Darnton

This article needs to be shared as widely as possible! I couldn’t have said any of this any better.

5 Myths About the ‘Information Age’ by Robert Darnton (posted by The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 17, 2011)

It may be a couple years old but the points he makes are important.

I discovered this post through the Library Juice Press blog—for my money, one of the very best library blogs out there.

Theatre, the Arts & Libraries: The Power of Storytelling

One of the things that strikes me most about working in a library is how much overlap there is between libraries and theatre.

In my MLIS program, there were several of us who came from a career in theatrical tech / stage management and were transitioning into librarianship. As I’ve noted before, theatrical technician-to-librarian is a fairly common path.

The professor who taught my Intro to Library Science class (the ever-delightful Dr. Janice Del Negro) once commented that “librarians tend be a little bit off of center”. Theatre people tend to be a lot off of center, so we feel right at home in libraries.

Theatre is about telling stories—librarianship, at heart, is about sharing stories. Both passions are founded on a love of storytelling, a recognition of the irreducible importance of storytelling in society. Even history, science, math… All forms of human communication and the sharing of knowledge are forms of storytelling.

So when I read this article about the nature of arts and theatre, I couldn’t help but think of how it applies libraries, too.

The Truth About the Arts: Art is Activism by Lisa A. Kramer (posted on her blog on August 25, 2013)
Continue reading “Theatre, the Arts & Libraries: The Power of Storytelling” →