dr-archeville:

“It is about making knowledge available and initiating the public to make knowledge themselves,” says Jeroen de Boer, co-author of the upcoming book Makerspaces in Libraries.  “Makerspaces are the places where knowledge exchange happens in new ways.”  Libraries are increasingly inviting places for these areas, which are essentially DIY spaces where people can go to access resources and exchange ideas in order to create and invent things.

With new technology, libraries are not necessarily doing a different job — they are doing the same job, just better.  Public libraries in the United States, dating back to the 19th century, have always given people greater access to ideas.  Before the Internet, those ideas could be found back in the stacks among the books.  They were a collection of past knowledge, available free of charge to anyone with a library card, as Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting explained succinctly to an over-privileged grad student: “You dropped a 150 grand on a [expletive] education you could have gotten for a $1.50 in late charges at the public library.”

What’s different about this new trend is how it incorporates a focus on inspiring the future.  Libraries that invest in commercial manufacturing technology give patrons access to past and future ideas.  An inventor doesn’t have to spend thousands of dollars and wait weeks for a prototype – they can go to a public library and make a prototype for a few cents.  Many inventors who work in libraries use a website called Thingiverse.com, a repository of 3-D designs for anyone to upload or download.  Just like book collections, it is free to access, and the only cost to library users is for materials.

“Libraries are about more than collections — they are about information.  Making things is a way for information engagement.”