LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

 Bringing a group of antsy middle school boys to the Cape Cod Mini Maker Faire on Saturday, really brought home the principles of Do It Yourself in a big way. We set up a table for folks to solder a little Maker badge: 2 LEDs, a cell battery holder and a tie tack to hold it on. At the last minute, I threw in a MaKey MaKey kit and the 3 Doodler. Turns out, our table was busier than we could handle and we ran out of material around 1 p.m.! I wish I had brought three times as many badge kits and 3Doodler plastic as I did. Granted, it was another rainy Saturday in a never-ending cold and clammy Spring that hasn't really happened and I think folks are tired of the same old winter routines. The Maker Faire was free, open to everyone and in a great space on the campus of Cape Cod Community College. There was a wide range of exhibitors: 3-D printers, Martha's Vineyard High School's dump-diving go carts, Barnstable High School's great mapping application, Truro...

With the DFL Children's Room recent purchase of ten Sparkfun Inventor's Kits , a number of us boldly went where no DFL librarian had gone before: into the fascinating but brain-cramping world of Arduino: Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects , taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can communicate with software running on your computer . Luckily, we had as our guide, Kevin Osborn , engineer and Arduino enthusiast. He led our merry band of librarians, trustees, patrons, and teachers, through the jungle of code, into the swamp of breadboards, out ont...

Our young teens have discovered Rube Goldberg! Not only are his illustrations funny and timeless, but it is more challenging than it looks and I am convinced that learning how things work together mechanically is a big plus in the Maker World. This kind of making doesn't have to cost much. You can pull found object from an amazing array of places. The 2 metal pulleys cost a total of $5 at our local hardware store in the clothesline section. We always need to put it all away so another program can use our room. That's where a screen really comes in handy. Casey and Peter send a marble down to hit a whiffle ball which drops the cup, sending the counter weight up the pulley..... Here are some shots of our teens experimenting with pulleys, levers, chain reactions... Check out the Rube Goldberg app you can purchase from your app store: Robert and Stephen experiment with a fan, a feather, and an inflatable globe....           ...

Sometimes it is hard to wrap your brain around a new technology until you see it in action. This weekend I had the opportunity to visit the new MakerBot store on Newbury Street in Boston, MA. If you have not had contact with a 3D printer yet, the MakerBot store offers you a convenient glimpse of multiple 3D printers/scanners in action with examples of a wide range of things to print. The store offers you opportunities to print your own designs or choose an already made design on Thingiverse for a fee. If you don't want to wait for something to print, it also has already made printed objects such as small 3D models of Fenway Park for purchase. For $5, one could obtain a Doctor Who Tardis out of a toy vending machine.  On display in the window were various printed Easter Eggs and rabbits with their attributed designers. Churches, garden gnomes, and even a large samurai bust were on display near each printer. I was amazed at how far the technology has come this year. The quality o...

Jessica helps Andrew trouble shoot his Larson Scanner Tinkering is the goal of any Makerspace. It's not enough to have people sign up for pre-planned projects. What we are striving to do is train patrons in skills, give them some experiences to draw from and then let them explore and discover how their own imaginations, skills they have developed and an appreciation for what is possible to build, construct, develop their own projects. Groups are not herded into the same project. Choice is an important component. On Tuesday, we came just a bit closer to the ideal of open tinkering.... Eli, Jackson, Peter, Martin and Stephen build their siege catapults Robert explores the possibilities of our new 3Doodler to "draw" in 3 dimensions. Andrew and Ben work on their Larson Scanners