LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

I'm always reflecting and evaluating how something is working especially something as expensive as our Ultimaker 2 3D printer.  Before purchasing a 3D printer, make sure to have a talk with staff about what they hope to accomplish with this printer. Is it a program? Is it a self-directed service? Is it both? This is true for any kind of new equipment such as video to DVD conversion, scanners, free Adobe suite products, and other items in our digital media lab. Ideally, people would come in, sit down and independently use the equipment for personal projects but some might need that initial tutorial for the confidence to begin. I don't think we are at a point yet where most people have enough exposure to 3D printers to offer it as just another service (like our ink jet printers) without some beginner programming. It needs highlighting in newsletters, website, social media, etc. Sometimes it just takes that one hour program to encourage the self-directed learning that you hope t...

We finally had our Grand Reveal for our Arduino Garden Wall last Thursday and it was fun seeing the reaction from youth and adults alike. Some found the Garden Wall perplexing, "What is this doing here?" Some found it delightful, "You had youth, an artist, and an engineer working together on this?" Bringing over our Ultimaker2 and having it running a loop of bracelet-making was also a big hit. Because the artwork is on a rolling partition, bringing it up to the Reference floor was not a huge problem. We had made sure there were no delicate wires dragging and no reason why we couldn't fold it up fairly close to get it into the elevator. Because it is so colorful and the visuals Sally Dean created are so delightful, it can hold up to being turned off most of the time and still be a visually pleasant addition to the surroundings. We will keep it in its current location for a few weeks and then move it back against a wall near to the Digital Media Lab where ...

Last week, when we demoed our 3D printers, one mother asked me, "Why is this at the library?" I think projects like our summer interactive wall will be the answer to her question. Thanks to the help of local artist Sally Dean Mello ,"maker in residence" Kevin Osborn and students from our Tuesday Tinkering Lab, we've begun working on an interactive wall that can be wheeled around the library. Our goal was to have a painted mural wall that patrons can touch with 3D moving aspects. We started by buying a plastic screened wall which Sally designed and outlined a garden scene. We decided upon this wall because we could move it around the library, or maybe even take it on the road, rather than using one of our permanent walls. For the past 2 weeks, students have been coloring it in with acrylic paint during our Tinkering Lab. We invited art students from the high school to come over and now we have a few newcomers to the Lab.  While this has been going on, we ha...

With a collaborative grant writing effort from community members and library staff, we are proud to announce that we won 2 Cube 3D Printers from the Maker Lab Club in collaboration with the American Library Association, American Makes, and the Association of Science and Technology Centers. We cannot believe how easy these were to set up.  The first one took some extra time as we had to navigate around the new website to find the software, activate the printers, and calibrate it but we were able to figure it out in an hour. The 2nd printer took about 15 minutes! With the 25 free designs already preset for the Cube, we printed a chess piece Rook. It took an hour and a half to print. It even had a staircase inside, what great detail! The Cube has it's own software and design file name (not the standard .stl) so files designed elsewhere will have to go through their software before printing. Once it is ready, file transfer is done over a flash drive that is plugged in directly t...

Sometimes people need an incentive to try something new or dig deeper into a familiar creative tool. That's what we hope will happen when we announce the 2015 Creative Graphics Challenge this winter. We challenge our teen and adult patrons to come up with a marketing package for the Duxbury Free Library's event during April, National Poetry Month. We are looking for original graphics: a brochure, a flyer, a web page mock up, some art that we can use on bookmarks, signs, etc. Use our Adobe Creative Cloud Suite in our new Digital Media Lab and let your imagination go wild! The deadline is February 28, 2015 so we can judge and start using the resulting winning graphics for our Poetry Campaign this winter!  What do you get?  You get the opportunity to put this competitive contest on your college brag sheet or work-related resumé. So start your creative juices flowing! Interested? Sign up at the Reference Desk of the Duxbury Free Library. You can download the in...

This week was beach week. We headed down to Duxbury Beach on Monday night and held a Mad Scientist Sand Sculpting Event. It was open to all ages without any prizes or contest pressure. The sand sculpture event has been a staple of the summer reading program for many years. Beach sculpting is an art and science of its own. One thing we had to think about was when the tides come in and out. It just took a quick call to the Harbor master to schedule. Holding library events off site is a great opportunity to meet and greet new people. Some families joined into the event just because they happened to be at the beach that night. I loved that the sand sculptures all had their own stories, a wonderful literacy component. This one picture above was a favorite of mine, complete with a light house and guard house. For our weekly Backyard Ballistics on Tuesday, we built boats with DC motors, AA Battery packs, and popsicle sticks. We left out a wide variety of floating materials such as fo...

 Hearing Bill Derry from the Westport, CT. public library talk about transforming libraries is heady stuff, but it wasn't until I starting talking to young people myself that I realized the urgency of the mission. Bill Derry talks about moving libraries from thinking "collection development" to "connection development." What does that mean? I think it means actively seeking out the people in your community who have skills to share and people who need to learn those skills. Then providing the community with a place and resources to facilitate making things. He juxtaposes these old vs. new library polarities: Library Centric vs. Learning Centric Language Literacy vs. Multiple Literacies Answers vs. Questions Library as Grocery Store vs. Library as Kitchen Little time for Science vs. Emphasis on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) Here is how South Carolina public librarian, Melanie Florencio, explains it in a TEDX Creative Coast 7...

 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...

We have these origami trees on our children's help desk that one of our talented staff made for her winter themed display and they received so many compliments and questions that we made a QR code sign that directly led people to the instructions.  The desk has been one of those places traditionally kept without advertisements but so much attention made me start to wonder... As librarians, we tend to get flyer crazy. I've walked into many libraries where there are signs and flyers everywhere: No cellphones, No food or drink, Musical guest this Sunday, Printing- 15 cents a page, or Please sign up at the desk (just to name a few). You can see that it might be overload for anyone walking in especially if they are trying to chase a 2 year old around. But how to engage the child without text? And so begins my marketing experiment, based on all the excitement and interest in the origami trees at the desk, it seems like this would be a great place to start marketing STEM programs ...

I had one of those eureka moments at a meeting a few weeks ago, when a fellow staff member was talking about her writing group and the importance of having open ended free writing components. I thought, "Hey that's tinkering too!" I think if we all look hard enough we can find lots of examples of tinkering that we do in our everyday lives or in already established library groups that doesn't have to involve electronics. I've always been a "don't read directions first" kind of person, which was tough during my schooling years but that's the beginning of my tinkering. Can I figure it out without looking at the directions? We all develop educational and life strategies based in part by our personalities. For me, this tinkering led me to always jump head first into technology. I was never afraid of "breaking it." I'm the kind of person that purchases Adobe Photoshop and just begins by pressing all the buttons before I crack open a tu...

The Case for Libraries as Makerspaces Although there is a big educational component to the Makerspace Movement, setting up a Makerspace in your library should not be limited to simply finding people to give one-shot lectures or courses. We've been a venue for lectures for decades. Why not just leave classes on topics of interest to the evening classes at the high school or senior center? The answer is that we are using instructional classes and drop-in help with trouble-shooting as a stepping stone towards an ultimate goal of creating a space where people have the skills, tools, resources both human and physical, and TIME to experiment, explore, and create something new. The intellectual impetus around Makerspace is the goal of unleashing people's creative juices and making something new that isn't a kit, isn't on a crib sheet, hasn't been thought of yet. Librarians are exactly the right people to cultivate this movement because we are experts at finding r...

Even under the best and safest of circumstances, accidents can happen. That's why we have put together a Release Form which we cribbed from the Makerspace Manual and personalized it for use here at our library:               For a MSWord copy of this form, click here

The library can be a place where people passionate about their hobbies can share their love for things like knitting, chicken-raising, bee-keeping, coupon-cutting, photography, music, writing, electronic gadgets, fishing, travel... You name it, there's probably a community member doing it with knowledge, passion, and an interest in sharing their hobbies with others. Why does it have to be a big deal, an expensive commitment, a risky new challenge?  Why can't it be neighbors teaching neighbors and sharing their experience and passion about a life style choice? Listen, ask, dig under the surface for the expertise and commitment needed for great programming. Set up a regular schedule, provide space, equipment, staff support and good media advertising and your library will become the go-to place for information and support. The best teachers are people who are passionate about the subject - who are doing it for love.  Set up some practice sessions so you can help your patr...