LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

It was hard at first to wrap my brain around doing a science based session of story times as a stay alone program for 10 4-5 yr olds for 30 minutes. In my 9 years of experience, I've never hosted a stay alone story time (crazy right?). How do I even begin? How messy should I get? What happens since I'm by myself trying to conduct experiments without parental help? What about food allergies? What kinds of questions do I ask? I decided that the whole session would be us pretending to be scientists, using their tools, and experimenting/observing a new theme each week. One of my main concerns was organizing the flow. I like stations but it's hard to do that without more supervision so we tried to do as much as possible as a group first and then had a few choices to play with afterwards. This was a great jumping off point for me from the Boston Children's Museum STEM Family Activity Guide & the Boston Children's Museum Sprouts. Then I went to Pinterest for t...

While primarily being a resource for individuals to do their projects, we also plan to run group sessions using Lynda.com as a great teaching tool for groups as well as individuals. We did a soft launch over the summer for our new Digital Media Lab with well-attended sessions on Windows 8 and how to buy and sell of Ebay. We had advertised in the traditional way: in the building, on Facebook, on the web site, in the local newspaper. Now, with the start of school year, we are eager to reach out beyond the usual library patrons and people who read the local newspaper to find new patrons of the library who may not realize we have something they might need. Hence, having paid for an initial 6 month Meetup membership to try it out and using it for an Adult Board Game Meetup group and a Crafting group, we thought creating a Duxbury Adobe Explorers Meetup group might be a good idea. Almost as soon as we posted our first Meetup for last night, we got 19 members. Eight of them came to ou...

As we prepared for the "Fizz, Boom, Read" Maker-style national summer reading program, we received reactions that we found surprising and a bit disturbing. When advertising our weekly Middle School hands on program, Backyard Ballistics (limited to air and water propulsion - no, we decided gun powder was off limits), we advertised on our teen web page and in the local newspaper: "Making stuff that moves, propels, explodes, and causes other stuff to happen." Teens and their parents quickly signed up and we currently have a waiting list. Our first activity was Stomp Rockets and we played a bit with rocket design to see what shape would travel the furthest. An older couple read the newspaper blurb and asked to speak to the director. She found out that, although they were completely clear that our intentions were benign, they felt others might think that we were promoting terrorism and bomb-making. Hm. Over the winter our resident knitters did a program called ...

I had the opportunity to attend the annual Teen Summit, hosted by the Massachusetts Library System and the Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services in Worcester this past week.  Youth librarians from both states were invited to come together and talk shop. The theme this year was "Full STEAM Ahead", a subject that here at the DFL, is right on target. The keynote speaker was the delightful YA author, Marissa Meyer, who surprisingly spent a small amount of time talking about her wonderful science fiction fairy tale quartet "The Lunar Chronicles" and most of her presentation introducing the concept of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math). Using her childhood love of Star Trek, she posed the question; When does science fiction inspire fact or visa versa? Did the Star Trek communicator inspire a flip phone? Will warp speed ever exist? Did the fashionable Geordi La Forge visors inspire tools that grant sight? These were just a f...

Many of you know that Jessica and I are trying things out on our Middle School group, the PHILS, on Tuesday afternoons, with the objective being to gauge activity flow, supervision requirements, etc. in preparation for a more robust on-going Tuesday program for a more diverse age group. One of the interesting things we have found is that it's good to have a couple of options to choose from on any given day. Gathering first to explain and perhaps grab a teachable moment, then allow some free flow between activities. Some kids really like to dig into one thing, others like to try a few things out. This feels important to me because if we want this program to be on-going and a bit self-sustaining, we can't be constantly coming up with unique activities every week, but I don't feel that that's necessary! The Take-Apart Table is ALWAYS interesting. I learned that limiting the number of things to take apart is better. Yesterday, someone took apart an old keyboard. Ins...

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

Gathering a group of thoughtful, engaged local Duxbury residents helped us push our "Library-as-Makerspace" ideas even further with a sense of community "buy-in." A lively discussion ensued, much of which is shared here: Links we showed include: Westport Library's 3D printer :  Innisfil Library's Digital Media Lab - the business edition Duxbury Free Library PHILS first electronics workshop Ideas:   3-D Printer Help with social media Building a web site Collaborating with the schools / different needs for different generations Gathering place Collaborate with service groups such as the Lion’s Club Fabrication lab w/ training and tinkering available Photography / dark room Place for projects to be worked on / mentoring avail. Setting for parents/children to go something together. Craft sale of handmade products / learn a business model. Opportunities to write / publish / Setting for parents/children to go something together. Use co...