The Information Professional

Video of Lauren’s final project for the “Innovation in Public Libraries” class taught by Meg Backus and Thomas Gokey

"We want to see 3D printing, FabLabs and Hackerspaces become a regular feature--in addition to its other services--at every public library in the country. This is a description of our proposal to create a FabLab in the Fayetteville Free Library and gives a brief introduction to what 3D printing is and how revolutionary it will be for those who are unfamiliar with it. A FabLab is a fabrication laboratory (or a fabulous laboratory).

A hackerspace is just a public library under a different name (although I’m not aware of any hackerspaces that are publicly funded, its time to change that!).

It is a place where people gather to share their knowledge and help each other make whatever project they are currently working on. This video was made in support of Lauren Britton-Smedley’s proposal to create a pilot FabLab at the Fayetteville Free Library.

"Shareable has an interview with librarian Lauren Britton Smedley from the Fayetteville Free Library, which is adding a Fab Lab to its community offerings.

She said, 'I think that libraries are really centers for knowledge exchange, and a Fab Lab fits perfectly into something like that. This idea that libraries are a place where the books live, and you go to find a book, and that’s all it is, I think is really starting to shift. Libraries are a place for social transformation. They’re a place that you can go to get computer access, or access to technology that you can’t get anywhere else, and access to people. ...

At the Fab Lab, the impetus behind the whole thing was to create a center for knowledge exchange where we’re not just offering Intro to Word or Intro to Excel — that we can offer Intro to Computer Programming, or Digital Fabrication — these skills that are really important in the STEM fields, and we can push that information out for free."