The Information Professional

Last week I had an interesting Twitter conversation regarding a popular rhetorical strategy surrounding maker-spaces, New Librarianship, participatory culture, and the other assorted "big ideas" for the future of libraries."

 

"The common thread and the favored tactic in the literature surrounding libraries and maker-spaces is to draw a sharp distinction between the consumption of knowledge and the creation of knowledge. By ‘knowledge consumption’ most writers seem to mean reading; by ‘knowledge creation’ most seem to mean hacking, tinkering, building, making, or collaborating. And the way the conversation is being shaped by this rhetoric, it’s clear that knowledge consumption is old and in the way and what we really need is to forge ahead into a bright future of knowledge creation. Yes, some librarians make the case that we need both creation and consumption (e.g., “…in addition to knowledge consumption”), but the rhetorical device is still in play: knowledge can be either consumed or created, and the library of the future is weighted towards creation."

Put to a vote among unconference participants, “Creative Spaces” won out as the topic of choice (beating by a wide margin digital relevancy, advocacy, and budgeting).

Attendees shared ideas, with an emphasis on low-cost, practical ways to implement “Maker” activities in the library.  Much of the conversation urged partnering with other organizations, including:

Reddit subcommunities. Local groups have formed around social news site Reddit. Consider hosting an event at your library. Or how about Ikea Hackers? Your local college or university. Don’t have native expertise among your library staff? Consider reaching out to a technical college or student organization to help lead programming.Area crafters. The Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library enlisted the local Etsy community to help launch projects, from making zines to bicycle tire art.Hacker spaces. From robotics and electronics to wood and metal working, these groups are springing up worldwide.

By Peter M
"According to leading educational thinker, Sir Ken Robinson, in order to meet the challenges of living and working in the 21st century, we need to deliberately and systematically create spaces and processes in our schools that foster creativity and innovation. We shouldn’t be anaesthetising our children, he argues, we should be waking them up."

[...]

"Since 2009, a growing wave of library ‘makerspaces’ have emerged in public libraries, museums and community facilities in the United States to foster collaboration and creativity. Focussing particularly on engaging and inspiring teens and pre-teens, it is only very recently however that the ‘makerspace’ model has been considered as a good fit for school libraries.
A ‘makerspace’ is a collaborative learning environment where young people can come together to explore their own interests, learn to use tools and materials, and develop creative projects. They are dynamic workshop spaces for creative multimedia learning and doing. Not so much defined by the space or the specific activities but by a mindset of collaboration and creativity."

[...]

"It is essential that school leaders apply the same spirit of innovation and future focus to the re-imagination of their school library environments as they do to other aspects of both their built and virtual school environment. Library as creative collaborative makerspace is an exciting, transformative idea that warrants exploration."

 

Read more: http://www.schools.natlib.govt.nz/blogs/libraries-and-learning/12-09/reconceptualising-school-library-collaborative-makerspace