Makerspace: the new black?

Makerspace is the buzzword of the year. Makerspaces will plant and support new business, help teens and adults get their careers off the ground, and they will help kids integrate skill and information as they transition to the Common Core at school. Oh, and they will also save your public library.

Can they really do all that? The problem with any new bandwagon is that careful evaluation of what it is and how that dovetails with what you need quite often takes longer than the public ride to the next level will wait for you.

Makerspaces across the country have provided business incubator space, 3D and large format printing, audio and video production space, gaming space, classrooms for instruction on computer topics, business topics, career topics and a variety of hobby topics. As you might imagine, all this comes at a high price, and not every community needs, can afford, or can justify all these uses.

In our project, our first step was to define who we are: what is our library setting and goals, and how can we best utilize the community desire to have a makerspace and that huge $3,000 budget.

Defining ourselves as an elementary school library cut out a lot of options used elsewhere, and made the task much easier to deal with. Elementary schools don’t need business incubators, and gamerspaces are frowned upon. With the advent of the Common Core, curriculum and technology integration is required, so what better use of a makerspace? You can outfit your space to have a spot for every curricular area, or, with a budget like ours, you can specify a few.

For some reason, everyone seems to expect a 3D printer in a makerspace! Maybe it’s just cool to have the newest technology in the newest concept space. Anyway, $3,000 will buy only the very lowest end 3D printer, and that’s it. Knowing we couldn’t do that freed us up to think of other cross-curricular ideas and what we could do to support them.

Even though several of us work in area elementary schools, we all have different perspectives about what is important in today’s library and today’s school curriculum. The thing I appreciate most about the Media Mavens is that we also have all gotten comfortable with collaboration — being right isn’t as important as doing the best we can with what we’ve got for the kids. This project was like that in content as well as process. Some people feel more comfortable taking more control, and they’ve learned to do that in a way that moves the project forward rather than stops everyone in their tracks. We’ve begun to appreciate each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and to use them to everyone’s benefit.

Skippy Says: So why don’t these makerspaces have places to feed, groom and snuggle with dogs?! We’re important in schools and libraries too. You could even run classes in certifying therapy dogs!