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This week we are looking at library makerspaces!
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Makerspaces are an exciting trend in libraries of all types and sizes. Although their traditional programs are STEM/STEAM based technology learning, they can involve all sorts of programs that inspire patrons to try new skills and to create new things.
Library Examples:
Here are some libraries doing great work with makerspaces. See what they are doing, and think about how to add in more services to your own library!
Books We are Reading
We are library people, we read a lot of books! Read these, or send us your suggestions for books that you are reading and enjoying. We will try to add them to a future podcast.
Mary
Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty “A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer — before they kill again. It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died. Maria’s vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn’t the only one to die recently…”
Magic for Nothing, by Seanan McGuire “As the youngest of the three Price children, Antimony is used to people not expecting much from her. She’s been happy playing roller derby and hanging out with her cousins, leaving the globe-trotting to her older siblings while she stays at home and tries to decide what she wants to do with her life. She always knew that one day, things would have to change. She didn’t think they’d change so fast. Annie’s expectations keep getting shattered. She didn’t expect Verity to declare war on the Covenant of St. George on live television. She didn’t expect the Covenant to take her sister’s threat seriously. And she definitely didn’t expect to be packed off to London to infiltrate the Covenant from the inside…but as the only Price in her generation without a strong resemblance to the rest of the family, she’s the perfect choice to play spy. They need to know what’s coming. Their lives may depend on it. But Annie has some secrets of her own, like the fact that she’s started setting things on fire when she touches them, and has no idea how to control it. Now she’s headed halfway around the world, into the den of the enemy, where blowing her cover could get her killed. She’s pretty sure things can’t get much worse. Antimony Price is about to learn just how wrong it’s possible for one cryptozoologist to be.”
Angie
A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf “In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister—a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, she takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have a fixed income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create.”
Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott “It’s not like she’s the only woman to ever have a baby. At thirty-five. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all important first year. From finding out that her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out that her best friend and greatest supporter Pam will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but very little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events that make up a woman’s life.”
Each week we look at a library that is doing some great work, and share their information with you. Take that information and use it to implement some new ideas in your library, or to refresh the ideas you are already using! The Lewis and Clark media center is not only doing some very interesting work with their makerspace, in addition to sharing ideas for starting your own makerspace!; they also have some great resource for their community.
