Slashdot Mirror
Are Maker Spaces the Future of Public Libraries?
misterbarnacles writes "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. And how do we do that? By getting people in the community who know that stuff to come in and share what they know.'"
Maybe you need to read some books. It is then not than. Get a clue.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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.
"Starting" to shift? Libraries haven't been about books in at least 10 years (since I became a librarian). In fact, the "it's not about books" thing was a long-tired cliche even then.
I'm not religious at all, I don't buy into it, however the positive side of religion is as a community center, a gathering places for people to come together and in that sense I support the idea.
However I have often thought that libraries could be (and are) the same thing on a higher level, a community center laced with science, knowledge and education, (and fiction too) access for all and a saner, kinder place to gather.
A church of the geek/nerd as it were.
I have many fond memories of my local library, and anything that keeps them around is welcome, there should always be some place for us "non-believers" to gather.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You could easily have an excellent sci-fi collection of 54 books without having a single old, white male author among them.
Yes, we should stop publishing white male authors until blacks and hispanics have decided they want to write sci-fi as much as white males. How far are we going to cary this farce of social injustice before we start to realize that blacks and hispanics are just interested in different crap than we are (on average)? Its not a CRIME to have different culteral priorities and interests.