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Public Libraries Tinker With Offering Makerspaces
eggboard writes "Public libraries are starting to build labs that let patrons experiment with new arts, crafts, and sciences, many of them associated with the maker movement. It's a way to bring this technology and training to those without the money or time to join makerspaces or buy gear themselves. It extends the mission of libraries to educate, inform, and enrich. Many are now experimenting with experimenting."
This kind of thing has happened before. The ancient Library of Alexandria was much more than a library. It was a government -funded research facility and think tank where many of the greatest minds of the ancient world worked. Granted that it was not a public library like those found in ancient Rome, it's not a surprise at all that public libraries would try to enter this space in at least some form.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
I work for a large University library, and that is basically what we are turning into. We have some specialized collections, but generally now just buy online access to databases for our students and faculty. Something like 40% of our books are being moved to Aux Storage that can be retrieved if requests, but it has little use. However, we do have several 3d printers, study areas that have resources otherwise unavailable or too costly to the average student, and are toying with more space for specific "fix this type of problem" or "make this". First, ironically enough, was a group with students from english writing, publishing, and art classes to go through the process of making a children's book....in the area of the library that used to have children's books. Though they did go through e-pub as well, so maybe it wasn't completely ironic...
I have lots of wonderful weird old books from around WWII. It seems that in that era community centres (or centers) had equipped workshops for citizens to drop by and do some woodworking, or repair electrical appliances. After some reflection, I realized this is not compatible with the social model of consuming to keep the economy growing. But it would be nice to have a Mr Fixit type person running a shop for every x number of citizens in an area would can not only run 3D printers, but all the other stuff we seem to have lost in the last half century or so.
Mostly random stuff.
He has a point.
From reading TFA, it's obvious that this isn't a group of skilled craftspeople coming together to share ideas, equipment, and workspace, but rather an attempt to educate the proles in how this new technology can be used to make Christmas ornaments. More like "Summer College" classes for your 6th grader than a real attempt at collaboration.
The downside to this approach, at least from my point of view, is that the people who would use the equipment access to work on real projects are going to be stuck waiting in line behind 1,000 stay-at-home moms, who are laser-cutting snowflakes with their kids faces on them because they have nothing more productive to do with their time.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
As a taxpayer I'd rather fund local libraries that get the masses off the streets, educated, literate, potentially productive and even entrepreneurial. If I was going to cut bloated government bureaucracies that are not essential to the freedom or security of our nation, I'd start with the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
As a taxpayer I'd rather fund local libraries that get the masses off the streets, educated, literate, potentially productive and even entrepreneurial.
Except that's not what the libraries are doing. They don't deal with "the masses", and they don't create literacy to start with.
If I was going to cut bloated government bureaucracies that are not essential to the freedom or security of our nation, I'd start with the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
That's nice, but the issue you seemed to be replying to was that tax dollars are going to fund the entrepreneurs who need to build prototypes of their products but don't want to spend the money for the equipment to do that themselves. You might consider that the people who would be making use of this service won't be the poor undereducated ones who never go to the library because they're too busy working to feed their families, but the richer better-educated people who are already up the chain and have ample free time to do this.
And you ignore the difference that the "local libraries" are funded by local tax dollars in local tax districts while the offices you want to eliminate are federal. Cutting either or both of the targets you want eliminated will do nothing to fund libraries.