Convivial Making: Power in Public Library Creative Places

In 2011, public libraries began to provide access to collaborative creative places, frequently called “makerspaces.” The professional literature portrays these as beneficial for communities and individuals through their support of creativity, innovation, learning, and access to high-tech tools such as 3D printers. As in longstanding “library faith” narratives, which pin the library’s existence to widely held values, makerspace rhetoric describes access to tools and skills as instrumental for a stronger economy or democracy, social justice, and/or individual happiness. The rhetoric generally frames these places as empowering. Yet the concept of power has been neither well-theorized within the library makerspace literature nor explored in previous studies. This study fills the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of power, as described by the stakeholders, including staff, trustees, and users of the library. Potentially, library creative places could be what Ivan Illich calls convivial tools: tools that manifest social relations involving equitable distributions of power and decision-making. A convivial tool ensures that users may decide to which end they would like to apply the tool, and thus are constitutive of human capabilities and social justice. However, the characterization of library makerspaces in the literature evokes a technologically deterministic entrepreneurialism that marginalizes many types of making, and reduces the power of individuals to choose the ends to which they put this tool. This multi-site ethnographic study seeks to unravel the currents of power within three public library creative places. Through participant observation, document analysis, and interviews, the study traces the mechanisms and processes by which power is distributed, as enacted by institutional practices—the spaces, policies, tools, and programs—or through individual practices. The study finds seven key tensions that coalesce around the concept of conviviality, and also reveals seven capabilities of convivial tools that the users and providers of these spaces identify as crucial to their successful and satisfying implementation. As a user-centered exploration of the interactions of power in a public institution, this study can benefit a range of organizations that aim to further inclusion, equity, and social justice

Metaphors of Privilege: Public Library Makerspace Rhetoric

This discourse analysis examines the professional conversation about public library makerspaces. Articles describe makerspaces filled with advanced technological gadgets and high-tech users. This discourse brushes past familiar ways of making, such as fiber crafts or painting, to emphasize novel forms of digitally-mediated creativity. Interviews with public librarians offering makerspace services describe a more gradual evolution from long-standing library activities and creative programming to include some digital tools and some traditional tools. This research examines the tropes in the discourse, to identify legitimated ideologies or interpretive schemes. It further considers how the rhetoric might impede or facilitate public library principles such as equal access. The analysis identifies strategies and tactics for institutional control and individual agency in the process of structuring the makerspaces, revealing dissonance between the printed texts and interview discourse. As more librarians create makerspaces, this institutional discourse shapes a path for others to follow.ye

STEAM: Science and Art Meet in Rural Library Makerspaces

Public libraries around the world are adding collaborative creative spaces, often known as makerspaces, which facilitate hands-on activities with digital and electronic tools such as 3D printers and soldering irons, as well as more traditional tools, such as sewing machines and wood working materials. Many makerspaces incorporate art with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to create a STEAM-charged participatory culture that encourages people who were not previously inclined to code or solder to interact with science and technology in ways they had not before. This poster synthesizes three qualitative studies, one of which is ongoing, using grounded theory methods to build a picture of makerspaces in rural public libraries from the perspective of the users and librarians.publishedye

An Imaginaire: Makerspaces as Radical Change in the Library Faith

<div>Dewey introduced the concept of “library faith,” a belief that libraries could positively impact society. In the early years of public libraries, this library faith “consisted in a belief in the value of the printed word, especially of the book, the reading of which is held to be good in itself or from its reading flows that which is good” (Leigh, 1950, p. 12). </div><div><br></div><div>The library faith acts as an imaginaire (Flichy, 2007), a collective vision about a sociotechnical system, which is necessary to its implementation and continuation. A library faith imaginaire maintains that public libraries can beneficially impact society through the provision of publicly funded services. How libraries may benefit society changes over the years, and with new social goals, values and technologies.</div><div><br></div><div>Dresang’s (2013) radical change theory is a new imaginaire, in which connectivity, interactivity, and access act as modes of transmission for this new type of library service: makerspaces and other library creative places.</div

Resist*rs: A Political Economic Analysis of Public Library Makerspace Rhetoric

<p>A conference poster from the ALISE 2015 conference, based on early pilot results from my dissertation research.</p