Blogs

The team behind Make It @ Your Library has made the decision to archive this website.

We are delighted to feature a post from Carey Gibbons, one of the awesome librarians who tested out our maker kits during the Beta Phase. Carey is the Teen Programming Coordinator at Fondulac Distrcit Library in East Peoria, IL. Thanks for your wonderful work, Carey!

After surveying Illinois libraries, we turned our energies toward prototyping - putting together test kits and selecting pilot libraries.

We’ve started with 5 kits and 5 libraries:

Back in March we surveyed over 300 Illinois librarians (327 to be exact) from all across the state to find out if they were even interested in the maker movement and our circulating maker kits. Thankfully, and as we expected, the answer is yes! And an overwhelming yes at that. 

This post will tell you more about the materials we are considering for our circulating maker kits. These materials fall in to categories that highlight crafting, 3D design and printing, electronics and circuit building, computers and programming, robotics, and engineering. There are links to specific products, however, these may not end up being the items that Make It @ Your Library circulates. We are simply using these examples to see where interests lie.

Make it @ Your Library has been fortunate enough to have been awarded a Prototype Fund Grant from the truly remarkable Knight Foundation.

Brace yourselves!

On Friday, May 23rd, Allison, Liz and I visited with some of the folks behind the Maker Lab at Chicago Public Library.

The team behind make it at your library came together through the ILEAD USA project in 2013. One of the mentors at the program, the marvelous Beck Tench, distilled this bit of wisdom from a group conversation:

I have a new gig (as the Head of Youth Services at La Grange Public Library). But before I left my old gig (Lisle Library District), I agreed to do a program for the adult services department on duct tape. I didn't think much about it until about a week before the program actually came up. I mean, really. I've been programming for years (let's say over a decade) for kids. How different could it be to do a simple old craft program with adults?