A university-wide collaborative effort to designing a makerspace at an academic health sciences library

Herron, J., & Kaneshiro, K. (2017). A university-wide collaborative effort to designing a makerspace at an academic health sciences library. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 36(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2017.1259878

Summary:

Herron and Kaneshiro’s article presents the process taken by the Ruth Lilly Medical Library’s new Tech Team at the Indiana University School of Medicine in designing and creating a makerspace. A heavy emphasis is made on the collaboration between the Tech Team and a variety of campus groups and departments. The paper is structured in a way that parallels the steps in which the Tech Team took in their process. First, conducting an environmental scan consisted of accumulating resources, meeting with other staff members with 3D printing expertise, and identifying who would be potential user groups. This collaborative step of speaking with students, staff, and faculty informed the Tech Team’s proposed focus for the makerspace to provide a gateway to 3D printing and prototyping. The team promoted the new service through word of mouth, sample prints, and an opportunity fair while the physical space was renovated to better serve as a makerspace. This paper offers a comprehensive synthesis of the collaborative process taken by the Tech Team in designing and building a successful makerspace within an academic library. 

Evaluation:

The relevance of Herron and Kaneshiro’s article lies in its value to academic libraries who are at the beginning of their journey to design and build their own makerspaces. The emphasis on collaboration between library staff and other university members provides valuable insight for library staff unfamiliar with makerspaces as they can gain a network of connections in their own campus community. Another significant takeaway from this article is how the Tech Team strategized to differentiate their new space from other similar 3D printing labs in the university. This resource can help library staff to position their own makerspaces in relation to specialized academic libraries, such as medical academic libraries in this case.