Library Making Goes Home: Adaptations and Lessons Learned

• In Event: Moving Making to Online and Homes Spaces: Lessons for Maker Education

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: Libraries have emerged as critical spaces for informal STE(A)M learning, especially for under-resourced communities (Lee & Phillips, 2019). Makerspaces and making and tinkering programs have become a prominent trend amongst public libraries that serve their communities in this way (Halverson et al., 2017). With the profound disruption to library services caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, this study sought to understand how library staff perceived, experienced, and negotiated the changed nature of their work as it related to hands-on STE(A)M learning programs and resources, and what implications that might have for future practice.

Theoretical framework: Social and material factors are key in shaping learning through making and tinkering (Kumpulainen & Kajamaa, 2020). This study looks at how some library staff learned and adapted when the sociomaterial realities of their making programs were upended by the COVID 19 pandemic.

Methods and Data Sources: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of library staff in both on-the-ground educator and program administrator roles. Interview participants representing 11 different libraries, and 7 different library systems across 6 states. Inductive codes were applied to interviews based on themes. Analysis included seven of the eleven library staff participating in interviews who had pursued some type of hands-on making activity remotely during library closures through the pandemic.

Results: Across interviews, library staff reported offerings a range of remote programing, from take-home make kits, to synchronous making meet-ups, and asynchronous tutorials. Because participants weren’t able to attend makerspaces or activities in person, library staff reported having to think more deeply about what a broad range of members of their community would have access to in their homes, including wifi, and tools and materials. This prompted ingenuity in material use, as well as rethinking of how tools could be made more accessible for at home use, even beyond the pandemic.

Library staff also reported that the changed social and material circumstances of their making programs increased the degree of intentionality they needed to bring to selecting materials, designing programs, and communicating with their communities. Some library staff reported that virtual programming seemed to increase access for some, bringing in new audiences, while they saw less of their “regulars”. This may indicate it could be worthwhile to continue offering take-home and virtual programming alongside in-person programming.

Significance: This exploratory study suggests that library practitioners' experiences adapting to library closures may have led to more expansive thinking about issues of access and materiality in their programming going forward. Further research should be done to understand if and how these experiences inform future making and tinkering program design and practice, as well as the implications this could have for participants’ learning. Furthermore, library staff’s adaptations to the changing social and material contexts of making activities could have implications for more equitable access to learning and sustainable making practises for both in person and remote learning through libraries.

Author

• Sari Widman, University of Colorado - Boulder