What is the user experience of library makerspaces? Can they make what they wish to make? What barriers exist, and what helps people and communities in these spaces?
I have done and am doing several studies on how makerspaces in public libraries impact their users, how they are understood or framed, how power is enacted in these spaces, and what factors help the spaces and their users succeed in reaching their goals.
What factors help a makerspace succeed, and what might cause them to “fail",” at least as perceived by someone in the library or community? What constitutes “success” or “failure,” and to whom? How do people see the spaces and wish they were designed, for the people to consider the space successful?
Public Library Makerspaces: A 2-Phase Mixed Methods Study
What kinds of leisure do public library makerspaces actually support and who is left out?
Serious and casual leisure in public library makerspaces: The two-audience conundrum and research agenda
Makerspaces in public libraries are often labeled “empowering,” but what does that actually mean?
Convivial Making: Power in Public Library Makerspaces
How do these spaces fit with the library story?
To what ends, by what means?: The development of the library faith from moral uplift to makerspace
How are these spaces seen in the context of access?
Access and express: Professional perspectives on public library makerspaces and intellectual freedom
How are these spaces arranged and what are the implications?
Creating space: The impacts of spatial arrangements in public library makerspaces.
Further Studies.
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Makerspace Rhetoric
Metaphors of privilege: STEAM and public library makerspaces.
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Rural Makerspaces
STEAM: Science and art meet in rural library makerspaces.
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Makerspace Teaching
Makerspaces and Teaching Artists.