Toward Context-Relevant Library Makerspaces: Understanding the Goals, Approaches, and Resources of Small-Town and Rural Libraries

Abstract

While best practices for developing makerspaces in public libraries exist, there is scarce literature that describes how they apply to small-town and rural libraries in alignment with the libraries’ existing assets, practices, and constraints. This paper aims to explore the small-town and rural libraries’ goals, approaches, and existing resources towards establishing a future makerspace and investigate the extent to which these elements support or hinder the design of the makerspace or maker programming. From the qualitative analysis of cultural probes and interview data with nine librarians, this paper demonstrates two ways that small-town and rural libraries differed from the best practices in the field: a) focusing on attendance and equipping the materials within the makerspace over community building, b) lack of transfer of existing assets and practices to maker programming. Study findings suggest small-town and rural librarians’ lack of STEM competencies and knowledge around makerspaces as a critical barrier for applying their existing assets and practices to a new area of maker programming. Our study proposes context-specific recommendations and directions for small-town and rural libraries to design and develop makerspaces.