Developing Makerspaces in Libraries throughout California is a pilot project from the California State Library in collaboration with the Bay Area Discovery Museum (Phase 1 and Phase 2), and Regallium Consulting LLC (Phase 3). The project is establishing unique community-driven makerspaces in ten public libraries in California. Participating libraries are geographically spread out across the state, and were selected by prioritizing libraries that were under-resourced as defined by budget, staffing, or serving a high needs community. An essential component for the sustainability for these library maker programs is to develop strategic collaborative partnerships, where the library can engage with the local maker ecosystem including education institutions, industry, civic groups and government.
In Phase 1 and 2 of the project, libraries conducted needs assessments, participated in training for maker education, launched prototypes and made a plan for their makerspaces, which range from a dedicated space, a mobile space or a pop up program. Each space includes a physical environment for making, local partnerships and creative programming.
Phase 3, from September 2019 to July 2020 the makerspaces will launch and the planning tools and resources from the pilot will be refined, tested, and published in a toolkit. that will include customizable resources to help future libraries build budgets, an action plan, a data collection plan, a logic model, an elevator pitch, a program inventory and marketing plan to make mindful, data-driven and intentional decisions when setting up their makerspace.
