FFL Fab Lab: first Makerspace in a public library!

I had the pleasure of meeting Lauren Smedley, Transliteracy Development Director at Fayetteville Free Library, while attending the Contact Summit in NYC earlier this month, where we had a chance to discuss the intersections between libraries and maker/hacker culture with other attendees, including Bre Pettis of Makerbot fame. Lauren is creating a Fab Lab at her library and won one of three $10,000 awards at the Contact conference to help make her dream a reality.

She is now seeking further funding via IndieGoGo. Lauren describes the fab lab as follows;

Our Story

The Fayetteville Free Library is excited to offer a new public service—the FFL Fab Lab. What exactly is a fab lab? According to Neil Gershenfeld, the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and author of Fab: the Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, a fab lab is “a collection of commercially available machines and parts linked by software and processes developed for making things (Gershenfeld, 12).” At the foundation of the FFL’s Fab Lab will be a MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D printer, made available to the library through a generous donation from Express Computer Services.

The Impact

Over the past fifty years, the manner in which we process information has changed. New technological developments have changed the way we interact with information, allowing us to become “creators” rather than just “consumers.” There are few places that currently provide FREE community access to new, innovative creation technology like 3D printers. The public library provides a safe and accessible space where anyone in the community can interact, understand and develop through use of this technology.The FFL is encouraging local innovation, collaboration, and education through offering this new public service. We are documenting the process so that other libraries across the country can replicate it, making their own free, public access Fab Labs.

As Lauren states in the video, “makerspaces make a perfect fit with public libraries”, so please take the time to visit the site and contribute what you can to this important project. For more information see Lauren’s blog or follow her on Twitter for updates.

Update November 9, 2011: The FFL Fab Lab appeared on Boing Boing today quoting from this article on MindShift.