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A new form of learning space has emerged across the world, marking a shift from Do-It-Yourself to Do-It-Together. This space, generically known as a makerspace, is located in accessible and affordable venues, both within communities and serving communities. It offers a resource that allows people to discover their latent capabilities through exploration, experimentation and iteration, alongside the knowledge openly shared by those around them. The underlying rationale is found in the work of John Dewey, notably Democracy and Education (D&E, 1916). This chapter examines this newer form of space to gain insight into what it implies for learning and education. It commences with a reflection of salient aspects of Dewey’s D&E (1916) and how this informs understanding on what is desirable in a learning space. This is followed by a reflection upon research on makerspaces to establish how they can be conceptualized. A case study provides rich insights into characteristics, ethos and practices, while acknowledging that each space is unique and not representative of them all. Nevertheless, it foregrounds the essence of what defines a makerspace. The chapter closes with discussion of the implications and what may be concluded.

Whatever has transpired between the publication of Dewey’s D&E (1916) and the present, his vision of the empowered individual clearly manifests in the makerspace. It allows individuals to break free from the limitations of the formal educational system and, as part of a social learning community, discover their potential in new, natural, non-linear and often unexpected ways. Further, and perhaps only just beginning to be understood, is its wider potential to ignite alternative approaches on how to contribute to society and catalysing new directions for the future of work. With increasing research insights alongside broadened awareness of the possibilities, individuals can gain the capability to design and build for their future – that is only limited by their capacity to imagine it.

The maker movement is showing signs of gaining popularity as it matures. As information institutions, libraries find themselves admirably positioned to serve as hosts for formal makerspaces that encourage turning ideas into reality. Though equipment for innovation is becoming more affordable and therefore more available for general use, many products do not include accessible design, which hinders the significant population of potential inventors who have disabilities. This chapter seeks to provide guidance to organizations that want to implement universally accessible makerspaces.

This chapter is the result of a semester-long project in which students at the University of Maryland worked with a local library seeking to build a new universally accessible makerspace. Article reviews, interviews, and solicitations for information from the field helped form the understanding and suggestions provided in this project.

Interaction with field experts led to specific suggestions for library staff on policy, equipment, and staffing.

Accessible makerspaces make it possible for anyone to exercise creative endeavors by providing equipment and materials that encourage innovation regardless of ability.

Literature about universally accessible library-owned makerspaces is very scarce. This chapter serves to bring together writing and practice in both universal accessibility and makerspaces to provide a starting point for other institutions considering implementing similar services.

Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation is a goal for many college campuses. How can your library support those goals? Should you add a makerspace to your library? Or make other costly changes? Library spaces help students think at a higher level, to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. It is rare to have a dedicated spot on campus for thinking. Our libraries are those spaces. Spaces that strongly foster entrepreneurial thinking range from quiet reflective spaces to noisy collaborative spaces. You do not need to do an elaborate study to understand your library spaces. To assess your library spaces as they relate to innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, first take an inventory of your existing library spaces. By examining your existing spaces and the activities in them, you see which of the six essential types of spaces you have and which ones you lack. Once you have done a space assessment, you can see how you can readily add any of the six spaces you lack. A case study of an academic library’s space inventory, assessment, and recommendations helps illustrate the process. You use your space inventory for present and future space planning and to communicate your worth to your stakeholders. Libraries can market unique spaces to students (e.g. “Here are spaces to help you think creatively”), support Creative Campus initiatives, and promote library spaces which foster entrepreneurial thinking.

While access to devices and connectivity remain key issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, a growing body of literature also recognises the importance of media literacies and competencies necessary to navigate an information-rich society. This media literacy movement highlights skills that lead to critical analysis and the assembly and production of knowledge. In the Caribbean region, information literacies have been linked to competency in exploiting opportunities for informal and lifelong learning. This paper builds on the literature dealing with media literacies by drawing on ethnographic interviews with women in Trinidad and Tobago.

The methodology consists of an 18-month long ethnography including participant observation data as well as transcripts of 90 interviews.

The research shows how women in a lower middle class community dubbed ‘Belleton’ build and refine their digital media skills through lifelong adult learning. These informal learning processes that are facilitated by digital technologies that are spaces of learning where these women construct knowledge and build fluency and larger life skills.

This research makes a contribution to the literature on media literacy and digital skill-building. It ethnographically analyses the social practices of Trinidadian women who interact with digital media in a wide range of daily life activities including DIY consumption and small-business entrepreneurship.

This chapter discusses the unique role that public libraries can play to (re)build our Republic by centering the lived experiences and voices of marginalized communities. As robust sites for out-of-school time learning and community-based information spaces, public libraries have long played a key role in promoting the health and well-being of our nation’s democracy. Public libraries’ inclusivity efforts, though, have not always been evenly balanced, and these efforts have often been underdeveloped, poorly articulated, and undervalued by other key civic actors. Bringing together a Learning Sciences scholar of youth development and civic engagement, Library and Information Sciences scholar on free speech, and an Assistant Director of a public library in the Southeast, this chapter will offer interdisciplinary research-practice insights into both the challenges and opportunities that exist for public libraries as they grapple with the serious question of how to serve the public in the complex reality that is this third decade of the twenty-first century. In particular, this chapter explores questions like: how can public libraries balance the constraints of the status quo to hear, share, and amplify the voices of marginalized communities? And in what ways can library staff encourage opportunities that bridge librarians’ expertise and libraries’ resources with the lived realities and needs of marginalized communities? In this chapter, the authors expand upon these questions and collectively dream about the ways in which public libraries might be reimagined to more authentically and equitably serve the many faces of the contemporary American public.