Meyer Library launches new community-operated workplace

April 16, 2014, 1:58 a.m.
KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily
KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily

Last Thursday, Meyer Library officially announced its new create:space, a makerspace — a community-operated workspace that promotes socialization and collaboration among people with common interests — open to the broader Stanford community.

According to Beth McCullough, the leader of the project, the makerspace came about after a 3D printer and about $100,000 of funding became available. The space was officially opened to the public by the end of January but had not been rolled out until late last week.

“We were thinking of ways to extend [the ability to work creatively] and at the same time, we had more resources available,” McCullough said. “We had a 3D printer and we were thinking, ‘how do we integrate that more into our service model?’ One of the things that we thought that we could do is extend the services that we offer to the Stanford community and we coalesced around the idea of having a makerspace.”

This space is meant to be a place for creative activity and features components of digital creation, like multimedia-equipped computers, scanners and the 3D printer.

Given that many makerspaces open on campus aren’t necessarily public, McCullough’s team wanted to get its feet wet with the idea of building one more accessible to undergraduates.

“What we wanted to create was a low barrier to entry so that anyone in the community could use it,” McCullough said.

The small designed space is now situated on the second floor of Meyer Library but has plans to move over the summer to a new location in Lanthrop Library, which will be situated in the former Graduate School of Business buildings by Littlefield Center.

McCullough also noted that the idea of opening makerspaces in student dormitories has been brought up, and acknowledged that her team has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with undergraduates to determine what features they want to see more of in the create:space.

“We’re in early discussion about how we can provide more support in the residences … the idea of makerspaces in the residential zone is definitely something that we are thinking about,” she said.

 

Contact Catherine Zaw at czaw13 ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

Catherine Zaw was formerly the Managing Editor of News for Vol. 245 and Vol. 246. To contact her, please email [email protected].

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