 Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Leigh Ann George, Coordinator of the Spec Survey Program at the Association of Research Libraries and I'd like to thank you for joining us for the third in a series of Spec Survey webcasts today. Today we're here from the authors of the survey on Rapid Fabrication Maker Spakers Services. The results of this survey have been published in Spec Kit 348. Before our presenter begins, I have just a few announcements. Everyone but the presenters has been muted to cut down on background noise. So if you are part of a group today, feel free to speak among yourselves. But we do want you to join the conversation by typing questions in the chat box in the lower left corner of your screen. I'll read the questions aloud before the presenters answer them. The webcast is being recorded and we will send registrants the slides and a link to the recording in the next week or so. Now let me introduce our presenters today. Dr. Micah Altman is Director of Research and Head Scientist in the Program on Information Science for the MIT Libraries. Matt Bernhardt is a web developer at the Libraries. Lisa R. Horowitz is the Assessment and Linguistics Librarian at MIT Libraries. And Randy Shapiro is a Senior Administrative Assistant supporting Chris Berg, the Director of the Libraries, and the work of the Program on Information Science. Wen Lu, who is a research intern in the Program on Information Science, isn't able to join us today. So use the hashtag ARL Spec Kit 348 to continue the conversation with them on Twitter, and now let me turn the presentation over to Micah. Good afternoon everyone. The talk today will go over a number of key concepts in Makerspaces and Rapid Fabrication. We'll talk about the strategic positioning of Makerspaces for a library and then about the survey results which are focusing on research library adoption and with recommendations and next steps. And there'll be time after that for substantive questions, 20 minutes or so. During the presentation if you have any clarifying questions, please use the chat and we'll attempt to clarify any confusions. There's a bunch of boilerplate. The most important of which is simply that if you like any of this then it's all due to all of my collaborators and supporters and to Leigh Ann's editing. And if you don't like something in the presentation then I messed it up. And during the presentation there will be a lot more words on the slide than I will speak through there for background and context. But don't worry, we'll hit all the key concepts. So a really interesting thing about Rapid Fabrication and Makerspaces is that they complete a lifecycle loop between fabrication and digitization between producing information and producing objects. And so they form a part of the information lifecycle. We'll talk a little bit about the concepts in the fabrication part and then a little bit about the input. And in between there are all of the things that libraries help with in terms of managing information. On the fabrication side, fabrication in this domain refers to the production of physical objects from digital models. Depending on the type of machinery you use, this can happen at a range of different scales from the microscopic to architectural materials from plastics to organic material to metals, shapes, time frames, budgets, and other considerations. We won't go into all of those things in detail but you should be aware that there are three broad forms of fabrication. One form of fabrication, and this is the sort of old style, certainly still in use, very useful, but not where a lot of the new advances are coming from are the subtractive, which means you've got a block of stuff and you remove some material from it. In the old days you might use a hand plane or a lathe and newer methods include laser cutting, plasma cutting, CNC. There's also a deformative process where you build a frame or a mold and then use a material to wrap around that. But where the technological advances have been coming most thick and fast are in the additive process. This is called, quote, 3D printing, unquote. Technically 3D printing is only one form of additive manufacturing. Generally additive manufacturing involves plastic but all sorts of materials can be used and it's usually a layered assembly process and a hugely developing industry. The other side of this coin is developing models to make into physical. And there are broadly two forms of digitization here, contact or non-contact. On the contact side, contact scanning acts like a 3D mouse that requires physical contact. More newer techniques involve different forms of scanning from small scans like MakerBot to large scans using lasers across entire buildings. And in between the process of digitization and fabrication there's of course a life cycle of management and modification of the information. Now that we have some contact straight, we'll talk a little bit about the strategic significance. And first I'll start with a few examples. And some of these examples are actually things that we learned that people at MIT were doing the last time that we put on a course on this. There are various uses in both teaching and in research. And various communities are using this. At the student side examples can be as diverse as creating an attachment for a robot or other machinery doing advanced fashion design using algorithms to design the next fashion or using models as a way of communicating, visualizing information. In the lab and industry there are a whole range of uses from medical implants to teaching aids to architecture. And then on the experimental side there are many things that are on the horizon from pharmaceuticals to embedded sensors and printable electronics which would mean that not only would you be able to print something but you'd be able to create something that functioned actively possibly collected more information that you would use in creating a new object. Fabrication is not just for engineers. It can produce benefits that improve research on a whole bunch of different disciplines. It does that in a number of ways. One, by enabling control over the materials for physical objects both from shape to composition to behavior as we get more and more technology. It lowers barriers both to making objects to portability to how long it takes to set up a physical environment for researching or what skills are needed. And even more exciting it enables new forms of design, design that's localized to particular constraints that reacts to an environment that is generated from a algorithm or a theoretical construct or that involves information cycle of sampling the world and incorporating that object, remixing and iterating. Because rapid fabrication creates information and uses information there are a number of opportunities to support the information lifecycle related to rapid fabrication. And this includes everything from helping people manage information from interventions to helping with digitization to managing collections of these objects. And we found through our own work in this area through Literature View that approaching this area for patrons generally requires answering a number of questions that are not specific to a particular discipline. Can a physical object solve my problem? Where are there existing models? How can I use an existing object to make a model? Or how do I modify it? It's not just the last stages of where can I find something to print someplace to print and how can I prepare a model to be printed? So our survey focused on library adoption, the penetration of makerspaces into research libraries, and the pathways that research libraries were taking to make use of this new technology. What we found was a little surprising from our point of view that many research libraries are very actively engaged in makerspaces. Of the respondents, over 60% of research libraries were engaged in either providing, piloting, or actively planning a makerspace service offering, and over 15% more were investigating it. So there are very small percentage of libraries for whom this area is not on the resource, greater at all. Of those engaged in providing or piloting or planning makerspace service offerings, the core services generally include reference services addressing at least some of the questions in the previous slide, training on the equipment, providing and maintaining fabrication equipment, maintaining digitization equipment, and supporting some sort of repository of the information, the models that are produced from this. Core equipment and software generally focus on 3D printers, 3D scanners, and supporting design and conversion software. And there are common supporting services, training and pathfinders, online big guides. But although the core focus is on 3D printing and 3D scanning, we saw an amazing range of software and hardware technologies that libraries were offering. This included things like hand tools, 3D pens, virtual reality goggles and visualization walls, industrial sewing machines, and even drones. So libraries are experimental in this area. We asked a number of questions to evaluate and understand how makerspaces were being implemented in libraries and attempt to understand what the minimum buy-in was. And what the target audience was. A relatively small percentage of respondents based expected use on specific user demands. But all of them almost targeted undergraduates as expected users, most expected graduate students, and about half expected faculty to make use of these resources. Most of these services came from existing funding streams, from the general budget, and using existing staff. And a small minority, less than a third, charge fees for this service, even for materials. And the core resources, generally the leading resources varied, but staff time was most commonly named as the biggest resource and equipment. And the median service had three staff members part-time at greater than 20%. There was a wide variation in the space available needed for this service. Though we did have a respondent indicate they used 9,000 square feet for a makerspace. The median was quite smaller. It's possible to deploy a makerspace service in a relatively small footprint and to deploy it in several months, though some services required longer time. Overall, the library experience that was reported to us has been quite positive. 40% of respondents conducted formal assessment, and that was based on usage data, user observations, satisfaction surveys. Overall, they reported generally positive evaluations, and many made some changes to extend or improve their services. There was no library reported reducing their services as part of this evaluation. But there was a note that there are a number of common challenges, and the big focus was on resource and maintenance. Generally, people spoke pretty highly of the service. One of our respondents said, during the pilot phase, we gauged interest from anyone we could talk to, and it became clear that the applications for the technology are so broad that any department could use it. I think this speaks to the interdisciplinary nature of this service. There were all sorts of high-flying quotes about the potential for this service as a catalyst, as a hub, as a next step for scholarship, etc. And that's just representative quotes. Overall, and this goes somewhat beyond the responses, but we have a number of recommendations reflecting on this. Makerspaces connect with a number of library core competencies. Libraries have core competency in information, in interdisciplinarity, in building a form of literacy with information and being able to create physical objects with information as a new sort of literacy, and in supporting research and teaching and creating spaces for research and learning. All of these dovetail with makerspaces. So overall, the feedback that we got in the survey, together with the literature review, suggests that fabrication is a potential fit for research library. It addresses a strategic opportunity to provide new services and to develop learning and teaching and research spaces. It aligns with library core values and competencies and serves a potentially broad patron community. But there are a number of caveats. This is very much a do-it-yourself culture, not an off-the-shelf solution. These systems are reported as high maintenance, as requiring knowledge in both the specifics of the system and in other related competencies. And it's important not only to get the system and the service contract, but to engage in readings, in conferences, and in events. And really to invest more in human capital in the people and expertise to address the core information lifecycle and service question, then in a specific set of equipment and skills around maintaining that. And it was also stressed that this is a rapidly changing environment and that one should plan for change. And we see this change at three levels. Short-term change implies that the equipment is going to require maintenance and care. And so it's not a plug-and-play environment or a set-it-and-forget-it environment. The second level of change is that these technologies are changing rapidly. So what might be a very good choice of hardware today might not be the optimal service in the next two years, three years. And in the long term, the rapid changes of technology are causing business models to evolve. For example, we would expect to see more fabrication services. Overall, the makerspace serves a lot of purposes and builds, and there's a lot of room for reference service, teaching, data management. It's not all about hardware, but one should expect the hardware needs and the role of libraries as a hardware provider or a gateway to change over time. Because continuing education engagement is so important, we've spent some time on the resources section. There are still very few books and articles on them, and most are at the high level. But there are a number of resources, and particularly conferences and events, and active repositories where people are sharing their models. And this is a very important part of engaging in this service. Now we have more boilerplate. You can always ask us questions afterwards, and these slides will be posted later this week. Thank you, Micah. And just to reiterate, we do want your questions, so please join the conversation by typing those questions in the chat box in the lower left corner of your screen. We have one coming in now. Margaret asks, how do libraries deal with troubleshooting reference questions related to CAD software that their staff aren't familiar with? How do you create that do-it-yourself at those? Well, I would invite my colleagues also to jump in. We did not get responses specifically to that, but from looking at some of the resources that libraries make available, there are often a number of general tutorials, videos, mailing lists, and other help groups associated with software and with different communities at practice. So the resources for answering questions that aren't part of the standard set are, some of them are there if you look for them, and spend some time locating them. Creating a DIY SOS is, I think, a larger question. And I think that's a strategic question for libraries in general, but my personal view is it involves declaring what the organizational values are and then empowering people to experiment in developing services and pilots. And having some common framework for both transparency and for how these experiments are evaluated. I'd also like to say as a reference librarian, so this is Lisa Horowitz about Margaret's question, is that I think it depends on how you set up your organization and your makerspace. Do you decide that you have technical support because you need help with that kind of a response of a question? Or do you decide that you're going to refer people out? That's a part of it anyway. But I think that thinking back to when we started to have all those printer questions that we didn't know how to deal with, or even now, sometimes you get Microsoft Word questions or whatever, it's all part of figuring out how you're going to handle those in advance and not assuming that just because people are in your library and you have stuff to offer them that the people who serve the desk or serve as reference staff will actually troubleshoot. That's just my throwing in there. So this is Matt Bernhardt. I would also chime in on the question of supporting a DIY ethos. I think my perspective on that is that you can do a lot to reinforce that approach by making clear that these are not in terms of how you position the technology, so making clear that these are not turnkey services that someone simply drops a 3D model off at a reference desk and comes back later to pick up a finished model. If you position the technologies as this is something that we use together or that you allow patrons to use under supervision or in collaboration with library staff, that goes a great deal of the way towards establishing both for the librarians and for the patrons that this is a technology that we use together. This is not just a service that you set and forget and come back to later. Erica has sort of a clarifying follow-up question. So who's supposed to have this DIY ethos? The librarian or the patron? I think the comments were directed at the librarian that the librarian has to engage with the technology and the core competencies. But I think that it's also communicating, as Matt said, the state of the technology to the patron. So patrons are often coming in with do-it-yourself ethos. And librarians need to match that. Amanda asked, how were some of the institutions that were a little further along addressing concerns with air quality and noise in the spaces? Did you see that in the responses? I don't recall seeing that in the responses, and it certainly wasn't a question that we asked in a quantitative way. In some of the surveys of makerspaces at MIT that we've done here and some of the reviews of the technology, it varies considerably. And the requirements for something like a water jet cutter requires some serious HVAC and safety monitoring, for example. Whereas a 3D printer using PLA has very little environmental effect or safety effect. And the noise, there may be some noise, but it's comparable to other office equipment that can be dealt with in some traditional space planning way. So I think it's an important consideration for those who are at the farther experimental end of the section. But given that most of the respondents are focusing on 3D printers and 3D scanners, the HVAC requirements are well within some normal office setup. You might have answered Randy Ryan's question here, but he asks, are safety training sessions required for patrons in some of these spaces? Is that a common requirement? I'd have to go back to the qualitative responses to see how many of web proportion. I don't have that offhand. It certainly is a requirement. In every service that we've looked at in detail, if there was equipment that posed serious risk, there was a safety training requirement and generally some sort of monitoring requirement. But again, there's little safety risk from a 3D printer, though you could manage to damage the equipment, but not yourself. Or from a scanner and a considerable from a cutter. Amy asks, has the makerspace become the primary campus space or do units still build and support their own spaces within their silos? So most of the respondents reported a single or, if I recall correctly, a single space, but that may not reflect all the spaces on campus. So I'm not sure that we have the evidence to speak to that definitively. MIT is unusual, but we last counted there were a dozen maker fabrication facilities and there were also several in the community. But I will say, this is Lisa again, I will say at the same time that although MIT has all those makerspaces, there are still people who, based on a previous survey that we did of our own campus, they're still interested in it because their department doesn't offer it. So there's a mix bag and there is a, I don't know what it's called, there is sort of an initiative to put a makerspace into a new dorm that may be coming up. So there are different ways of thinking about it. It sounded like your question is, is the library's makerspace the primary campus makerspace? And my guess, I'm going to throw this out, Michael you'll correct me if you saw somewhere that somebody says something different. But my sense is that it is only for those people who don't already have a place to go. I think I would amplify that. We did a qualitative survey, not published here of makerspaces at MIT. And what we found is that they generally weren't open to everyone. And so the, I think in many places the library is in a unique position of serving a broad community and an interdisciplinary one. And even those spaces that were available generally only address the particular part of the reference service. Where can I fabricate my model and how do I prepare? A part of a makerspace service in libraries may involve answering these other questions too, introducing people to a sort of physical information literacy, when information can solve their problem, where models are and how to find them in collections, both internally and externally, how to create new models. And the plethora of makerspaces in the area generally serve the last parts of that question set. Ryan has a question on the average hours of access availability of these kinds of spaces. I don't have that offhand. So I do think that we have, in the detailed survey we have sample people reporting on hours of services. Most, I will, I do recall that most of them were not 24-7, but a subset of library hours. And Jeffrey asked, did any of the libraries use students as part of their staffing models? And if they did, were they paid or volunteers? I can go ahead and chime in on that because I have just looked up the answer to that question. This is Randy speaking. We did have 24 respondents who provided us with details about position titles, et cetera. And of those, eight did indicate that there were student workers. It looks as if those would be paid. They were called workers. I did not see any indication of volunteer. In our other local research, we did find examples of people who were in classes who would assist others. So, you know, a collaborative training model, part of the do-it-yourself ethic, but maybe not part of the formal service. James asked, did you study the specific kinds of equipment used in the makerspaces? And by that, he did more libraries by high-end printers such as the Stratocys versus low-end models like the MakerBot. I think that's the question. Is anybody staring at our survey results right now? Well, here I was looking up the hours question, but I have nothing going on. All right, so sorry. To go back to the hours question of the people who responded, it looks like about 25% are open all the hours. The library is open, but others seem to restrict it to certain specific hours that relate to when they decide that they are appropriate. It does say for some of them, consultations are available outside of those times. Sometimes there's no service on the nights and weekends, other kinds of things. So, it seems like probably, yes, 75% of them seem to restrict the hours to a certain subset of the library's open hours. And then the other question was about the equipment. So, this is not for her. The impression that I have from the survey answers and also from the experience of accompanying Micah on the interviews around the MIT campus is that from the library's perspective, libraries are more likely to skew towards the lower end of the technology scale. So, offering things like printer bots or MakerBots as opposed to the higher end equipment like a Stratasys or the EO systems that can quickly run into 6 and 7 figures. And that applies not only with 3D printing, but for any kind of capability that you would take on, for any given manner of making, whether it's subtractive manufacturing or additive manufacturing, there are going to be kind of the 60% solutions versus the super capable or more highly specialized solutions. And I think the libraries or any kind of campus level resource is going to more likely opt for the more general or 60% solutions, just because when you start to try to solve the solutions that are offered by those $2 million or $200,000 machines, you quickly ramp up the monetary requirements and the staffing requirements. I would agree. I noticed that James has also reframed the question about did people use... His question was, did people use printers more for experimentation, pedagogy, low-end, or for actual research and production, high-end? And I would reframe his reframing and say that the intended use was, I think, to support experimentation, pedagogy, and some degree of actual research and that quite a bit of research can be done with lower-end equipment. For example, one of the examples we encountered here was someone who was doing biological modeling using a simple plastic tube as a model for larynx. With a 3D printer, even a low-end one, you can do much more complicated things. If you're doing robotics and need to make customized attachments, a maker bot will support real research if you're visualizing a model of a satellite for discussion during a working group. Again, there are many research uses. I think production use was not a main target. And I think, actually, this segues into the question from Erica England about what happens if we start thinking of the library as a home depot. And I think my colleagues will want to chime in on this, but I'll start. I think the implication of that question is that fielding a maker space makes the library look a little bit like a home depot. And I think that is a risk, but that may be I think that's the wrong way to think about the service. The service that a library usually provides does not have a competitive advantage in the hardware. For specialized hardware, or there are going to be particular departments, there are going to be particular service bureaus, if you want something printed in wax and then made into platinum, you can do that online. So we'll always be chasing the service bureaus there. But in connecting a patron with a particular who has a problem to a particular set of answers, from going from the problem that may be a vague thought that a physical object can solve the problem to finding models, to curating models, to getting the information needed to modify them, and either printing a prototype in the library or finding an appropriate place to materialize that object if it's a service bureau or department or a local fab shop. And I think that's a position which is sustainable in the library. We're just about out of time. We have a couple of quick questions here. Then we'll have to conclude. Suzette asks, are there any specific power requirements or infrastructure needed for the kinds of services that are being offered now? So this is Matt Bernhardt. I'll take Suzette's question. By and large, the kinds of equipment we're talking about do not have specialized power requirements. The MakerBots and 3D printers specifically of that type run off wall power, so there's no requirements for that. Should your library be in the fortunate position of spending $100,000 on a Stratasys system, there will be more restricted power requirements. But if you're in that conversation, the sales agent you're working with will indicate that to you. Similarly, for some of the other kinds of equipment that are a little bit less prevalent, things like laser cutters or CNC machines, the big requirement there is less about power and more about air quality because you're starting to produce off gases or dust or other contaminants that need to be treated environmentally. But again, that's smaller segments of the responses in terms of what kinds of equipment are being offered. Thanks, Matt. And our last question from Margaret. For those who are charging fees, how is the fee structure determined? Right. It looks like of 35 respondents, 31% are funding with some sort of usage fee. That's how they're funding it. I also have who is – how many people are charging and why, but it doesn't say how they got to this point. A lot of people it looks like are trying to recover costs. So their goal is to charge by how much it weighs or have some sort of a basic fee plus something to do with the weight. And that's just – most of those are talking about the 3D printing specifically. There is one library that responded that it has two tiers and that actually relates to service. So they've decided to break down the pricing and whether somebody does it themselves or if they use the self-service model. So yeah, a lot of them it looks like it's just trying to get some recovery of the money that they have put out towards the materials. I'd like to thank all of our authors and presenters and participants for your questions. Thanks for joining us today. You will receive links to the slides and recording within the next week. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes today's conference call. We may now disconnect. Preventors, please hold the line.