 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10am central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today, and the recording will be available for you to watch later at your convenience. I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archive recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please share, spread the news with any of your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries. We are like the state library here in Nebraska. So we provide services to all types of libraries in the state, so you will find topics on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, really our only criteria is it's something to do with libraries. Something libraries are doing, resources for libraries, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on the show sometimes to do presentations on programs and services and things we're doing through the Library Commission, and we also bring in guest speakers. And today we have a mixture of that. We have, today we're going to be talking about our wrapping up of our Library Innovation Studios program that we've been doing for the last, oh, it's been four years now, right, Joanne, since we extended it? We ended up with it. It's been a while. And how that went and some very useful information for anybody wanting to do this. So with us today is Joanne McManus. Good morning, Joanne. Good morning. Yeah, she's the project manager of our Library Innovation Studios project here at the Library Commission. And we also have Jessica and Joy here as well from two libraries participated and when we get to, you know, I'll let you all introduce yourself and talk about what you, when we get to whenever you're going to be discussing your libraries. What you all did, and what's going to be going on forward. So I think Joanne, I'm going to hand it over to you to start. Very good. Thank you, Krista. Obviously, we're going to talk about Library Innovation Studios project, which we are wrapping up, but more importantly, we're going to talk about how makerspaces work in libraries and other community spaces. And so a lot of communities have the question, well, if we put in our makerspace, will people actually come and use it? And will it be a value to our community? And so hopefully today, you can find out if that might work in your community. But I think we found that they do work in small rural libraries. Oh, yeah. So, as Krista said, we, and excuse my cough today, I'm going to try to keep my speaking to a minimum. But we have Jessica Chamberlain from the Norfolk Public Library and Joy Kyn from the Ravenna Public Library, their directors there. And they're going to share a lot of information about what they've done, even since we were there with our host, as a host library. So basically the project got funded over four years ago, and we actually got over 700,000 from the Federal Library Agency, IMLS. And we had partners, we had 35 libraries participating, and all in all, it was a very valuable adventure that I think is going to pay off years to come in Nebraska. So basically the project was used to traveling makerspace, installed at a public library to support community engagement and learning opportunities. Back in 2017, when we got started, hardly any public libraries in Nebraska had makerspaces. And this 20-week try it before you buy it, opportunity was really allowed those 35 communities to figure out, hey, does our community want a permanent makerspace in either our public library or elsewhere in our community. So one of our goals, our third goal was that libraries and communities nationwide will have access to a replicable model. And so that's why we're going to continue to have our resources on our website at the Nebraska Library Commission. And then also we have trainings that are available if people have those same kind of machines that we had at nicheacademy.com, and we're going to be talking a little bit more about that. But those are two places to get more information about our project and also to access the resources that we continue to have there. So basically, in the project, we worked with 35 public libraries in communities across the state. We put together four studios, makerspace studios, equipment and kits. We wrote instructional materials, standard operating procedures. We conducted trainings on the use of equipment. We put together all kinds of marketing materials, and we worked with libraries on programming and events. We put together policies and release of liability forms. We worked with sustainability strategies, and we'll talk about more about that later this morning. And we also had consumables so people could readily make when they came to our host libraries. And then of course we had some next steps as far as what happens from here. But let's get to so with this work in your community. And a lot of communities say, hey, I'm pretty small. I don't have a lot of staff. I don't think we can do a makerspace in our community. Well, in our project, the 35 libraries that we had, some were pretty darn small. As you can see, we had six libraries in communities less than a thousand population and 14 less between a thousand and 3,000. And not too many big communities, as you can see. This is very representative of Nebraska in general. I think the size of our libraries, this is something common here in the rural states. Most of our libraries are in those smaller communities. We don't have the big ones as prevalent as in some other more populous states. Right. So this was a pretty good, like you said, representative and a good cross section. So this was, this is what we would expect in Nebraska. And I'm not going to read this whole list, but this free information, this was our list of where we were at. Okay, so what did we learn. And how many went on to establish partial or from makerspaces after the hosting period. So, given my voice and the fact that our libraries out there who are actually doing it have more information than I will ever have. Let's hear from two of our former host libraries who went on to do makerspaces. So again, I mentioned we have Jessica Chamberlain. We're from one of our larger communities just under 25,000 in population and joy is from Ravana. That's around 1350 so we have kind of the two sides of our spectrum here. Okay, so in our project and I'm not going to read this list, but our studios project. These were kits we had. We had big machines like 3D printers and laser cutters and vinyl cutters and heat presses. And then we had smaller kits that fit in totes that you could put in the closet and bring out for making audio recording kits, camera kits, electronic kits, and so on. Okay, so I'm going to turn this over to Jessica and she can talk about her space there in North Park. Thanks, Joanne. So this is, you can see our space here in North Park. We were very lucky that we were able to host the innovation studios grant right after we opened a new building. So we had in the planning process set aside some space for a makerspace even though we didn't really know what it would have in it or what we would do with it, but we kind of just set aside a little square footage for that. So this is what it looks like today. Well, a few months ago, we've moved things around again in there. But if you want to go to the next slide, Joanne, we, and that's in our library, it's in a very visible spot as you walk in the front door that's to your right. And so it's also very supervisable from the service desk. And so we're able to have good supervision there and have eyes on it. You can see that's our little planning document from the architectural drawings. So our space is really pretty small. It's only about 300 square feet. And in there, we have a cricket vinyl cutter. We have a 3D printer. We have a design computer. We have a laser cutter. We have our AccuCut dye machine, a button maker and just got a CNC router as a result of the innovation studios. So we have a lot of equipment in that small footprint. And one thing that we took away from the innovation studios, they brought a bunch of equipment all at the same time. And it was just a huge splash of energy and equipment and all kinds of things. But when we wanted to make it more sustainable and more, when we were going to start our own, we just stair stepped, we just baby stepped our way in. We started with one machine, got everybody comfortable with that, got our processes in place, then we added a few more and then we added a few more. So now it's full after a couple of years. But that was just one thing we learned from the grant about how we wanted to move forward in a more permanent way. And Jessica, you said it's been a couple of years. You were one of the, in one of the first few groups that was received the studios, correct? I think so. I think we were around two maybe. So it's been a while. It was probably a second or third rotation and we had eight rotations all together. Jessica and I, we're both in the second round rotation. We hosted it at the same time. So the Ravenna maker space, if you can see in the photo, this is part of our genealogy room. We too were in the construction of a brand new facility. At the same time as Norfolk's was, they were renovating and we were building a whole entire new building. We did not plan for a maker space in our new library. So we ended up putting it where we could fit it. So it's kind of spread out throughout our building. And in that photo, we have our sewing maker space in our genealogy room. So it's kind of in its own little area. And then, and this is our first layout. So we have rearranged it since then. We have our wonderful snap on toolbox right by our front door. And then we also have in this photo, our maker space was kind of in a back corner around from where the circulation desk was. So because we were a new building, we did not ventilate our laser directly out of the building for the fact that we didn't know we didn't want to put a new hole in the wall in our new building, which it actually worked pretty good that that happened. Because if you look at the next picture after our the maker space convention that we had this last fall, we got brainstorming and we came up with putting our laser in this back window area because we do have windows that open. And so we decided that we would put it back there so that it would be able to be ventilated a little bit better. The filter works great, but it does need a little bit of extra. We get a haze in the library when we do a lot of engraving. And we also then move the vinyl cutter, the heat press, the sublimation printer and the other snap on toolbox that holds all of our maker space tools in it back into a back of the opposite corner where it was. And we actually like this better because it is in a direct line of sight from our circulation desk, because we are a small community we only have 1300 people and so that means I only have myself and an assistant and then a high school student that comes a couple hours a week. So at any given time there might only be one employee in the building. And Joy mentioned venting for that laser cutter, a lot of libraries, you know, a few libraries will actually have venting outside. Most will just have a filtration system that exhaust goes into and it pretty much takes care of it. So you don't have to knock a hole in your wall or have an open window, but like Joy says sometimes it might be helpful if you're using that machine all day long. Okay, so and I think Krista mentioned you guys can type in questions as we go. We're kind of going to go over different aspects of maker spaces as we go. So if you have questions as we go, go ahead and type them in, or we can deal with those at the end as well. Okay, so we talked a little bit about layout, and that you don't necessarily need a big space for your maker space. But one of the things that people grapple with is, okay, if we're going to have a maker space, we're going to have to train our makers. And so how do we do that? So at during the studios project, first, our statewide team train the local trainers, and then once the local trainers became comfortable, then they of course were in charge of training their customers and patrons. So we did ask during the studios project, we did ask local trainers to train patrons and actually certify a maker. We wanted to do this training on machines because it helps to keep the makers and others safe. It helps to safeguard the machine from misuse and damage because if you don't know how to use the machine, you can certainly break it. And because we were having these maker spaces go from one community to another, sometimes people actually followed the equipment. So if they knew that equipment was now 30 miles down the road, then they might still continue to go and use that. So we actually had a certification database where when you did get trained and certified, the library entered their name in the system and saying that this person was trained on the laser cutter. And so then as people came in to use those machines, staff could easily check, okay, well Sally's coming in, has Sally been certified on that laser cutter. Can we just let her use that? And basically our steps to certification is that you had to watch or attend a general safety class. You needed to read and adhere to the studio policies. You needed to design a use and liability release agreement and then attend a training class and demonstrate that you have an understanding of the machine. So how do people do it once they have full-time maker spaces? Certainly Norfolk and Ravenna might have learned and we were kind of, you know, they were on the ground running. So Jessica, you want to talk about what you do in your library for training? Sure. When we started, we had the Innovation Studios grant like in the fall, winter of like 2018-2019. So it was spring of 2019 when we started with our first piece of equipment embroidery machine and started adding things. And so when we first started, it was pre-pandemic and we would do small group classes. We would schedule a couple of months at different times, you know, make sure we had one in the evening, one during the day. And then we would train about four or five folks at a time. Over time, you know, the classes got smaller and smaller and we were trying to figure out, you know, is this really sustainable? How are we going to do this in the future to have small classes? Is that work? Well, then the pandemic came and so we shut everything down for a while and then we switched to online training. So we don't use any paid products. Nisha Academy is great. We just don't have a subscription to that at this time. So we made our own training videos just with a free YouTube account. And then we use Google Docs to make like a little online test, which is basically just to make sure that they've watched the videos. So we ask a couple safety related questions to make sure that they've seen it. Once they've done that, then they schedule an in-person appointment. And so that takes maybe 20 minutes. But then we have folks just one-on-one and they kind of show us that they, you know, can demonstrate that they can use the machine. We do a quick little sample project or something just to demonstrate that they feel comfortable and confident moving on to use it on their own. So we consider that our new certification process. Enjoy. Sorry, my lights, because we're a new library, my lights are automatic. So if somebody doesn't move in 20 minutes, they go off. So if you see me waving, that's why I apologize. So we actually, we had written a couple of grants to get some equipment. And that was pre-COVID. And so they were announced in January right before the shutdown. And so we were starting to buy our equipment in the midst of the pandemic happening. So we did not have any of that pre, I'm sorry, I have people just a second. Guys, I'm in the middle of a webinar. We're having issues. My maintenance men are here, so. They'll do a lot of those things, right? So anyway, so we didn't have any pre-pandemic training to know of. So we just went off of what we did during the grant process with Innovation Studios. So we do one-on-one training, and they have to put in a reservation. And it's a, we usually tell them it takes about an hour to learn the equipment and the software and the safety guidelines. We like the one-on-one because then if they have questions, you know, they have the opportunity to ask as many questions as they want. It's not rushed. We make sure we let them know that it's going to take about an hour to do that. Okay. So, and then I do want to mention that if anyone has machines like we had in the Nebraska Innovation Studios project, we did record all of those trainings. So if you have that same Universal Laser Cutter or that same MakerBot 3D printer, et cetera, anybody can go to our niche academy area for innovation training. Click on the machine that you want training on and you can do that training free of charge. So again, if not, if you're interested in learning how to do a laser cutter, if it's a different brand, it might not be very specific to you. But if it's that universal brand, then it'll work. And so we, you, anyone has access to this. Okay, so now that makers are trained, are they really ready to make? Did they, did that 20-minute session and that online learning, did that really do the trick farm? We talked to Joy and Jessica about additional programming they might have in the library other than that quick training or other events that they might do that help bring in makers to their community. So Joy, do you want to get us started on that? Sure. So we've hosted a few of our adult Pinterest nights and we use the equipment to make those projects. We've done door hangers. We've done just a whole bunch of different things that utilize our equipment. So once those participants see what can be made, we've had people make reservations on learning how to use the equipment then afterwards because they get ideas of what they can make themselves. We also have done it during a team night. So the teenagers, you know, go home and they tell their parents how amazing things that we can make on the, on the equipment. And they drag their parents in and say, hey mom, let's make some Christmas ornaments or make some Christmas presents, which has turned out great. And then the other thing, because we're a small community word of mouth, word of mouth has been huge. We had some quilters come in at the beginning a couple years ago, and I showed them equipment and they were kind of intimidated and didn't really understand how it would benefit them. And then we had a quilter who belongs to the Quilt Guild here in town and she commented that she had one of those machines and so an AccuQuilt cutter. And so, since then, we have two different quilting groups that come once a month and they actually use all of our equipment and then we have more people friends have been coming in then too. So the word of mouth has been huge in our small community of getting people to come in to use the equipment. I do have a comment actually before we're going to Jessica for Joy. Kelly from Ravenna, she says, she's the city clerk in Ravenna and I love and use the makerspace and Ravenna often. Joy does an amazing job training and helping patrons on the makerspace so she's one of your regulars I guess. She actually helps train sometimes. She has used it since day one so I appreciate her assistance too. Yes, you never know who might come in and use things and then become one of your volunteers, trainers, people helping the makerspace work. I like to call them master makers and we saw master makers all across the state. They might have been somebody who worked at the library or volunteer or just somebody who loved using a particular machine that really started to help out and encourage others and and that was great. So, Jessica. So in Norfolk when just to compare a little bit of our evolution of how we've changed when when we first started we did those small group certification classes and we were finding that a handful of people were, you know, after that certification they were comfortable they came in they had all kinds of ideas they were doing all kinds of cool stuff. But there was a majority of people would come to the certification class and then we, we wouldn't see them again. So we were trying to figure out you know what was going on were they intimidated were they not sure what, you know, what to do. So we started doing, we call them next level classes so if you had gone to the certification class you could come to this next level class and make a particular project engrave a beer mug. You know, cut out a leather bookmark, you know a variety of different projects. And as we started doing those those classes would fill up right away. And then we would, we were starting to see an uptick in the usage of the machines, you know by other certified makers so we felt like that was going pretty well. But then post pandemic and we've changed everything around and we were we're wanting to start up those next level classes again here in the last couple of months and after going to the maker conference in the fall. We heard so many libraries like joys who did it the opposite of us who they said come and make the cool thing. And then, you know, get excited about wanting to get certified and use the machine on your own and so we have flipped and now we do it that way and so they don't have to have any prior experience to come to a class we have one tomorrow night. Where we're going to engrave, engrave a jar or a cup and they've got a couple of different options. But they can, they don't have to have any experience and they can come and do that and so we've had good luck doing it that other way round as well and those classes fill up in a flash. So and our usage of the makerspace has really picked up in the last couple of months since we've started doing some of these hands on classes. Yeah, and that's a good way to get people who might be fearful of coming in to learn a machine coming in because they know hey somebody's going to help me through this. And, and then they find out do I, you know, want to take that next step and actually start coming in using that machine myself and going through the training. Okay, so I just wanted to mention a few things and and quite frankly these ladies mentioned most of these already so during our studios project. We did see a lot of different things at the 35 libraries. There were a lot of plant planned making opportunities so like Jessica said, come in and make, you know this product this item. We also had some machine interest groups so if people weren't coming in to use the CNC router or the Lego Mindstorms or something else. They could just advertise that on Tuesday night we're going to have Lego Mindstorm night and we're going to have our master Lego person there and so it'll kind of just be kind of group making or discussing or whatnot. You could have a day, a night where it's kind of mentor Mondays again where you have your master makers coming in. In Scott's bluff, they had maker kids, and they had a group of kids sign up and each week. There was something different that when they got together they were going to be making and that was advertised in advance. And then I know, I think Jessica mentioned Pinterest Club I know Central City did a lot with Pinterest Club and still do. And those are just ways of, again, generating interest in the machines that you have in your maker space. So, obviously, if you have a maker space you might want to have some policies and some liability release forms in the studios project we did have a draft policy put together that Deborah worked on she got collected policies from other maker spaces and kind of redrafted one for our use. We set that out to our participating libraries they revised it and approved the policies. We actually had put together a webinar where we discussed all those policies and why we had all of those points in those policies, and that recorded webinar is still available so if you're working on policies. You can kind of hear the reason for each of those points that we had in our policies. But, obviously, we have libraries out libraries and other maker spaces out doing that. So now how they evolved. What is Norfolk and Ravenna doing. Now that they've had a couple years under their belts of having a permanent maker space. So we'll hear from Ravenna first on their policies and release forms. So, like Joanne said we pulled the maker space policy that was presented with the traveling maker space. And we took what we thought was great out of that one and we, we did also went and did a lot of research on different policies across the nation, and took the ones that we like the best and we made our own. We did also after we made our policies. We had our city attorney look through them just to make sure that everything was legal just to cover ourselves and our patrons who are using the maker space also. And I did give Krista these and I believe Krista you said that you would be able to upload these on the recording. So that anybody else can click on these documents and look at them later too. Yes, yes, I do have your email with those attachments. Yeah. And I'll mention to all your message and mentioning that for everyone who's here. The all these presentation slides as well will be available afterwards with the recording when that's done. And any other documents that were mentioned yes so I have the excellent yet you can't see you probably can't read this very well but you'll have the actual document to look at yeah. So yeah, that's everything that could be possibly thought of was put into these policies and we had policies and then we had procedures. So the different ways the policies we have in our policy book, and then the procedures is what we actually give to our patrons so they understand what they are responsible for, and the requirements. Okay. And then you also have a release of liability form joy. Right, correct. And so this is the front of the form and then on the back of the form. It has where the maker signs it and says you know that they agree to everything it has emergency contact information. And then at the bottom of that form we also have a place where it's a staff only, and we initial and date exactly when they're trained on what piece of machinery or equipment. So then that way in the future we can say, well, so and so wasn't trained on that even though they said that they were. So let's go back and retrain them or what's actually officially train them on that. So that all staff have record and be able to see. Oh yeah, no joy trained them last week when I wasn't here and I can see that they're okay to use that machine so. And then we have that in our, we have a binder that has all of our appointments, we do our scheduling and just in a binder not online or anything. So we have those releases in that binder so we can just flip to it and see, is it going to take an hour for this person coming in to be trained, or if they've already had that training so. And I noticed in, in this particular agreement, and it was on page two which I don't have on here, but on that damage of tools and equipment. You're basic, you're not saying that they're going to be held liable if they damaged the equipment. But, but what you're asking them is to report any damage that is on that equipment and we always found that very important. When we had the studios project out there because sometimes something is damaged but if you report it right away. The staff can make sure, first of all that it gets fixed but that it doesn't get further damage because sometimes if you can attend to it right away. Then you really can prevent further damage that would really be expensive. And then, are we ready to move on to Jessica. Or did you have anything else to say joy. I think that's about everything. Okay, there's our maker space policy and I will admit that we started our maker space with no policy and no release form, and we just kind of winged it for a while. And that that's not I don't advise that you do that. But what that did allow us to do is kind of really see how our space was being used and what our concerns were before we developed a policy. And so, so we were able to put all of our concerns and safety issues into the policy once once we did finally make it. So that is available on our website norfolk any dot gov slash library, and then we have a section for all of our policies so that is there. And I can send that to Christa as well to post on the webinar to so, but we just have some age limits safety and responsibility. You know, we regarding the damage, we do hold people liable for damage. If the damage was done by them disregarding safety rules by them using it out of accordance with our policy. You know, if they were blatantly dangerous and did something that damaged it, then they will be liable. But we don't hold people liable for normal wear and tear for, you know, breaking a CNC bit or, you know, we've had little pieces on the laser cutter break because somebody made a mistake. We, you know, we don't hold people liable for honest mistakes and good faith usage of the machine. I didn't share our use and liability statement because we got our draft from Ravenna and use almost their exact same policy. But we did also have our city attorney look at that policy and look at our release and use agreement as well as our policy to make sure that, you know, it, you know, you never want to think about the worst thing happening. But if someone really did get really hurt. Is this a good policy that protects them and protects us. And, you know, if somebody really did, you know, blatantly damage our super expensive laser cutter, you know, does this policy and that waiver help us recoup some of that cost if we needed to. So that's always a good idea to have an outside eyes look at those those things. Okay. So, add maker spaces. There are a lot of logistic issues. Are we going to do scheduling do we have are we going to make reservations in the studios project we left that up pretty much up to the library. They got a feel for whether the machines were quite busy and you had to have reservations are scheduling. So how is Norfolk and Ravenna approaching these details. And we're going to start with our fork. Okay, so we do use LibCal for everything that manages the maker space. So once they've done their first certification they have to watch that online video and take their online test when they're done with that then they have to make an appointment for their in person safety orientation. And that we'll talk about staffing later but this is also how we manage the staffing of it because we choose when we're available for those times and we, we set aside times that staff can dedicate to doing these things. And so you can see there that's what the appointment scheduling look like so if I had just completed my online training for the 3d printer, I come here and I select a time to do my in person orientation with the staff person. And once they have completed that and signed their waiver and done all of those things. We just have a spreadsheet. We just use Excel and we have a different tab for every piece of equipment and once somebody certified we add their name on there. And so then we know that if they submit a reservation request we can approve it because we can check and see that they've done it. Let's go to the next one, Joanne. So all of our equipment is set up in LibCal that people can schedule it. So you can see an example of the laser cutter down there. If I were to click on the laser cutter and look at the availability, if it's available, it's green, if it's booked, it's red. So as a patron, this is what I would see. And I would click on any available open time and reserve it and there's a quick little form to fill out. And the form does ask, have you taken the certification? Have you completed certification on this piece of equipment? But then that request comes to staff to review. And we get notified by LibCal anytime somebody submitted a request so we can double check that they have completed the reservation. Then we can approve that request and they get an email that says, yes, this is approved. Come on down. So we allow three active reservations at any one time so they can book a few days in advance or book a couple weekends ahead of time. You know, it's at their convenience how they want to use those three reservations. And then of course as soon as they complete one, you know, they could book another one. So it's a rolling three active at any one time. So we really like this system. It works really well for us. It helps keep us from double booking equipment. Patrons can look at it from home so they know, well, I'm not going to come down because somebody's already using it. You know, so it saves them time. It's convenient for them and it works well for staff too. Yeah, this looks like a good system. Okay. And so what is Ravenna's approach to scheduling and reservations. So like I said earlier, we just have a binder that's broken down into the day and all the times that were open from morning to close. We just go by what staff has available for training hours. My assistant, if I'm not here, she'll write down their phone number and say, you know, this looks like it'll fit enjoy schedule, but she'll give you a call if it doesn't. We're pretty informal with our reservation book. We always also stress to our makers that they need to call before they come down here because the machines are not guaranteed to be open. Since we don't have an online system where they can just look at it. A lot of the times it is available, but we always do stress make sure you call ahead of time don't travel down here unless you double check. And then we don't have any per se limits on the time that they can use how long they can use the equipment. During Christmas time we try to limit it to two hours per session, just because it is so busy during the month of December. And we also do not allow new makers to be trained in December because it is so busy. It's hard to get training time in there and then they're excited and they want to make immediately. And it's just overwhelming for staff since it's myself and my assistant and my volunteers like Kelly and my one of my board members also volunteers and helps train. So it's just kind of on what's available for our schedules also. Okay. Okay, so there's obviously staffing and volunteer issues. When you have a makerspace, how does libraries and other makerspaces do that when they might have limited staff time joy. So like I just said, we have only a few volunteers my assistant director she is a little hesitant on the technology and so I try to have her work on a different machine. Throughout the, the weeks just to get her refreshed and feeling comfortable. She wasn't here when we had the, the grant cycle. So she's not as familiar with all the machines. So I do most of the training. Kelly, who was on earlier she does some training she has taught some of her family members and shown them how to do it. So I don't hesitate to ask for those volunteers to help, but a lot of it is done by myself. Okay. And Jessica, how do you do that in our fork. We don't really use volunteers for the makerspace. We have had. Oh, maybe one or two people offer in the past and they were very knowledgeable and certainly would have been good at it. It just logistically has never worked out when we've reached out for, you know, hey would this work that just doesn't quite work. So, you know, we certainly are open to that if that works out in the future, but right now just staff do it and we use that scheduling software to, you know, have appointments work when it works for our schedule we each have a night or two a week where we're open to do it and a couple of hours afternoons and we certainly will schedule something else if somebody reaches out and lets us know that, you know, nothing, nothing we have available works for them, you know, we can certainly do something else but we've got a handful of staff that really enjoy the equipment they really enjoy using it and and so we've been able to just do training in staff or in house with our staff. During the makerspace project, we didn't notice that in the smaller communities, they worked with volunteers more so than in the larger communities that had extra staff available or enough staff available. And then sometimes the volunteers worked out great. And other times, you know, not so much if they decided, you know, that just wasn't for them or the technology was above their head for whatever reason. And so, you know, we did see the gamut on that. So obviously, if you're going to have a makerspace, you have an investment equipment in 2017 when we purchased all this studio equipment, we actually put about 28,000 in each, you know, to get all of the machines. These prices might be a little low compared to what you can buy them today, but that's what we spent 28,000. And of course, we depended on the libraries to supply, you know, the tables and the counters and whatnot, because we just brought in the equipment. And so if you're actually doing, putting in a makerspace, you might also have the cost of, you know, obviously the tables and chairs and whatnot, if you don't have that. So, in Norfolk, what did you do to fund your makerspace? Yeah, well, as I mentioned earlier, we decided to do like a baby step approach. So we didn't, you know, we didn't have to source like a $30,000 startup cost. We just looked at one piece at a time. So actually our very first piece of equipment was an embroidery machine that a local business came and offered to donate to us without us even asking. So that was a wonderful business donation that got the ball rolling on the whole makerspace getting started here permanently. So we've had business donations. What we did for the year following that was we did budget some funds so that we could use them kind of as matching funds to ask for grants and other things. So we got some local grants from like our community foundation. Our library foundation kicked in some funds. We have a community like Day of Giving, like a big give day. And our library foundation used their big give funds to donate to the makerspace to get machinery in there. So we've just kind of pulled bits and pieces from lots of different places. We got a library improvement grant as well from the Nebraska Library Commission that helped with a lot of our pieces. So we've just kind of, you know, cobbled together little bits here and there till we'd say, okay, well now we have enough to get our laser cutter because that was our most expensive piece. So once we got the laser cutter in, then we could start looking for, you know, other little bits and pieces. Okay, what can we get next? We want our 3D printer. How do we find funds for that? So just kind of a little bit at a time. Yeah. Yeah. And it looks like you had a good cross section. And Ravana. So I was the assistant director when the Nebraska Library Commission makerspace came through. And then a year later, the director had actually moved on and I became the director. And the director before me, when we, like I said earlier, when we built or when we got the mobile makerspace, the library was brand new. So it was a little overwhelming. We had only been in our new building for six weeks when you brought in all this equipment. So it was a little overwhelming. And my previous director, she was not on board and getting a makerspace in our library full time. So after she left, and I love making, I've been a maker my whole life. I was a 4-H or, you know, like creating is my jam. And so we had the Ravana Area Vision Foundation actually approached us and said that they had written this grant and they had raised $7,000 for a laser. And so they gifted us $17,000 and said, we have this money. If we don't give it to you and you purchase it, money is being taken away from that grant every month. So we need to give you this money. So that's how we actually started our makerspace was with that donation. Then we were able to use their $7,000 that they raised and used towards their grant. We were actually able to use that also towards a matching grant with the Croix Bennett Foundation. And so, and then our Friends of Library pitched in $3,000 also to match that. So we were able to get $20,000 from the Croix Bennett with their donation. So $10,000 and $10,000 matching the Ravana Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Corporation. They donated the vinyl cutter, a heat press and all the startup vinyl for us, which was about $5,000. Like I said, the Friends of Library, they donated the $3,000 matching. Snap-on Tools was an incredible donation for us. So Shane Faradar, who is the main driving force behind the Innovation Studios on campus, he was the creator of that. And he's from Ravana. So it was one of those nice connections that we had that he had told the shop manager, the director of Innovation Studios that anytime that we started a makerspace that they would be on board and helping us with whatever they could. So with his connections, we were able to get Snap-on to donate to rolling tool chest and then also about $5,000 worth of actual tools. So we have ratchets and screwdrivers and drills and like anything that you could possibly need for mechanic or for any kind of construction use. And then we had a family who also had heard about the makerspace that we were building and they donated all of their moms. She had passed away and she was an avid sewer and part of that quilt field in town. So they donated her embroidery machine, her sewing machine, all of her like 90 quilting books, thread and like everything you can imagine. And then they also donated $1,500 in memorial money to buy an acute quilt cutter. So that and then we also just recently received the Nebraska Library Commission's library improvement grant for a brand new embroidery machine because there was a little bit of problems with that one that was donated. And then also we raise money during give where you live, a big give kind of day to be able to purchase a 3D printer in this last since January, we were able to purchase that. So, like Jessica, it was slowly, the only difference between Jessica and mine is that Jessica, their library actually had it in their budget for some of these things or they could use some of their budget as matching for these grants or startup. Our makerspace is 100% funded through donations and grants. So our makerspace is valued at about $54,000, and it was 100% zero out of our budget. Yeah, it looks like you both had a good cross section. I think what is also noticed about both of these, and these are two totally different size libraries like different size communities different ways of doing it. But what is the same is those partnerships networking. You never know who's going to be have money that they want to give you or something I want to donate or the snap on connection I mean how would you even predict that was a thing you wouldn't, you know, so I think you always need to be looking at the partnerships into the local businesses in your community, and just keeping those lines of communication open and just, you know, selling the makerspace or just selling the library in general to anyone you talk to and saying hey, we do this, and you never know who might just come in and say, I want to give you this. I want to help support this. Yeah. That's right. So in the studios project, we really wanted to work on sustainability issues obviously our 20 week. Those 20 week hosting cycles were no guarantee that a library would put together permanent studio afterwards. So we really thought up front, how could we help communities actually get over that help. So we encouraged all of our libraries to develop a local team. We put easy to customize marketing templates on our website and those are still on there. We put a frame in front of each machine that says what the machine was and how much money it costs to encourage some fundraising. We required an open house and then a maker showcase near the end to celebrate the success and we were hoping that that would help studios actually start to get set up. And then we wanted to take that further toward the end of our grant and we did have a Nebraska makerspace conference in November that folks around the state was invited to. And as you heard both Joy and Jessica said, they got ideas out of that conference and brought it back to their communities and did some different things when they came back. We've also now launched a makerspace mailing list that you can go to our Nebraska library commission website and you can type in mailing list and you can click on the makerspace one and add your name and email address to that. And so now we have makerspaces talking to each other, sharing information, asking questions. And then we're also going to be putting together soon we're working on a Nebraska makerspace database that will be accessible and searchable. So people are going to be able to search who has makerspaces in Nebraska and what kind of maker machines they have and whether they charge money or whatnot. And of course, in the communities, they have to think about growth strategies and sustainability issues as well. And I know some of you, Joy and Jessica mentioned a few of these things. Is there anything else you want to mention about this topic. So our sustainability that we do if you look at our policies and everything. It does say that it costs a dollar per hour to use our laser. And that is because it is about 500 hours that you can use the filtration system before you need a new filter. And so if we charge a dollar an hour 500 hours, it costs $500 to replace that filter so it just makes sense to to charge a dollar an hour. Then that way we don't ever have to have out that that cost. And so that makes it a little bit more sustainable. And then also with our vinyl cutter because it's being used quite a bit. And it's not being used for small projects. It's being used for large projects. We charge a dollar per foot to use that machine just because of the wear and tear on the machine. So if they bring in their own vinyl, they're still paying a dollar per foot to use the machine. They use our vinyl consumables, then they pay the cost for the vinyl plus the dollar per foot. So if somebody is making a 10 foot banner, they're going to pay $10 if they bring in their own vinyl. Originally, we had it set up for a dollar per use just to be able to pay for new blades in the wear and tear on the machine. However, it's being used a lot and we're going to have to replace it probably next year. So because of that, we've just changed it actually this last month. Our board passed where we're charging a dollar per foot just because we're going to have to replace that machine because it's used so much. Other than that, everything else is free to use. We did also make sure to tell everybody this because this is really important. We were getting donations during our maker space with our like at Christmas time, it would cost them like 570 or something like that and they would give us a $10 bill and it would round up. So then they would say, oh, just just it's a donation towards the maker space. Well, thank you. But in our accounting, we had to report it as a donation and that any donations to library goes into the city's general fund. It doesn't stay in the library. And so I felt that that wasn't quite fair because those donors were giving that money for the maker space and we're going to need that money eventually to replace those machines. So I talked with Kelly, our city clerk, and because she uses the maker space a lot, she agrees. She thinks she thought that it would be really important that those donations are going into a special fund where it can roll over every year. So then that way we are adding up those dollars or those donations so that if we have to replace a $16,000 laser in the next 10 years, then by then we should have that money generated to be able to replace that machinery without having to build or without having to write more grants for those equipment. And so it's designated specifically for that purpose and kept in its own little pocket of money. Yeah, that's a good idea. Well, we're going to a lot more organized than we are. We do not have any long term strategies that way. We just knew that we're going to want to keep things fresh in there that we're going to want to be adding new equipment every year or two to keep people excited and engaged in, you know, and also just replacement where we'll have equipment wear out. So we've just been watching what is getting the most use and what people are really excited about and knowing that we're going to want to add things. You know, we were looking at maybe adding something this year. We got lucky enough to get a piece of equipment from the the dissolution of the innovation studio grants. So we got a new CNC router, new to us, CNC router through that process. So that kind of checks off our box of having something new this year. And then we'll just use our same strategies as we have in the past. We'll budget a little bit of money to have some seed money to matching funds for grants and we'll look for donations and let people know what we're trying to raise funds for and, you know, use grants and donations and a little bit of seed money from the budget. So I know we're kind of going over but we're going to just quickly quiet kind of go through this. I was just going to mention to everyone since we are, yeah, we did start a little after 10, because we're waiting for those tornado warning tests to go. But we will keep going as long as it takes to get through everything that we have in our slides. And so that joy and enjoy and Jessica can get all their information out. The whole show is being recorded so if you do need to leave because you only allotted up until like 11am ish central time to watch that's fine. You can watch the recording and catch anything you miss later. Okay, so in consumables for consumables in our studios project. We wanted to supply have consumables at the library. So folks could buy those items and do some quick making. We thought that was a very important since we were only going to be at the library for 20 weeks. And we really did want people to experience that maker space in a short amount of time. But what do permanent maker spaces do nor fork. We do not offer consumables. We have other than 3d filament because we do have the maker bought 3d printer and we want to make sure people are only using maker bought approved filament. So we do provide that and they have to use what we provide. And then we do have a handful of button kits, you know, for magnet and pin back buttons. But other than that, we just let people know what kind of materials are approved to use it. We have lots of retail stores in town. They can pick up and get their own. So we don't feel that that is something that in our situation that we need we need to do. Okay, and Ravenna looks like you have a different take on that. Yeah, we sure do. So, like I said, Roveda is a very small community. And the largest cities around us are Grand Island and Carney and they're about a 30 to 35 mile drive. So we don't have that convenience of being able to just go down the street the hobby lobby or to a lumberyard or anything like that. So we do provide for the cost we charge the cost of the product plus we round it up to the nearest quarter, and we call that our convenience fee. The big thing with consumables though is that to remember you have to collect sales tax on it. So that one's one of those really important things that I was reminded at the convention that if you're selling them you do have to collect, even though you are a nonprofit or government building. So here is that other snap on toolbox and that so the top ones have the actual like pick tools scissors goggles, all the safety stuff, the heat mats, but the bottom two drawers are all the consumables for our heat press. So we have koozies and we have sublimation ink puzzles. Jar openers mouse pads bags we have like six different kinds of bags. We have little makeup bags, a little bit of everything and then that shelving unit is actually in our back storage room. And we have glassware cork ornaments would and then so in that first photo that you saw of our maker space you can see like a cart full of vinyl. That is the removable vinyl that we have offered. And this in the back room is the permit vinyl so we have them in separate places so that people don't mistakenly use versus the removable. And I believe there's one more slide. So with we just got these t shirts from the Nebraska Library Commission, because we had so much of our own equipment already when they were distributing the the remaining stuff from the mobile maker space when they were getting rid of all of the grant. We did receive t shirts and I was able to organize them in these bins that have the size and everything on them. So that takes up another part of our storage room also. And then this is a listing of all of the prices for those consumables we have these part of our policy when we hand out to our makers so they all know exactly how much everything would cost to use. And as you see like the acuquilt cutter, it's free to use bring your own fabric. So, like I said, a lot of everything is free. However, if they want to purchase, they can give them that option. Okay, and so how did our total of our 35 libraries do that host to the maker space and for a 20 week period. So as you can see from this list, these were some of the more popular machines that libraries have bought after they hosted. So you can see that laser cutter before the grant none of those 35 libraries had laser cutter since that since it's been over 21 now have laser cutters and there's another seven of them that are fundraising for a laser cutter that they think they'll get within the next 12 months on down to, you know, even the, the most common thing that has been purchased was the button maker. 27 libraries have added a button maker. And if you go all the way down to the end of the 35 libraries they had 18 before they hosted. 18 items together between them. And now they added 285 items. They're going to add another 53. And so you can see that once they tasted a maker space. They like maker spaces. And then here's just another quick breakdown. So of 35 libraries to libraries have 20 or more machines and kits that they've added another three has between 15 and 19. So you can just see that there are a lot of machines in those 35 libraries. So questions. The project was a success. It would be the final. Yeah. I think so did what we wanted to do with it. Absolutely. Yeah, so if anybody has any questions, like I said, we will stick around if you have any questions you want to ask as long as it's going around as long as it takes to get answers from Joanne and Jessica enjoy. I have a comment from Galen Ainsworth said that when you're talking about this cost for supplies, that the cost for supplies for training is an expense as well. So when you are training people that's something that you would, you know, training your volunteers or training your staff that you would have to plan for as well. So if you have any questions to come in, just here are a few online resources that we have. So definitely check out nlc dot Nebraska dot gov. And you just type in maker space or innovation studios, and you can find all of these templates and information about what we have on there. So here is my name and number. And of course we want to always thank IMLS the Institute of Museum and Library Services for their grant. And then at the end I have a few other slides that I'm not going to go through. But those are just additional information on how to get to niche Academy and how to use that system. So when the slides are posted to, along with the archive recording for today's show, the full slides will be there so there's a whole bunch of extra slides after yes. The webpage for the grant is linked from the session page and I also linked to both Norfolk and Ravenna's pages websites to. So you have some questions that came in so let's get to the questions. They want to know first questionnaire do you have any statistics on the number of people have who have used the equipment. Do you have any actual like well in our grant patrons do you have statistics on that. Yeah, in our grant project we did ask libraries that anybody that they trained on piece of equipment that the Adam to certification database. So I know how many was trained in total over the course of the project. And right off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you a number, but it was quite a few. And I noticed a lot of our libraries do keep track of how many people are using those machines, because they wanted to be able to go to their city council and say, hey, here's information but Norfolk or Ravenna do you have information like that about your studios. Yeah, we report usage statistics every month along with our search stats and our number of library visits and everything we just put the usage of the equipment right on there so. Last month I know we had more than 80 uses of the different pieces of equipment, which was a good growth from what it's been over the last six months. And just a quick look, I can see we have about 100 people certified to use the 3D printer and almost 120 certified to use the laser cutter. So those are our two most popular pieces of equipment. And honestly, I don't have those off the top of my head. I don't have them on hand. However, I know that when we had the mobile maker space we had over 100 that were certified on equipment. And I would say that it's pretty close to that right now also for the current maker space. And it just keeps on growing, like I had seven new ones this last week. Get trained on the actual cutter so it's just, it just keeps on like I said it keeps on snowballing as soon as somebody says something their friends are like wow where did you make that or how did you get that so That word of mouth you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Also we have a question about that mailing list that you mentioned Joanne. It says can people from other states sign up for the mailing list. We describe it as for Nebraska maker spaces and those interested, but there's really nothing to prevent other people from joining that as well. So, yep, you can go to our website. And just, it's a link. Yeah, if you search for mailing lists on the website to bring you the page that we have all of our different mailing lists and maker spaces is on there. Yeah, I checked it myself and it just says it doesn't have any restriction so Yep, and we do have, I think we just kicked that off about last month, and we already have about 115 people on it so there's already a, and we got a question yesterday and several people answered the question so it's working. Got interaction happening I love that. So the reason the question is there a training video for the computer software that the machines used to operate, or how do other libraries address that training. Yeah, you know it depends on the machine itself because some machines have software specific to that machine. In the studios project we also had corral draw on most of those machines and And we do have, I believe there is a corral draw in that niche Academy but there's also, you know, most design software, you can go to the web and do the tutorials that they have as well. All right. Have you. Okay, was this. Okay, I get it now. I had to read the question to make sure I knew what they have you had a reluctant user come to the library as a result of having this equipment. So maybe someone who maybe I assume they mean a You know, so you're getting new different types of people as a result of having this equipment. How's that happening. We had throughout the grant we had a lot of reports of we are getting a whole new group of people into the library to use the makerspace equipment. And I'm sure Norfolk and Ravenna can say what they've witnessed over time. Just last year, our re our annual reports said that we gained 90 new patrons. And that's huge for a community of 1300 people. And because you have to have a library card to be able to use the makerspace. And if you live out city limits, our library cards are like some of the cheapest around. It only costs $5 a year to have a library card in her Vanna. So at the most that they're paying is $5 to have access to that equipment if they're from out of town. And yeah, so I'd say probably about half of those new patrons are probably just because of the makerspace that have never used the library before. That's great. That's awesome. When we updated our policy that was one thing we included as well that you had to have an active library card. So we have signed up a lot of our folks for library cards to come in for makerspace training because they've never been in the library before. So it is. There's of course a lot of overlap regular library users who also want to use the makerspace but we also have makerspace users who come in the library only for that purpose. So that's an area that libraries are always trying to figure out how do we, you know, get our non the non users to come in how do we get people who are not usual library users to see what we have and realize that this is something for them. And any new things that you can do can always you never know what's going to catch someone's eye, and bring them into your building, and then they'll hopefully expand and use other services to beyond just what brought them in in the first place. All right. All right, that was the last question we had. So I think we might work on wrapping it up if anybody has any last minute desperate questions you want to ask right now get it typed in. Otherwise you can reach out to join at the library commission or Jessica enjoy it there through their libraries of course. Both joy and Jessica have sent me we had mentioned earlier their policies and release agreements. So they will be posted along with the recording afterwards if you wanted to have that actual documents you can have that. And just in common saying great presentation. You're impressive and amazing asset to your towns of course absolutely. And all of our makerspace libraries, you know, this is just two out of the 35 that were involved in this. And I think they're all doing great work in their communities and as Joanne scribe there whether statistics and what we're doing here is we're officially wrapping up the project. It's still going to have an an ongoing effect in the future with all of these libraries having equipment and everything we have out there on the website available for any other libraries who may want to do something like similar to this in your communities. And we also have a lot of makerspaces and schools and academic areas and then of course there's community makerspaces as well. You know, and Lincoln and Omaha and even smaller communities in Nebraska. And so, you know, there's just makerspace. I mean, you just never know where a makerspace is going to pop up. And it's all about making to and I think something that's something that people think of makerspace I think of a 3d printers and all this high tech stuff, but some of the things you have are not that it you know a nice embroidery machine for sewing a little Lego mine storms or a, you know, non techie low low tech button maker smash the thing boom I mean it's all levels of things it's about creating, making anything and at any level and any type of thing so this is just the small subset as you said Joanne of who we've been doing it with in Nebraska. All right, I don't see any new questions coming in so I think we'll wrap it up I'm going to pull presenter control back to my screen here. And get this up. There we go and I was just sure this is our list of the mailing list that we do have the library commission and the makerspaces one is down here in the middle, you can go right there to sign up for that if you do want to. The recording will be ready should be done by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me. It will be posted on to our website. I do have the link here in the session page that will be used for the recording as well to the innovation studios project page where all the resources you might want. And then I kind of in Norfolk and revenge libraries I have linked to their makerspace pages on their websites to if you want to go and see what they have out there. Our archives are available on our main encompass live page we have our upcoming shows and then underneath them as a link to our archive pages. Most recent one will be at the top here today's will be there. I'll have a link to the recording link to the slides link to the documentation that Jessica and joy sent to me. Everyone who attended today and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when it is available. So you'll know when it's ready. While we're here I'll show you there is a search feature to search our show archives you want to see if we've done a show on a particular topic. You can search the full archives or just the most recent 12 months if you want something just recently done. That is because this is our full show archives I'm not going to scroll all the way to the bottom because it's a large large page. I'm going back to win and compass life premiered which was in January 2009. So, you know we are librarians we keep things for historical purposes sometimes in our car archives as long as we have somewhere to put it we will keep all these recordings up here, but just do pay attention to the original broadcast date of any recording you watch. Some of the shows will be fine and stand the test of time but some will become outdated old information services and projects and programs and anything discussed may have changed drastically since this original broadcast links may be different. Links may be completely broken. Some things may not be happening at all anymore so just pay attention when you are watching a recording. We do have a Facebook page that I link off of from everywhere on foreign compass lives if you like to use Facebook give us like over there. We do reminders about logging in for today's show speakers meet our speakers for the day. When our recordings are available so if you do like to use Facebook give us like over there. We also use the end comp live a little abbreviation friend compass live hashtag on Twitter and Instagram to share information there about things that are when everything is happening in the show. So that will wrap it up for today's show thank you everybody for being here with us today I think this is great information I'm so glad that this project happened. It's been a long time that we've been doing it I know Joanne and the libraries involved. And we did originally started out with a shorter shorter timeframe and due to the pandemic and needing to extend. We got an extension and I'm just, I think we're all happy that is. It is wrapping up and that it was a success for everybody. Thank you so much. So I'll be joining us next week when it is pretty sweet tech day. The last Friday, last Wednesday of every month is our pretty sweet tech sessions. Amanda sweet who is our technology innovation librarian here at the library commission comes on to do something tech related. And next week she's going to be talking about 3D room designs with Tinker CAD and thingiverse. So, this is something that maybe you could use to design your makerspace rooms. So if you're interested in that I want to learn more about it sign up for next week show and neighbor others we've got our all of our April date scheduled here and see our future dates we coming up there as well so thank you everybody for being here today. Thank you, Joanne and Jessica enjoy and hopefully we'll see some of you on future episodes of and help us live. Bye bye.