 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is a Commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be too offended by it. We embrace it. We'll recover anything that may be of interest to librarians. We do this show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, and it is recorded, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesday morning, that's fine. You can always go to our website and you'll find all of our recordings for all of our previous shows, going back to when we first started in 2009, are all there on the website, so you can watch them. The show is free and open to anyone to watch, so we do have people from all across the country. It looks like here today, which is great. And we do all sorts of things in the show, a mixture of presentations, book reviews, training sessions, anything related to libraries. We want to share it and get it on the show, so we do that. We have commission staff that do, Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations, and we bring guest speakers. And today we have a mixture of that, which happens sometimes. And we also do once a month, which is what we're doing today, is a tech talk with Michael Sowers, who is sitting next to me here. He's our technology innovation librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission, and he comes on once a month to do something more techy oriented. Sometimes we have other sessions that are that way, but this one definitely is, if you're into that kind of thing, this is when you want to be here. So I'm just going to hand over to you, Michael, and you can take away and explain who's here and what you guys are on. Okay, great. Thanks, Christa. So yes, as Christa mentioned, this is our October 2013 tech talk. And what we're going to do this time around is I co-presented a two hour session at the Nebraska Library Association conference about three weeks ago with Marcia, who's sitting here next to me at the commission, and Gordon Wyatt, who's out at his library. Gordon, can you say hello? Make sure we're all here. So we did a two hour session called Tinker's Printers and Makers, Makerspaces in the Library. We're going to attempt to compress that down to an hour here for our session today, and we should be able to do it if nothing else. We don't have the hands-on portion there. Gordon actually brought his 3D printer with him to our session there. So we're going to go ahead and I think Marcia is going to start. I'm going to jump in. Then Gordon's going to take over, and then I take over a little bit. Then we go back to Marcia again, if I think I remember all that correctly. And I'm going to be running the slides from this end, so especially when we get to Gordon and he's a little remote, I'll do my best to kind of keep the slides in sync. So why don't we go ahead to Marcia and take it over. Okay, well good morning everyone. It is good to be here. We are going to do a modified presentation, like we said, of our NLA presentation a few weeks ago. So first of all, let's go ahead and talk about what makerspaces are. Now I'm assuming if you're here today, you're interested in makerspaces in your library. Either it's something that you're planning, you're scheming, you're dreaming, or maybe you have something already in place and you want to go ahead and expand on that. And that's really cool. Makerspaces are basically a physical location where people can come together and they can be creative. It can be anything from real high tech with 3D printers and laser cutters and computer software that you wouldn't believe. Or it can be more low tech, a place that is inspiring. People can come in and they can do everything from knitting and crafting to a mix of all types of media. So they're really cool places. Traditionally, the idea of tinkering is something that maybe your grandpa did in the garage. He had a workbench, all kinds of neat tools and there's always stuff there and you could make things. And then we've kind of lost that ability to do tinkering. And so this is a nice community oriented space in the library where people can come in and get creative. Now you don't need a ton of high tech stuff. We are going to talk about 3D printers and software and all the different bits and pieces that make a cool makerspace. But honestly just providing the space and telling people that you want them in your library to be creative is enough to get started. Libraries are all different here in Nebraska. We know of one 3D printer in a public library which is Gord's library and he's going to talk about that. I work at UNL and we have at least six 3D printers on campus. A variety of departments and colleges have the 3D printers and they're using them for their students and their graduate programs. I'm not sure what's going on elsewhere in Nebraska. That's why we're here and we want to talk to everybody about it. But I know that this is something that's percolating. I've talked to enough people who are interested. And so if you are using makerspace in your library and you're not in Nebraska and you're listening, please let us know. Let Kristen know in the chat room so we can kind of keep track of what's going on. And if you are in Nebraska and this is something you're thinking about, let us know because we really want to build support for this and share amongst ourselves what we're doing and how we can support each other. So moving on our next slide, we're not actually going to watch this YouTube video. I highly recommend it after the show. It's not a long video, but what it does is it takes a look at what a makerspace looks like in the library. It's really cool to watch. It shows you 3D printers in action, kind of how the spaces and the bits and pieces that go with it. But once again, due to the sake of time, we're going to go ahead and skip it, but please watch it after the fact. There's plenty of public libraries and academic libraries that are using 3D printers in their library and making makerspaces. You're all librarians. Google it. You'll be able to find it. So moving on, we're going to spend some time in this show talking about what 3D printers are. Now we have some pictures, so you're going to be able to see them. And Gordon's going to explain what his 3D printer looks like, how it operates, and how we got it in his library and that kind of thing. And Michael's going to talk about other really cool makerspace gadgets that are available. So we'll go ahead and get started on that. Once again, if you have questions, let Kristen know and we'll address them as we're talking about them. We'll try and hit all the biggies, and I know there's always other stuff on the market. So creating a makerspace can be as simple as providing Legos. I just want to start there. If nothing else, that's what you do with Legos is you create things. And I mean, you could have Duplos for the smaller kids. You could have Legos for the bigger kids. And when I say bigger kids, I'll include me and Marcia's raising her hand. You know, at a certain level, I kind of miss the two five-gallon buckets full of Legos that I grew up with, me and my brother. But I do still have some of my Legos and put together an Imperial Star Destroyer a couple of years ago. And you still have Legos. Architecture ones. Those are pretty cool. Those are all over the house. So, you know, it can be as simple as Legos. But then if you want to take it even further, sticking with Legos, Legomindstorms. Now over here on the right is the Legomindstorms robot that you'll see. And this is kind of the project that you always see as the demo for that. But the idea is that you have Legos, but then you can program them to move in certain ways. Now, the other thing, though, you can take this to an extreme. And in the lower left-hand corner there, you can see a Rubik's Cube, a bunch of Legomindstorms, and a smartphone. And what this is, it's a Lego, excuse me, it's a Rubik's Cube-solving Legomindstorms robot. And so you shuffle up the Rubik's Cube. You set it into the middle of this thing so that the camera on the phone can see what side it's looking at, what colors it's looking at. It rotates the cube to figure out where all the colors are. And then it literally solves the Rubik's Cube in less than six seconds. And there are YouTube videos for this, just look up Mindstorms, Rubik's Cube Solver, things like that. They are, it's amazing. And so this is taking that concept of Legos and makerspaces and throwing in a little programming and some app development. I've kind of jumped from putting together little things in Legos to seriously techie things. But that just shows kind of the range you can use with Legos and things that you can put together. So this is another one I'm going to talk about before I hand it over to Gordon. If those in our audience remember Spirographs, basically I grew up with those where you'd stick the pen in the little gears and you'd draw little things. This is called a spin bot, and the idea is you add some pens, you put it together, and then it's got little motors on it. What it actually does is it kind of loose forms Spirograph and the robot moves around and draws while it's moving. So you do learn a little bit of robotics. You create something in the end, not just the robot itself, but you also create the arc that comes out of it. This is used with markers, chalk and more. I almost want to see maybe a bigger version of this with sidewalk chalk. You go out and run one of those on the sidewalk of the street because you yell car when there's a car coming if you're playing in the street. So again, a little bit of robotics, a little bit of creating, but something that it says not for children under three, but they're saying three or four year olds with some basic help and instruction could put something like this together. So you've got kind of a wide variety of almost toys that you can get these days to kind of help create that makerspace and teach kids some skills. So with that, we are going to now jump to 3D printing. So Gordon, why don't you go ahead and take it over. All right. Well, thank you very much. I kind of went overboard when I added stuff to this PowerPoint for the conference. So I'm going to go very, very quickly. If you have any questions at any time, feel free to email me. Even if they're big, long, crazy questions, I'll be happy to answer. Okay. Anyway, as far as 3D printing is concerned, it's what's called additive fabrication. There are four different real, four different methods that are generally used. The first two, selective laser centering and serial lithography both use lasers. Selective laser centering uses lasers to fuse a powdered material, any kind of material, until it fuses together and curate really cool things. Stereolithography uses a vat of resin and it shoots lasers at it in order to harden that resin in specific areas. It also makes really cool things. Now those are really fun because I've got lasers. Come on. The third one is powder bed and binder. These are usually very, very large, very, very expensive. It is the only 3D printing solution that is currently available that will print in full color. This is the process that makes the famed World of Warcraft figurines. If you play World of Warcraft and saw these prints and was desperate to print your character, this is the process that does it. It creates a little layer of powder that then uses essentially inkjet printer technology to squirt out full color binder into that powder. You get really cool looking things. The bulk of the 3D printing that you are going to see in libraries or really anywhere else at the moment is called Fuse Deposition Modeling. What this does is it uses a print material with relatively low melt point that is extruded through a heated print head. Very much like a hot glue gun, squirts out glue and melts it out of the little head. What this does is it creates filaments that are pressed together layer by layer by layer. It is used by probably 99.9% of all consumer 3D printers. It is relatively quick depending on the level of complexity you want to use. You can create all kinds of really cool things with it. Here is an example of Yoda. Now that I have given you a really brief introduction of what 3D printing is, here are some things that you can make with it. What you are looking at here is what is called the BlizDent toothbrush. It is 3D printed from a mold that you can get your dentist to make of your mouth. You set it into this company and they can print it out for you for about $300. It has the effectiveness of 3 minutes of traditional toothbrushing in 6 seconds. Stick it on your teeth and grind your teeth a bit. Chris is speaking a little unconvinced. Basically, if you look closely in there you will see the outside is the shell. Inside there are all these little tiny bristles that are all designed to go in there. Whether it works the way it is advertised, I don't know. But it is still pretty cool. The next thing we have got is a stint for a Kyba... I am going to kill his name. Kyba Gaon-Friel who was born with a problem where his windpipe was collapsing and it was preventing him from breathing correctly. So what a bunch of researchers and doctors got together and decided they could 3D print a stint that would be able to hold his windpipe open and let him breathe. Which is kind of freaking cool really. So there are some just fun kind of medical type things you can use. But 3D printing has also found itself in fashion a lot over the past couple of years. In fact, if you have recently watched this season's project runway, one of the contestants actually 3D printed accessories for his runway show. Which is pretty slick. But here are some really neat shoes that you can buy 3D printed for only $900. Or you could get crafty and make your own with a 3D printer at your library. You can also make tools which are really cool. This one is just done with standard fused deposition modeling 3D printer. You'd think, well that's just plastic. It's the same stuff they make Legos with. How could that be a good tool? It actually works pretty well. The prints come out rather sturdy. So it's kind of impressive. All three of us, Krista said it out loud, but the other two of us were thinking, have you ever stepped on a Lego? They're pretty strong. Oh yeah, yeah. But as far as stepping on a Lego and then using a wrench to knock those bolts or something, maybe a little bit different. But they are pretty powerful. But how about some fun? Well you can print off all kinds of stuff for games. This is the game that you can download from Thingiverse for free and print off. Pocket Tactics is what it's called. It's really cool. You print off figures and little tiles. It's really slick. That's really fun. For all you settlers and Catan enthusiasts, you can find models to print off 3D representations of the tiles. So your board no longer has to be a rather cheap looking cardboard representation of an island, which is pretty fun. And you can also print off fun little action figures like BMO here. Basically there's all kinds of things that you can print with 3D printer from the practical to the fun to the crazy to all kinds of stuff, including Legos themselves. You can print all kinds of custom Lego pieces that you can kind of see here and new gears and driveshafts for your mindstorms. Pretty much anything you need. In fact in there you can see adapters that people have made to use your tinker toys with your Legos. It's all kind of really cool. Gordon, I'm going to throw in here one more example that I just found this morning. So I don't know a lot about it, but we'll include in the show notes. A young man who was basically born without fingers on one hand, he and his father bought a 3D printer and have been actually making kind of like a robotic hand at home for the kit. So I just read about that. This morning I found an article that will be in the show notes. Yeah, that's really really slick. I didn't know about that. I'm going to have to take a look at that. That's like the absolute prime definition of being a maker right there. That's crazy. But anyway, those are some examples. Now you want, okay, well, that's pretty cool. I want to print out my library. So I'm going to go through a few quick examples of the ones that are probably the best bet for library use. What you're looking at here is a MakerBot replicator. The company that makes the MakerBot was really the first company to really make a dent in the consumer market of 3D printers. What they have here is the newest version of that printer. You can buy it fully assembled for $2,200. It's got a good print resolution. Basically, all the things that you would need. You can print using PLA filament and ABS plastic. ABS plastic is what they used to make labels. PLA is slightly more malleable and useful. They have a dual extruder version, which lets you print with two different colors for $800 more. $600 more. I can do math. Another good example is the cube. The cube is a 3D printer. It's sexy. It's really cool. It's got wireless. All of it is proprietary, which means it's incredibly expensive. But it's incredibly user-friendly. The software that they have for it is super, super easy to use. They've got kids making incredible things. It looks great sitting on a desk. It looks great anywhere. It's just really, really, really cool. You do have to buy your filament in cartridges, which you can see there on the left side of that printer, which, you know, you don't get a whole lot of filament in there compared with the spools that you would buy for other printers. And, you know, also you have to buy it direct from them. But it's super easy to install. You just clip it in there and stick the filament into the extruder, and you're good to go. It's a very simple print with ABS and PLA. What you're looking at here is the big-boy version of the cube. It also looks really, really cool. It is currently the only consumer-ready 3D printer, as you said I know of, that has a triple extruder head option, which means you can print three different colors with three different filaments, which is really, really cool. And I want one just for that. But it is very, very expensive. As you can see, it's $2,500 for the baseline, $3,000 for the second extruder head, and $4,000 for the third extruder head. As with the small cube, everything's proprietary, which means it's much more expensive. However, it's super, super easy to use. It uses Wi-Fi connectivity, so you don't need any cords. In fact, you don't even really need a computer for these. You can stick your print file onto a USB and just shove it in and print right from that. It's really, really cool how user-friendly these are. This company really has the user-friendly consumer-ready stuff with 3D printers down to a T, but you really do pay for it. The next option is the one that I went with at my library, which is a solid little 2. For my money, well, for my library's money, really. Well, more accurately, Nebraska Library Commission's money, because we were able to get a grant through them. This is what's going to give you the best bang for your buck. They've got a fantastic community. It's relatively cheap. It comes pre-assembled and ready to print. However, you can tweak it to hell and back. It really is a really versatile machine. There's people in the community that have done all kinds of crazy things. One example is to give you an idea. All of these printers that I've showed you print between a 0.1 millimeter to 0.3 millimeter layer thickness, which is to say on the Z-axis from bottom to top. That's how thick one layer is. There's a person in the solid little community that has his printer able to print at a 0.01 millimeter layer thickness. Granted, he had to change a lot of pieces in the printer and write his own code for slicing and the print program. But that's just ridiculous how good that resolution is. All on a printer that costs between $500 to $700. They do have an upgraded version called the Solo Doodle 3, which costs $800. It comes stock with pretty much everything that the top level of the Solo Doodle 2 comes with. It's got an 8 by 8 by 8 inch print area, which is really huge. The heated print bed, which is very important for any printer because it prevents the print from warping. It has the same great community, of course. It's able to print ABS or PLA filament, prints out of the box and it's highly tweakable, just like the Solo Doodle 2. It's just fantastic. Everything about these printers is open source, including software used to print things. They give you designs to print replacement parts if you need to on your printer. Everything that you could possibly need to do with these is open source. It's very easy to use, very easy to play with, very easy to improve. So really those are the best ones for your buck, but there's more available all the time. Just a simple search through Amazon or Google will show you a bunch of different ones that are available. What you're seeing here is just some of them. I just took out some pictures of just a few. And at any given month on Kickstarter, there's anywhere between 5 to 10 3D printer projects. The one on the left here is the Z-Pro, which I think just finished. It's an incredibly cute little desk ready model that prints very, very well and a peachy printer, which is intended to be a pocket stereolithography printer. I'm not entirely certain how that works, but it's really cool and I hope to see one work one day. So even just checking on Kickstarter, you can find some great things. I wouldn't suggest Kickstarter for library use, but if you want to get one yourself, it might be a good place to check out. Gordon, that's how I'm getting mine in February. What are you getting? It's the Buccaneer Pirate printers. There's a particular name to it, but for 400 bucks it might be proprietary, but I just want one to play with. That one looks fun, actually. That's cool. There's not just the more fused deposition modeling printers that are available every day, but this one itself is the Form 1, which is made by Form Labs, and is the first consumer available stereolithography printer that has seen mass production. It costs $3,300, and the resin costs about $130 per bottle, but you can create stereolithography prints with it, which are incredible, high-resolution, just amazing, amazing things. This is one I want to get, and hopefully we'll be able to get next year. But in addition to these, you've got all kinds of fun tools, including 3D scanners. What you're looking at here is the... Okay, I've got to find my notes because I can't remember what it's called. The MakerBot Digitizer, which when they released it, it actually crashed the site because the demand for it was so high, and they ran out of supplies. It costs $1,400, but what you can do is you take an object that you want to print out or make a 3D scan of, as you can see here, there's a little steampunk note sitting there. What it does is it spins around, and there's a little camera that you see below the M there on the back of that little truss. That just takes a bunch of pictures, and it stitches together those pictures with three-dimensional representation, which you can then print out, which is really cool. But in addition to that, you have all kinds of other 3D scanners that are currently available. Michael, you know a bit more about this one, if you would mind. Yeah, this was a Kickstarter project. Back up here for a second. As Gordon was explaining on this one, you set the object on the turntable, and it rotates the object. Well, sometimes you might... You know, as you can see with the little note. Whereas this Kickstarter project, which the name of has escaped me, but it's an attachment to your iPad, and you clip that on, and it's a 3D scanner, but you're the one who moves. You move the iPad around the object. So if you wanted to say 3D scan somebody's head, you can't take their head off and put it on a little platter to turn around. That would be kind of defeating the purpose of scanning your head. You understand still and you move around them. And I think this is running about, I think less than $200. It's not out yet, but like said Kickstarter project, there's more of these coming out each day as with just about all of this technology. But if you don't have the kind of budget to buy a scanner, there are free versions that are available. I mean, pretty much everybody has a smartphone which has a high megapixel camera just right inside of it. There's a web app on a program you can download by Autodesk called 123D Catch. You just take several pictures of a stationary object from various angles and load it into the application, and it has its own stitching algorithm which will create a 3D model. It's not going to, it might not be as good as, say, the Maker Pop Replicator or an industrial 3D scanner. However, it will do the job. As you can see here, there's like a picture of a little or did a scan of a toy Tyrannosaurus Rex there and on the right you see the 3D representation of it. And then you can just take it into a 3D program and clean it up and you're ready to print, which brings us to 3D programs. Now, the ones that you want to use for the library, the ones I would suggest anyway, are the ones that are of course free because let's face it, we're all on a budget. Blunder, which is my pick, it's free, it's incredibly powerful, it's got an amazing community with incredibly, incredibly diverse and excellent tutorials and video tutorials. And it's used for creating games, it's used for creating movies. The one downside to this is it's so powerful and it has so many options it might be a little confusing for many of your patrons. There's a bit of a learning curve but once you're on that curve, you can pick it up pretty quick. The other two are much easier to make but you are limited in terms of the complexity of what you can do, at least working things easily. 1-2-3-D is also by Autodesk like 1-2-3-D Catch. It's free, it's very easy to learn, it just uses common primitives in order to create objects. By primitives I mean like cubes, cylinders, planes, pyramids, things like that. It's also available as a web app. If you just go to that website there you'll see it. The other one is SketchUpMake which is also free, it's very easy to learn. Like 1-2-3-D it can be difficult to make complex models. SketchUpMake actually works really well for doing simple casual representations like if you're wanting to design a room, however it can be used to create models and things like that. They're all free, they all work really well and they all have some tutorials and resources available so you can download models, mess around with them and learn the program. So that's pretty much what I got there. We're planning on having plenty of time at the end for Q&A so at this point Chris have you noticed any questions coming in about 3D printers while we're there. No questions, just a comment from a librarian who's from Piscataway Public Library in New Jersey says that they just use their maker bot to help a startup produce a new product prototype. Very cool, very cool. So go ahead and send those questions and like I said we'll have plenty of time for questions at the end. I'm going to take back over here and kind of look at this from another angle and some other things that you might be interested in using at the library to encourage maker spaces and creation but taking it from a very different angle for a couple of these. This first one is a Raspberry Pi I personally own one of these I've been having a little fun playing around with it. This is you're looking at it, that's the whole thing it is a $35 computer on a board. How big is that? It will not fit in an Altoids tin but close. So it gives you a smaller than a deck of cards. This is you buy this board for $35 it has two USB ports an ethernet port for networking a couple of video ports on it an audio out port HDMI video also and then a slot for an SD card and what you do is you install an operating system on the SD card and then you slide that SD card and it needs to be a Linux based operating system there are a couple of different ones available for it you connect it to a monitor you use those USB ports to connect say a mouse or a keyboard or in my case I've connected a little dongle for a wireless keyboard and mouse and a little dongle for Wi-Fi so I didn't necessarily have to plug into an ethernet jack and then it is powered the power port is actually down here in the lower left that is actually a micro USB connector so it should run off the same power as your cell phone charger in most cases and you boot it up and it's a $35 computer now usually the question I get is okay I've got one what do I do with it and my answer is well if somebody handed you a laptop would you ask what would you do with it it's really the same thing it's a full blown computer now there are some additional connectors there's one along here one along here on the one along here on these little pins that you see sticking up where you can then connect other things such as cameras or an Arduino board which I'm going to talk about next but the operating system that they recommend to use comes with a program called scratch which teaches kids how to do object oriented I've heard of we've got at least one library here in Nebraska that is using one of these as an OPAC terminal so instead of hooking up an old giant PC box behind a monitor they literally have mounted one of these behind the monitor and hooked up a keyboard and mouse to it uses an OPAC computer I've heard of libraries also using it as the kind of to drive a PowerPoint presentation although it wouldn't technically be PowerPoint a slide show behind the circulation desk but these can be kind of fun if you want to teach kids basic skills of computers and installing operating systems let them learn some programming and at 35 bucks a pop you've probably got some spare monitors some spare keyboards and some spare mice floating around you could easily get some of these and kind of create a little lab out of it now I will say they are low powered machines that this is not going to be you know your $1300 ultrabook laptop that you just bought that runs Windows 8 they are slower machines but they get the job done and they're 35 bucks I literally got mine just to play with it's sitting in a little tiny box at home I pull it out for demos I have I turn it into a media server actually it will work as a media server quite well so kind of a lot of options available with that now the other piece of circuitry that I mentioned just a moment ago is called Narduino now I have not played with one of these Marcia has let me explain I think well I haven't played with one but one of the people I work with does homebrew and he's going to use one of these to monitor his browser so what's Narduino? Narduino is a microcontroller so it's not a computer with an operating system it's you hook other things to it and you write a program that says I want you to do X so it's really designed to do like one thing at a time and monitoring temperature would be one thing you can do with it you would connect a temperature sensor to it connect this to a computer load the program onto it and then disconnect it from the computer and put the temperature sensor in a beer or whatever it is you want to sense and have it do something when a certain condition happens the example I like to use although it seems a little silly it illustrates the point connecting a moisture sensor to this sticking the moisture sensor in your plant bed and then having it tweet for example hey water me when the soil gets too dry obviously the homebrew person is going to do something a little more a little more complicated than that but maybe actually control what is heating or cooling the mixture based upon the temperature that's in there now you can then connect an Arduino to a Raspberry Pi and then make it do many many other things whereas the software is running on the Raspberry Pi controlling what the Arduino does where a Raspberry Pi is going to run you about $35 plus whatever accessories an Arduino I think runs a little under a hundred bucks maybe $70, $75 to do that and then whatever sensors you want to connect to it things like that I'd love to play with one of these to be honest I'm not sure what I'd do with it I don't know why I haven't really played with one I'd love to get one for Christmas then it would be I would have an excuse to figure out what to do with it but a lot of maker spaces are getting these and saying okay kids what do you want to do what do you want to sense things like that the other project I want to mention here which version 2.0 of it right now was a very successful Kickstarter project this is called the library box and so it's library box 2.0 was the Kickstarter project together by Jason Griffey out of the University of Tennessee of Chattanooga Library and what it is is the white box that you see here with the library box logo on it is a $40 Wi-Fi router there is a small USB stick sticking out of the side of it and then it is connected to a battery pack and then in this picture he just embedded it into a hollowed out book because why not and what the library box does is you give it power it is a Wi-Fi hotspot that when you connect to it you can't go anywhere else it doesn't pass you through the internet but it serves whatever content is on this device so you could say set this up in your library to serve free e-book content or free audio content that's stored on the flash drive on the device people come into the library use their cell phone use their laptop they connect to this device they're presented with a menu of options they can download whatever content they want and the version 2.0 was improving the hardware improving the software adding new features things like that I think he was asking for about $15,000 or $20,000 and he got more than $60,000 to put these things together and I'm eagerly waiting mine now if you didn't get in on the Kickstarter or don't want to buy one he does have full instructions online you can buy the equipment like I said the Wi-Fi router is about 40 bucks USB stick is whatever USB stick you want to use a good battery that will power this thing for days might cost maybe $40 for this sort of thing I will admit I unsuccessfully tried to build one of these on my own I followed the directions and unfortunately I got newer hardware than the directions were for so when I followed the old directions on new hardware I ended up creating a little doorstop out of my $40 router but you know learning experience and I got a good backup battery for my cell phone out of it but just kind of this is almost an example of not something you would necessarily have your patrons doing but something you as the library could make and start to tinker and become a little bit of a maker in the electronics world without spending a heck of a lot of money so with that I think we are back to Marcia alright well as you can see on this slide how do you make this work in your library and these are just some thoughts to consider as your brainstorming how you're going to handle this of course funding and you know Gordon will talk about how he got his 3D printer in just a moment but funding is the biggest one I mean $35 doesn't sound like a lot you've got bits and pieces all over you probably have some type of computer store room where you know hardware goes to die and you can pull it out and use it but it still is going to cost money and if it's not costing money up front to buy things you know you're not going to be at the time of your staff to figure out how to do this and then explain it to the people using your library also library support this is a biggie we know any programming we do in our library if you don't have the support of your colleagues in your library it's not going to go anywhere and you can have the best idea out there but you need your coworkers to be supportive of it and be willing to help and anybody who's done some reading knows how important library support is I mean you want your community input I mean this is not just about the library this is about the community this is one more place to add value in your community and you want to be reaching out to the other stakeholders in your neighborhood, in your town, in your county, in your state what not because there's other people who are interested in this and the library can be a great facilitator to build that community support and create good value and good harmony within the area communication sharing of course libraries are good at this we love to communicate, we love to share you're not going to probably find your community maker spaces and groups with traditional media you're going to need to be looking at social media connect to other people who are within a certain community and talk to them and create those relationships space is always an issue but we always have space we rearrange our space and our facilities to handle any type of event going on in the library so think creatively on how you can do this it might not be something that you leave set up year round something that you just do for an afternoon or a weekend but space can be manipulated gadgets and supplies obviously we all have bits and pieces we can use and then the projects themselves think scope, I mean how how big do you want to dream which is great but what can you do to get your feet wet instead of jumping in the deep end and being overwhelmed think of the small things you can do like Legos you know kids coming in playing games maybe give them the opportunity to use their creativity to dream up how they would like to use devices in the library and go from the ask your customers what they want and then safety of course is always an issue I'm not suggesting you have the safety worksheet like your chemistry class does or anything like that but think about it, I mean this is an issue we all want to be safe and we don't want to be the bad apple that spoils the bunch I'm going to recommend that you take a look at the makerspace playbook and this is something that's put up by makerspace and it's going to be in the show resources they have a great school addition manual and this thing is like 90 pages long excuse me 77 pages long and it basically walks through all of these bullet prints and explains how you do this how you get it started you need to talk to great examples of how to communicate with your community and build support and what not I highly recommend that you take a look at it you can print off the whole thing it's easy to use easy to read and it's a very user friendly and I know that would be worth the time in your library Gordon do you want to mention briefly how you got your 3D printer for those who are curious when you mentioned library commission money I mentioned the Nebraska library commission grant it was an excellence news services grant which I did while I was the young adult librarian at my library it was very easy to to put together and and I did not expect to be approved but I was I mean I was so there was the money honestly grants are a great way to go for any kind of maker space technology or projects of any size or scope especially right now since maker spaces are kind of the big buzzword in the library world we're right in the middle of the what's a good word right in the middle of the you know that the good time to really get in there I mean the irons hot right now it's much much better to to get in there on the grants now then maybe two years so grants are out there I mean we're librarians we know all about grants I don't have to tell you how to do a grant but granting is a grants are a good way to find funding certainly wherever you are it doesn't matter what town you in what city you're in what type of community you have you have a maker community in your libraries service area I promise you have makers who are working together to create things and there they communicate and they talk with each other and more often than not they're more than willing to help out in any way they can to spread that kind of so to talk with them they might be able to you know donate time maybe even materials maybe they'll help you help you put together exactly what you need in a way that you need it she also Marcia mentioned space I think it's important to know that you don't necessarily need to have a great deal of space in your library for example my library has no space whatsoever I think we're actually breaking quite a few ADA was thankfully the building is grandfathered in but there's no space in our library so what we've done is actually place these things on carts we have a mobile maker station that we can move out to wherever we we need it whether it's in a large meeting room or in you know the middle of the library if need be so you know don't let lack of space be a limiting factor for you I don't know anything else you guys think I should hit on toss it to you Mike yeah I think we've got some questions that have come in and comments important comment you mentioned the youth grants for excellent grants for youth grants for excellence we do here at the library commission for anyone who's here from Nebraska I just got a notice in our chat here we got staff watching that the deadline for the youth grants for excellence 2013 is tomorrow so yeah I don't know why hello so yeah if you want it just needs to be postmarked no later than tomorrow it can also be submitted electronically there's an online electronic version of it so if you are interested in that in Nebraska and you've been working on it maybe or you just decided now I'm going to bang something out today and tomorrow you have until 1159 central time tomorrow to get that PM PM all right yeah we do have a question yeah I think we're at the questions point okay let's see we'll go this one since we just talked about grants it seems like there are grants for initial costs but how do you maintain funding to purchase ongoing supplies Gordon honestly we haven't reached a point where I have to buy more supplies we included a good deal of filaments with the grant proposal so I have a good deal of filament however when you're looking at in terms of 3D printers anyway that's what I'm speaking to here if you've got like a I don't know a laser cutter obviously your overhead and your maintenance costs are going to be different but the filament you can buy through various sources anywhere between $30 to $45 for a spool and a spool will make a ridiculous amount of prints it's imagine a I think a good analog really it's exactly what it sounds like it's a gigantic spool of plastic thread essentially and it just seems to go forever we've made how many prints and I haven't used up either of the initial spools that I've placed on our 3D printers so honestly it's relatively cheap and if you're opening up your printing for your your public you can defer a lot of the costs in the same way that many of us do with printing on paper you charge for the printing and that can cover your overhead and your resupply but a lot of libraries will post what they charge for printing I know at UNL depending upon the department and the printer they might charge undergrad students $5 to print or you buy so much of supply for that amount and then if you're within the program maybe the students are paying a fee to help support the printer and what they need the supplies to print so it's kind of dependent upon the nature of your library and how you're already charging for services you can add that in as well and I would almost think it's to the larger issue ignore 3D printers ignore maker spaces you get a grant to get some new equipment or a new program long term support is going to be an issue at least at the beginning budget as Gordon said budget that into the grant funding so that will get you through and to a point at which you can then decide has it been enough success to continue funding it to continue finding additional sources or to apply for a second grant for the purpose of continuing this great program to become so successful that we can't be handled ourselves give us some money to keep it going that's what I'm watching too and you know sponsorship there's plenty of people in our communities who when you say 3D printer their lives yeah there's plenty of opportunity to build a relationship and collaborate within your community okay we'll jump up to this one and do you know of any public high schools that are using a 3D printer if so what are they doing with it I did notice I just want to say when Marcia when you mentioned that maker the book there maker space playbook I've been going through the show I've been adding the links to our delicious account and on the same page that has that there's this one and there is one specifically for high school there's a separate whole playbook for that so that's something to use but still does anybody know how schools are doing it if anybody on the line is to type in and let us know as well give us some I don't know off the top of my head I do know here in Lincoln LPS they're rethinking how they're doing some of their relationships with community college and I know we have a strong CAD program on the high schools so I'm thinking with design they would probably have something do we have any media center specialists from high schools yes we do have someone who I'm not sure I don't know where she's from exactly yeah but high school we have a 3D printer at our high school our robotics team uses it to print components San Antonio Public Library Reagan High School in San Antonio, Texas and they have the maker bot replicator too she thinks so yes there you go contact Reagan High School I haven't heard of too many that have been been diving into it but I have heard quite a few that are looking into it and are really excited about it in fact the high school directly up the hill for my library is looking at getting a 3D printer for their robotics team I mean they already have a CNC router which I think a lot of high schools probably have which for those of you who don't know they have a lot of fabrication takes like a block of wood and gent gradually removes stuff until you have what you want but so I do think 3D printers are making their way into the schools possibly they've already made their way into more schools than they're in libraries right now we just don't know about it I would be surprised I would not be surprised to find quite a few high schools with them at this point okay let's go back to the top here alright here's an interesting one anybody have any experience with augmented reality in makers faces not yet no not me anyway most augmented reality stuff that I'm familiar with right now that you can get your hands on with any ease and without spending a small fortune is going to be smartphone based sort of holding the camera up GPS knowing where you are sort of thing that being said you start getting into the realm of Google Glass and some of the other newer technologies that are starting to come out you can and you know hooking up in our Arduino could be involved and things like that for I'm just thinking like hooking up a temperature sensor to a Google Glass sort of thing and you know you're hot you're cold or whatever I think the sky's the limit yeah but right now that's maybe just a little beyond what most people are going to be able to afford and put together because at that point you are reliant on hardware that's still in development I've seen some very interesting things around that area but nothing that's like simply easily commercially available the only other one I can think of is there's a just a heads up display I want to say it's like I want to say Optimus Prime but that's not an OptiPlex something that's kind of this 3D automated reality thing unfortunately the name is completely escaping me at the moment that is about to become commercially available or just did but I'm not familiar with any libraries using it that doesn't mean nobody is but I think that's just maybe one step further than what we're talking about this point yeah speaking of like Ismodo and Mashable are a good place to put your news if you want to know about new gadgets coming out okay we have someone who did comment about actually Connie who asked the question there's something called ATLAS iOS app by Track Labs I'll link all this controller robot when pointing the device at a marker okay augmented reality okay yeah I know I have a couple little like toy car things in my office that I've been playing around with that are controlled by the cell phone so you know I moved I can like turn the cell phone and the car I'll turn and they were 10 bucks a piece so let's just say you get what you pay for the technologies maybe not there but let's see the Sphero it's this little ball that rolls around and change colors but you control with the cell phone that I've seen displayed those costs a little more oh yeah there you go so yeah there's there's some things out there around that actually going great thanks going back to the high school question high schools doing it so I'm posted a comment that I didn't see before I'm going on to the next question that I've already linked to it in the show notes there's a company called BOT Objects B-O-T-O-B-J-E-C-T BOT Objects they're offering free 3D printers to high schools for robotics competitions information in the web that we can register to get one of these free and then they're also after they're done doing what the free wants to limit them out they're then having a instituting a discount program for high schools which is their 3D printer okay note to anybody who's a media specialist go find BOT Objects we'll be in the show notes add value okay anybody have any super creative what has to be super creative ideas for pre-k and under little kids they have this at this school or library they have little copies that they traditionally use for reading but she wants to change some of them into little maker spaces for the little kids but she's hesitant about the small part so what any ideas for doing things with small children that want to get into this because you know there's big block Legos yeah the Duplo Legos big block things you know it sounds kind of silly but remember throw those out there and give the kids the eye pass and take pictures of what they've created I mean high and low technology yeah and that's something that I think when people say maker space we immediately assume high high tech expensive equipment and tools and that's not necessarily the case and something that essentially making is something that librarians have done for decades when you go to a story time and your preschooler makes a paper plate mask you know what he just made something he's a maker what essentially you're doing is crafting with maybe some higher level tools so making doesn't necessarily have to include say a 3D printer which you know little kids can burn themselves on or a laser printer or a laser cutter they could blind themselves with you could do all kinds of amazing things with rudimentary tools or no tools at all in just the supplies look just do a Google search for paper crafts and see some of the amazing things people make with just paper crafts for little people paper plates and crayons, glue and tape someone also mentioned when I get more techie because little kids wanted to be techie too there's an iPad app called the color app where you print a coloring sheet and then you use the app and it comes to life on the iPad whatever they color it becomes a 3D animated picture it's really cool I think when you're talking about maker space it's important to remember that the soul of a maker space and the maker community is not the tools that do the job it's the act of making itself and the communication and the cooperation and the sharing that creates maker space staff here in Nebraska quilting is a maker space cooking, video creation it's not just get a 3D printer and do that kind of thing you start out saying Legos that's why we threw in Legos and that's making something if you had a choice between building a maker space right by the front door of the library for great visibility or converting a larger space in a former bookmobile garage I'm assuming this is a real example which is more visibility but in the building which would make a better maker space right at the front door or somewhere off separate I think that depends on the type of maker space you're looking at creating if you're going to have a great deal of say tools or a large amount of people that are going to be using that area on a regular basis you might benefit from something that might be a little bit more isolated like the the unused bookmobile garage something like that might be perfect for that however if you're going to do something relatively small scale and kind of in an open environment with a handful of people maybe using it at a given moment I think up front would be great because everybody would see it the one thing that the first thing that I fell in love with about the 3D printers in my library is whenever I was working on them whenever I had them out for a program I always ended up with so many people walking up and just being fascinated by this little box that's creating something inside of it wondering how it works and what it's doing it really brought a lot of people together and cross-generational interactions and it's a fantastic thing that if you have the space for it and it will work for what you're trying to do to have in an area where people can see it however there are multiple examples of people who have libraries that have put together maker spaces that exist in shipping crates or and by shipping crates I mean the big ones that sit on giant boats or mobile trailers you can really it doesn't have to be something that's open however I think if you have the space for it up front and it's not going to be terribly what's the word I'm looking for sorry I am bad on my words today I instantly went to the larger space because then you have a dedicated space to doing that sort of thing people are going to trip over it they're going to go there to do that that doesn't mean you can't promote it or do something smaller right up front where people will see it or wheel out the 3D printer and demo it in the library but it usually lives over in this maker space that we have I don't know the layout of your building but I almost vision the garages attached but if you could take that one wall and put it in windows so people can see into the maker space from the library I mean you know now I'm restructuring your whole building and there's money involved but I like the idea of that dedicated space that is still part of the library but some people might it's in the building across the street but you can still make it part of the library so you know it's just kind of what are your goals what are you trying to accomplish I'd love to be able to dedicate a space because according to that we're always been about creation now we're just maybe talking a little more physical than knowledge creation but yeah I'd you know if you could take the space if you can well yes windows would be put from this awesome connection from the children's room to the garage that's what I'm doing perfect then you become more of your community because it's not the library it's the library rehabbing space for community needs and then you're going to get your demographics of your 25 to 45 year olds which a lot of public libraries are trying to attract in they'd have a space they could come to you're still going to have the little kids who can see in and be like ooh and awing about what's going on in there and maybe your library is going to be available for hours to people who really are wanting the space to be creative and you can provide a service that is outside of traditional normal library hours so I would say take the garage and run with it and then you have space to fill and people are like oh you have space what if I give you this or how about that I mean that really might open up the door to more value in your community and more collaboration going back to the things that we actually mentioned in the PowerPoint there's no reason you couldn't take that that isolated space grab a grab a raspberry pi and create a streaming close circuit you know camera thing where you can have it string to a flat panel as you come in and say oh what's going on in the makerspace today yeah cool so it's all very good points and of course the garage has direct outside access too so it can be something that's happening I like that separate interest entrance concepts if you look at all the makerspaces and the hacker mentality you have a lot of adults the workbench and the space to go in and play after hours that's a cool way to increase non-traditional people in the library and she says ooh I like the camera feed ideas next question we have and I know we've got a little over time today we're not going to cut us off until we're done answering all the questions I have here this is a really different area any suggestions for simple coding tools to teach teens scratch scratch is and I've played with it a little and unfortunately I wish I could just like take a month off of work and play with this program scratch is it's designed for kids I mean it's like I think your first program is making the cat move across the screen it's this cartoon cat it's out of MIT yes it is it is out of MIT scratch.mit.edu I mean some teens might be a little turned off by it because it is a little more for kids but I gotta tell you if if I could find the time because I am not a programmer but I would like the last program thing I did was Pascal in grad school and before that basic I would use this to learn basics of programming these days I would check that out there are others there's a code academy code academy Brian hackasaurus.org hackasaurus I'm not familiar with I just heard of something called rails for zombies which although you need to know Ruby before you learn rails but anyway take a look at scratch we'll throw code academy in the hacker square in the show notes but scratch comes with the raspberry pi operating system but you can run it completely separately from that you don't have to use a raspberry pi for it so I think those are a couple places to get you started the last question we have a practical thing to go back to the small children and small things any storage ideas for small parts that will make it more safe she thought about an art themed one but she's worried about the choking hazard so what do people use to store I guess anything in the library that's small for the kids when the kids aren't using it I mean maybe if you can oh okay yeah I'm a little unclear on the question to be honest and the question is logged off you said so we can't get a clarification I mean when you're not using it behind the scenes where the kids can't get at it I guess it would be the clear plastic shoebox size containers yeah I mean you can get those ones that kind of stamp lock on the sides walking and then just don't leave it out when you're not using it of course I sure this time they do this anyways with small children you always have someone monitoring them they just let you know get free access to everything as much as I like the Legos and lots of libraries that do it you do need a certain minimal level of supervision with Legos and small parts and choking hazards and things like that but there are libraries that just have Legos available and so it's yeah the cleanup I can just see anyways anyways yeah that's what we do I would say if you have puzzles in your children's area the same sort of thing that you do with storing your puzzles I mean those tend to get everywhere and have small pieces so the same sort of storing solution you have for that should work just fine for things like Legos so that's the last question we had does anybody have any last minute questions they want to quickly get in here before we're done type them in we will some of these slides were worked a little better for the live presentations so we're skipping them here's a few resources these will all be in the show notes please do not attempt to write down those URLs at the moment everything we mentioned Christ has been logging them as we go through every watching your type furiously trying to find all these things Marcia's got a couple page document of more articles like this we'll include that in there and here is our contact information so if you want to get a hold of any of us if you have further questions beyond this presentation we are all happy to help so and if we don't know the answer we'll point you at somebody who probably does it's what we do as librarians and that is that's the presentation it looks like that's all the questions also and Chrissy you can go ahead and wrap it all up for the day my links are good we've covered pretty much that but I will pull up this I guess that wraps it up for today's tech talk yeah this month's tech talk thank you everyone for attending thank you Marcia and Gordon on the line and Michael for being here as usual the show is being recorded so it will be available afterwards the PowerPoint will be available to you and all the links that are mentioned and the extra ones that we have will be included as well so we have access to all of that when when it's all done and processed and good to go so that will wrap it up for today but I hope you join us next week where I just got this up on the schedule our Lincoln City Libraries here in Lincoln, Nebraska did an earned service day where they got a grant we know all about the grants here from the library commission to program bridges out of poverty and so Carol Swanson and also I just found out too the assistant director Hector, Lori Hector Julie Hector will be with us next week to talk about this great program that they brought in with grant money they got from the library commission talking about people in poverty and how to serve them in your community so hopefully you'll join us for that next week and if you are on Facebook with Facebook user and you get notifications of when we have new shows coming up when recordings are available reminder about when we're starting up a new show so like us on there if you are big into Facebook and see what we're doing keep track of us so then that we are done for the day thank you very much everyone for attending and we'll see you next time bye bye