Makerspace Librarianship Informed by an Ethic of Care

The conference session included interactive discussion questions. Here's what attendees had to say:

What comes to mind when you hear someone talking about care?

• Empathy
• Compassion
• Patience
• Community and connectedness
• Grace, respect and humanity
• Concrete action: "what can I do to help today?"
• Open-mindedness
• Inclusivity and equity
• Trauma-informed
• Re-indigenizing / anti-imperialist practices
• Practicing inclusive pedagogy

Think of a challenging situation that you're currently facing in your makerspace.

a) What is the issue?

• Makerspace equipment lacks usage/awareness
• Insufficient space in the makerspace
• Patrons want 1 on 1 attention that we cannot give during makerspace open hours
• Patrons have varying levels of digital or computer literacy
• Managing the needs of student workers
• Student workers not actively involved in makerspace workshops
• Communication breakdowns among staff
• Insufficient support from upper management regarding implementation of new programs
• Upper management slow to approve marketing material

b) How are different phases of care related to the issue?

• Not sure - I feel stuck in the "caring about" phase [caring about]
• Patrons deserve individual attention, but we can't be 1 on 1 with them all the time. [caring about]
• Lack of motivation or nervousness [caring about]
• Time is a limited resource [caregiving]
• Lack of time to develop staff. Managers are so busy with other responsibilities [taking care, caregiving]

c) What resources are available/needed?

• Need more money to hire more staff. More staff could give more 1 on 1 time.

d) What could you realistically do to improve the issue?

• Try to set user expectations for patrons who want individual attention. Ask them to come at a slower time. May have to repeat this message several times until the patron understands the limitations of others - this is helping the patron care for staff
• Help student workers come up with their own ideas for workshops
• Plan ahead, give enough space and time for assessment

What is one thing you learned during this session?

• Was unaware of the ethics of care as a lens until now
• Care is a team activity, not solo - we all care together

Fisher, Berenice, and Tronto, Joan (1990). "Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring." In Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Womens' Lives, eds. Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Hill Collins, Patricia (1991). "Black Feminist Epistemology." In Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2011) "Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things." Social Studies of Science 41(1): 85-106. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312710380301

Tronto, Joan (2013). Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality and Justice. New York: NYU Press.

Papoutsi, Anna, Boursinou, Maria and Riad Lukas (2024). "Between the Camp and the Makerspace: Commoning Politics, Temporal Autonomy and Care." Journal of Borderlands Studies: 1-22. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2024.2330061

Toombs, Austin, Bardzell, Shaowen and Jeffrey Bardzell (2015). "The Proper Care and Feeding of Hackerspaces: Care Ethics and Cultures of Making." Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 18, 2015, New York, NY. https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702522

Vyas, Dhaval (2019). "Altruism and Wellbeing as Care Work in a Craft-Based Maker Culture." Proceedings of the ACM on Computer-Human Interaction 3:1-12. https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3361120