How wonderful would that be? 

So what I’m saying is that this is potentially a great idea, but please call it something other than a hackerspace (or a hacker space, as per comments above).  I don’t want to change the idea, just what we call it.  I love libraries (And am glad that my community is building another one as we speak, bringing the total to four within 5 miles of me (three county, one city)), but so do old ladies who don’t read boingboing or really understand much about the internet or computers.

Old ladies are terrific until they band together to oppose something.  Then they can be terrifyingly effective.  Let’s not neglect the fact that these otherwise really supportive, very wise, community members may watch Faux News, and their only understanding of what a “hacker” is may come from “news” stories such as this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=n9gOSsvLIO4
(By the way, direct quote from video:  “Bank of America:  Great Bank!” (among other gems) should probably have given away that it was farce, but apparently not).

Call them hackerspaces when talking to people who get it and support it.  But please, for the future of projects like this, please either enlighten the masses or choose a different outward-facing title.  One of these alternatives is infinitely easier than the other.

I would say local government is right to attack under-utilized library infrastructure, but lets look  at how it has got that way.

Where I live we have a very good library system. You can request books online, they are delivered to your local branch in a web based queue system. When you get to the library you scan your card, put the books on a RFID reading pad and the book are automatically checked out. You don’t have to browse stacks or talk to a soul. I happen to be a bookseller who works in a shop less then a hundred yards from a satellite library branch. Daily, I have customers purchasing books because the queue for the title they are looking for is over 300 people long. The branch is about half the size of our store, but we probably have 100 times the number of titles. The library has a handful of bookcases with a few current magazines, general titles, movies, music, and a children’s section. The rest of the space is filled with couches, big screen tvs, wifi, and a large bank of computers.

What does this Library offer to the average patron? It doesn’t have the titles they are waiting for. It doesn’t have alternative titles to browse. All it has to offer is internet access. A majority of people don’t need to leave home for internet access.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it is a great system. They do a lot of literacy out reach. They have a great program where children’s books, are given and returned rather then loaned so low income parents don’t have to worry about their children causing late fees. Requesting titles is easy and efficient. It is nice to have  a local pick up  spot, and the computer access does serve a purpose. But, when it comes to creating a community it misses the mark. The library is often full, but it is full with the daily loiterers at their places on the couches and a rotating cycle of individuals jacked into the computers. The librarians are almost entirely removed from their role other then taking fees and fixing the printer. There are no lofty discussions of democracy or literature. The sharing of ideas is purely online.

I think the solutions is making the library a destination for information you can’t find online. Perhaps specialized collection are in order, more copies of current popular titles, a bigger selection. But, for them to succeed they should try meeting the needs of their more patrons before jumping into new technologies.

Libraries are constantly under attack from politicians looking to cut budgets wherever they can. How long do you suppose a locally-funded repository of books and things that nobody actually used would last, no matter how little it cost to run?

Why would the local government approve a separate community computer lab, when there is already an under-utilized library infrastructure?

Your argument makes sense from a very idealistic perspective, but falls apart under the least bit of strain from practicality.

Jump ahead 25 years, and you see what happened. Libraries are the soup kitchens of the digital realm, ladling out bandwidth and computer time to a small minority in their community at a huge expense. This isn’t the library’s purpose, it is just a role they accidently found themselves filling, after hundreds of steps by well intentioned librarians trying to make the most of their limited resources.

It, however, doesn’t change the fact that computer labs don’t belong in libraries.

And isn’t this the best way to secure public libraries, by making an active argument in practice for what they are capable of. If you get a successful small hackerspace set up with a dedicated group of hackers involved you’ll have some strong allies making the library more vibrant and helping to fight the privatization beast which especially comes out to feed in bleak economies.

It seems you value libraries based on patronage. I value libraries based on posterity. I feel it is their job to collect and maintain and provide access to books and other documents for as long as possible. A library with zero patronage which merely steadily adds to its collection would be fulfilling its public duty (and very inexpensive). A lot of librarians have decided that libraries should operate as community centers. I disagree.

Speaking as a librarian, I feel that several people who commented on this piece have not been to a library recently and if so, have never spoken to the librarians.  The library is a changing place due to a changing world.  Library patrons need to learn more about new technologies, and so we are doing our best to meet this demand.  I work at a small library in a depressed area where many people do not have access to even a “basic” desktop computer with internet, unless they come into our library.  When students come in for research, I go first to the books, but then next to our databases, to show them how to research articles to get more quality information.  We have bookworms coming in, but also movie buffs and audiophiles.  We have book groups and storytimes, but also movies and crafts.  This summer, I had a group of teens making mini catapults, and plan to create new programs that use science and math.  When libraries were first created, they were for books, yes.  If you want to go back to those first libraries, we would need to chain the books to the shelves just like they were.  The world has changes, and the library is changing with it.  I suggest that anyone with concerns should stop in to their local library to see how you can help instead of worrying about the semantics.

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, life is too short to be worrying about semantics.

Libraries aren’t machine shops, but if they were in addition to libraries, people would use the tools. There is no place at all I can go to use a table saw for 5 minutes, unless I buy a used one, which is about the same cost as hackpgh.

I totally agree about libraries as revolutionary sites. I’m interested in non-profit/subscriber (i.e. not govt) libraries because they seem to offer an opportunity for community funding; i don’t know much about them. Also in the confluence of the library and the school in the interface, or the line between a computer game and facebook or wikipedia. Harmonix ‘Rock Band’ is a good example of this – the game is, now, I think, a full-fledged composition tool, and actually has _some_ pedagogical elements.

Are you going to be doing anything w/those projects in LA? Do you know Machine Project out here?

One of the things we want to do is re-think the university. Since we were severely disappointed in the lack of support we received for these kinds of projects from the corporate “university,” and in the way the corporate “university” was exploiting us (they paid us less than what our adjuncts union has agreed on as the minimum because we were team teaching the class) and in the way the corporate “university” was exploiting our students (in the form of outrageous tuition), we’ve decided that the corporate “university” is adding nothing to our class and is only taking value away from it. So this year we’re going to be teaching the same class outside of the corporation. We’ll be offering our students a “badge” through the Open Badges Project ( http://www.openbadges.org/ ) which we hope will be recognized among the library world. The class will be free to all students.

This coming semester we’re really looking to put Freedom Boxes and Freedomtowers in libraries, expand our collective farm project at public libraries, run car share and bike share programs out of libraries, and much more. You can read more about how we’re leaving the corporate “university” and trying to build a true university in it’s place here: http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/3568

I suppose that a tyranny tower would just be Comcast.

freedomtowers just, as a word, reminds me of freedom fries. like there are tyranny towers (panopticons?) floating around somewhere out there.

You’re kidding right? If you can’t see the difference between movie theatres and food courts on the one side, and public libraries and hackerspaces on the other, then you are completely totally missing the point.

The public library is, above all, a set of ethics and values. The library is not a commercial space. It’s the very opposite of a commercial space. It’s a space that operates under a different logic than most of our society. I have no problem saying that hackerspaces already are libraries because they are built around the same core ethics and values, there is already an affinity between the two. A hackerspace at the public library is not an “add on,” it’s just the library being a library.

Libraries should not be offices. If the community needs a free computer room with a technician who can train people on MSWord the should build one and not shoehorn it onto a library. I think computers use in libraries should be limited. Social networking blocked etc. 

People may scream censorship, but libraries already limit access to certain material unless the librarian is given good reason it is access is necessary (i.e. fragile and valuable documents). The same should be the same for the internet. If you are writing a dissertation on Facebook, fine, but otherwise, you are not updating your status.

This would allow people to create their own classes, learn and teach what they want to, self-organize and democratize the programing that happens at libraries.

In regards to your earlier comments about improving the high speed Internet at public libraries, we’re also working on setting up freedomtowers to offer uncensored off-the-grid Internet access keeping with the ethic of public libraries.

I think the best way to help libraries is make them better libraries. All money that could be used putting in a techshop would be better spent on providing patrons materials not easily found or read online. Buying more copies of current releases to reduce wait time. Maintaining welcoming facilities etc.

Your article simply makes a good argument for free hackerspaces, it doesn’t give persuasive reasons why libraries should be the host.