SPEC Kit 348: Rapid Fabrication /Makerspace Services · 11
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Introduction
Rapid fabrication technologies, or “3-D Printing,” to
use the less accurate but more familiar term, have
undergone rapid evolution and are now used for
medical implants, prosthetics, teaching aids, infor-
mation visualization, research on rare/fragile objects,
architecture, art, and advanced manufacturing. These
technologies are rapidly lowering a number of differ-
ent barriers faced by researchers and others, barriers
that had previously made it prohibitively difficult for
most individuals, researchers, and organizations to
manufacture objects without significant investment of
time and money in training and equipment. Because
of these advances, the complexity and range of ob-
jects that may now be manufactured has increased
precipitously, including easily customized items or
precisely replicated physical objects, while the process
by which these may be manufactured has flattened,
allowing on-site or local manufacture and reducing
lead time (in some cases permitting even just-in-time
manufacturing processes).
These technologies produce intellectual assets—
sensor and digitization data, as well as models and
methods—that are potentially valuable to other re-
searchers for future reuse and replication. Moreover,
these technologies offer the opportunity to create
spaces (“makerspaces”) that facilitate research, col-
laboration, information discovery and management,
and a form of technical and information literacy.
Strategic Relevance to Libraries
In the last several years, the interest of libraries in
this space has been growing rapidly. Fabrication tech-
nologies and makerspaces are strategically relevant to
research libraries for at least three reasons.
First, makerspaces represent a unique use of li-
brary space. The assessment and renovation of li-
braries’ use of space has been recognized as a cur-
rent strategic issue for libraries in general. As Joan
Lippincott notes in Research Library Issues1, it is es-
sential that library space assessment be informed by
campus priorities related to teaching and learning,
expanding beyond library-centric thinking to design
proactive spaces that engage with student learning
more broadly. Makerspaces offer a key potential op-
portunity for such engagement, while creating spaces
that align with the library mission, synergize with
other services, and integrate staff competencies like
information management.
Second, libraries are increasingly engaging with
data management. Digitization and fabrication tech-
nologies both make use of and produce research
data—data describing objects, models, and the sen-
sor information collected from them. Makerspaces
offer a clearly scoped locus for the integration of data
management with other services and resources.
Third, we are now seeing fabrication figure in-
creasingly throughout the various stages of the re-
search lifecycle, and there is a clear trend towards
adoption in higher education generally.2 These tech-
nologies may be used early on as part of prototyping
for research interventions or to embed sensors for re-
search data collection, or later on as part of analysis or
research collaboration (e.g., by materializing models
for examination and sharing).
Further, libraries have a number of core competen-
cies that are complementary to fabrication:
Fabrication extends the information lifecycle.
Fabrication technologies make information
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