Yesterday, we were delighted to learn that the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded our proposal, Making in Michigan Libraries, a three-year grant to promote maker learning and productivity in underserved areas of Michigan. They summarized our project like this:
The University of Michigan School of Information will develop a multi-step approach to developing maker culture in Michigan libraries in underserved communities. This will include a statewide “road trip” to share knowledge of making, maker culture, infrastructure, tools, and community building with rural libraries and their communities, as well as closer partnering with two libraries for the purpose of engaging them in making on a more sustained level. The school will share its findings in an online maker handbook and in a free virtual conference at the project’s conclusion.
We’re very excited to get started in the coming days, planning for face-to-face professional development throughout Michigan in Summers 2016 and 2017. We’ll be looking for libraries to be host partners, colleagues who want to help spread maker culture throughout Michigan communities, and future makers to work with!
If you’d like to know more about our project, feel free to drop us a line (our email addresses are below) or sign up for our email list to find out when we have events or new resources to share.
– Kristin Fontichiaro and Silvia Lindtner, Co-Principal Investigators
font [at] umich [dot] edu
lindtner [at] umich [dot] edu
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, grant RE-05-15-0021-15.
Some materials (c) Regents of the University of Michigan. All materials are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license terms unless otherwise stated.