Staff Spotlight: Idea Lab

With the opening of the Library’s Idea Lab, one thing we’ve been focused on is encouraging creativity and learning through making. Whether it’s 3D Printing, sewing, drawing, making music, or some other endeavor, our job is to help inspire you follow your passions by giving you access to resources to inspire you and give you new perspectives and ideas. Here are a few books to get you in the spirit!

Zero to Maker: Learn (Just Enough) to Make (Just About) Anything by David Lang

If you want to get involved in the Maker Movement but you don’t know quite where to start, this inspirational book is the place to begin! Zero to Maker follows the journey of author David Lang on his quest to dive in head first to change himself from a regular consumer of things to a guy who makes and fixes the things around him. In the process, he learns grows into a successful entrepreneur.

Free to Make: How the Maker Movement is Changing our Schools, Our Jobs, and Our Minds by Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty is the creator of MAKE: magazine (another recommendation) and the phenomenon of the Maker Faire. This book provides a guided tour of what’s become known as the Maker Movement, a social revolution that is changing what gets made, how it’s made, where it’s made, and who makes it. “Free to Make” is a call to join what Dougherty calls the renaissance of making and an invitation to see ourselves as creators.

Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration by Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft

If you want to encourage creativity and provide a collaborative environment that will bring out the best in everyone at work or at home, this is a book you’ll want to consult again and again. Inside, you’ll find tools to enhance teamwork, configurations to enable activities, insights about why people do what they do, design templates and first person stories. The configuration of our spaces can help us or hinder us, inspire new ideas or squelch them. That means how you design your space for creativity can make a huge difference! Discover how to help people work together better and more comfortably as well as feel inspired by altering your physical environment.

Idiot’s Guide to 3D Printing by Cameron Coward

Idiot’s Guides are always a go-to when learning a new skill. This book provides a simple guide to the basics of 3D printing and is great for tinkerers and artists who want to learn to design and print any project they can dream up– or even build their own 3D printer! This book offers an excellent gateway into the world of 3D Printing.