This week, I have been desperately ill. It’s only a head cold and strep throat, but I will swear to you I have the plague. So yesterday I texted my boss and told her, “When I die, please bring the Teen MakerSpace manual to my funeral and tell everyone it was my greatest professional achievement.” She promised she would.

But it also reminded me that each time I tweet loving pictures of the manual – yes, I tweet loving pictures of the manual – someone will ask, “What’s in your manual?” So today, I will share that information with you. But first, some history.

I have been a YA services librarian for 22 years now. This is both the first and the fifth library I have worked at. That’s right, I’m working at the first library I ever worked at again. I cam here this time with a storehouse of experience to draw on and a manual that I have developed over those 22 years and adapted for this library and this community. It is now and always will be a work in progress.

Teen MakerSpace Manual Table of Contents

Teen Services 101

The first part of the manual is an outline of basic YA services and includes the following:

1. Our YA services mission statement and outline

2. Teens 101: A basic overview of adolescent development

3. The 40 Developmental Assets: A basic overview of the assets and how to use them with teens

4. Customer Service to Teens: A basic discussion of customer service to teens, what is means and what it should look like

5. Teen Fiction Collection Development Plan: An overview of what we purchase, from where, etc.

6. Collection Development Outline and Budget

7. Weeding Guidelines and Calendar

8. Social Media Policy

9. Programming Basics: An overview of what we do and why

Teen MakerSpace 101

The second part of the manual, and the biggest part, is exlusive to our Teen MakerSpace.

10. MakerSpace Outline

11. MakerSpace Inventory: You can find an outline of our various activities and stations here.

12. MakerSpace Opening and Closing Procedures Checklist

13. Directions for each and every Teen MakerSpace station, items or tool: This makes up the biggest bulk of the manual. I can not stress enough how important it is to keep a copy of the directions for each and every piece of tech that you put into a makerspace. I scan in the directions so I have a digital copy and I keep a copy in the manual as well.

14. The Teen MakerSpace Collection Outline: We have 2 separate collections. The YA fic collection, which is outside the Teen MakerSpace, and the TMS collection itself. We believe strongly that each station, tool or activity we do in the TMS should have supporting book materials for check out.

15. Circulating Maker Kits Outline and Inventory

Appendix

16. Forms

Many of the items in the TMS manual are actually discussed at length in the book I edited with TLTer Heather Booth, The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services. The collection development forms and policies, for example, were handed down to me, adapted over time, and written right into the book. They have worked for me so I use them.

Overtime, however, I have also developed a wide variety of forms that I like to use. They tease me at work because if they ask a question someone else will reply, “give Karen a moment and she’ll make a form for that.” All teasing aside, I have learned over time that I am a visual person, not auditory. For example, if you tell me we need to buy new 3D pen filament in passing as we pass in the hallway, I am less likely to remember that we had that conversation then if you send me a text or an email. Or better yet, just keep a running form of supplies we need to replenish.

I particularly like to have filled out forms for activities and programs. For one, they help me make sure I am doing all the steps I need to be doing in order to have a successful program. And two, I then have a record should I need to go back and look and see what I did. For example, our local community has a First Friday where we like to go set up a booth and do activities with the teens and promote our Teen MakerSpace. Over time we have worked out an exact checklist of what we need to take so we don’t forget anything. It’s the little details – like trash bags or chairs – that can often get overlooked.

So today I am sharing with you some of the forms that I have developed. Exactly zero of these forms were developed exclusively by me. They are forms that were shared with me and I adapted in some way to meet my needs; librarians are, after all, very good at sharing. So here’s a look at some of the forms in my (if I say beloved is that too much?) Teen MakerSpace manual.

Behold the Gift of Forms

So our appendix is just a master copy of all the forms we use in our Teen MakerSpace for easy access. Here’s a breakdown of what those forms are and how we use them.

TMS Supply Request Form

This one’s a pretty simple supply request form. I wasn’t even going to include it in this post but it’s in the manual under forms and apparently my completionist needs won’t let me leave it off.

tms-supply-requests-2017-pdf

TMS MakerSpace Assistant Training Checklist

Last year, I was incredibly lucky in that I got to hire two assistants to help staff the TMS. In order to make sure these new employees got extensive training, I crowdsourced examples of training checklists and put this one together for our needs.

tms-msa-training-checklist-2017-pdf

TMS Monthly Goals

This is a new form I am introducing this year and, again, it’s crowdsourced. We wanted a tool to help us make sure that we are doing a couple of things in our TMS, like rotating our stations in thoughtful ways and making sure we keep exploring new TMS elements and find creative, new ways to use our existing inventory. Thus, a monthly goals form was born to help us as individuals make sure we are meeting our goals. We have a yearly outline that we use to help specify what our specific goals for the year are.

tms-monthly-goals-report-pdf

TMS Program Planning Worksheet

This is a worksheet I use to plan a big program, which is different then a TMS activity or station. For example, we are working on putting together what we are calling a Con Con (inspired by an idea from ALA 2016) – a convention for teens who want to start going to cons to learn some basic con skills like sewing, painting, etc. I am using this program planning worksheet to help put that program together.

tms-program-planning-worksheet-2017-pdf

TMS Outreach Activity Checklist

This is a checklist we use for any and all outreach activities, including First Fridays as mentioned above. We try to have more than 1 activity to rotate in and out of our outreach bag of tricks. A checklist is completed for each activity and kept in a notebook. When we want to do that outreach activity, we just go and grab the checklist and get our supplies together.

tms-outreach-activity-checklist-2017-pdf

TMS Activity/Station Planning Checklist

Our Teen MakerSpace is set up in stations (we also sometimes use the term activities, just to confuse ourselves). For example, we have a permanent Stop Motion Animation Station. But we also have stations/activities that we can rotate in and out. We have a variety of robots, for example, that we can get out and have a day where we play with, say, Ozobots. We have also found that our teens like to do traditional crafts, so we rotate some of these in and out as well. Because our model is not permanent, we are always looking for new stations and activities to add to our reprotoire to rotate in and out. In order to do that, we have an Activity/Station Planning Checklist. Before we introduce a new idea, we do a little planning. We want to look at things like cost and materials, but we also want to make sure that we have or can purchase book titles that can be used to support that activity/station. Also, having the checklist filed away makes it easy to pull out and set up each station/activity when we rotate it back in.

tms-activity-planning-checklist-pdf

TMS Daily Report

I like to have a daily record of when teens use our Teen MakerSpace and what teens are doing in the space for planning purposes, thus the daily report log. As we work in the space we just make hashtags of teens in the space by hour and note what they are doing. This helps us know when we need staffing and what stations/activities are the most popular with our teens. I find it to be an invaluable tool. Also, because of this tool we know that we had over 3,000 teen visits to our TMS last year during peak, staffed hours and that our teens favorite things to do are make buttons, work with the 3D pen, and use our iPads.

teen-makerspace-daily-report-master-2017-pdf

And now you know why these tease me about forms. But in all seriousness, I find them to be invaluable tools and they really help us organize our Teen MakerSpace. And they complete the amazing Teen MakerSpace Manual. (Was that last line too much?)

Do you have any favorite forms you like to use? Let me know in the comments. I do like a new form to look at and adapt.

Previous MakerSpace Posts

Small Tech, Big Impact: Designing My Maker Space at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH)

MakerSpace: The Making of a Manual

#MakerSpace: 1 Year Later

The MakerSpace Index at TLT

Filed under: Makerspace