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Introduction
In September 2014 a Dutch documentary titled Digitaal Geheugenverlies (Digital Amnesia ) (VPRO Tegenlicht, 2014a) aired on public television in the Netherlands. The episode featured among others Brewster Kahle, director of the Internet Archive, answering the question if we are paying enough respect to our cultural heritage and our collaborative future by massively closing down libraries and archives. The following week the series featured an episode about the maker movement, De Nieuwe Makers (The New Makers ) (VPRO Tegenlicht, 2014b), focussing on the rise of digital fabrication. In my view the future library lives right between the contents of the two episodes.
The question what role digitization plays in the development of the Library of the Future builds on classic thinking about cultural heritage. How do we preserve? What do we preserve? Who do we preserve for? How long do we preserve? Numerous technical, logistical and ethical answers to these important can be expressed, but these ignore the most important role of the public library: providing access to knowledge and information and facilitating our users to contribute to knowledge production themselves. The result should be a library where users are knowledge makers as well as knowledge consumers.
FabLabs in libraries
Earlier this year David Lankes tweeted: "Libraries are about building knowledge in any, ahem, medium. The communities are the collection, not the books" (Lankes, 2014).
Lankes puts the axe to the roots of what is usually seen as the most important task of libraries: making books available for their users. However, this monopoly of the book as the main knowledge vehicle gradually begins to crumble. The internet and online information services are prevalent everywhere and are part of the personal domain of the traditional library user. Libraries themselves are part of this domain too, for instance with the development of ebook platforms.
At the time of writing this paper, I am in Helsinki. Here, of course, I also visited the library and then in particular the library makerspace. This place, Kaupunkiverstas , also called Urban Workshop, is an exciting place in the center of town where everyone can go[1]. According to library manager Kari Lämsä Kaupunkiverstas emerged as a place where you can see a sharp increase in the number of...
