Abstract
In this article, we examine how creative making is framed in a public library setting. We pursue this topic by focusing on the trajectory of a group participating in “The Inventor Course” during a school trip to a library. Video recordings of the maker activity comprise the primary data for analysis, supplemented by ethnographic notes. Analysis of the group’s interactions shows how different frames for inventing are acted out and intersect during the activity. We describe these frames as inventing as invention, inventing as exploration and inventing as narrative. Findings indicate that a narrative frame is a fruitful approach to making in a library setting and that narratives performed in dialogue with children help them to make sense of their explorations.
Highlights
In the Norwegian welfare state, public libraries have been important institutions for providing free access to a variety of media for all citizens
This study focuses on what children, teachers and librarians do in a making activity, considering the particularities of the public library setting
This city library provides a makerspace for their visitors, with one open makerspace for youth and adults and an annual inventor course offered for primary school children
Summary
In the Norwegian welfare state, public libraries have been important institutions for providing free access to a variety of media for all citizens. Innovation rationales, on the other hand, are more concerned with libraries providing public access to facilities that people can use to educate themselves for future job markets [1]. The makerspace was a relatively new practice in this library, as was the course, which invited school classes (grades 4–7) to visit and participate in an activity designed to foster children’s creativity and innovation skills. We explore how library educators support the children’s creative making processes in a relatively new makerspace practice, how they use narrative, or storytelling, as a resource to frame the activity in particular ways. To investigate this topic, we address the following research questions:. In which ways do storytelling practices in libraries merge with practices of inventing in makerspaces, and what is the pedagogical value of this merging?
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