Chicago Innovation Lab

cplmakerlab.wordpress.com

I forgot to take a photo of the entrance of the Chicago Public Library's new maker lab, so you'll just have to do with the 3d printed octopus.

"Maker labs", or whatever you want to call them, are super hot in the library world right now. Everyone wants them and, perhaps more crucially, it's possible to get grant money for them. Thus the underfunded Chicago library system has just opened a new space filled with various 3d printers, laser cutters, and other cool things.

I'll ignore the fact that it seems weird to me to be funding this when so many of the CPL's other services seem to be lacking. But it's not like they could have used this money to hire more shelvers. However, the funding only lasts until December (I think), and we'll see if this place will exist after that.


At any rate I think 3d printers are pretty cool. I'd love to play around with them at some point myself. I didn't have enough time to really use this one as it was closing for the day pretty soon after I got there.

However, one problem I had with this place was that the people working there didn't seem to have been adequately trained in the use of the equipment. This isn't to say that they had no idea what they were doing, just that they could definitely have been using the stuff more effectively. They admitted to me that they were still being trained on how to use everything. I think there was even one piece of equipment they hadn't used at all when I came by (though admittedly they'd only been open about a week). This kind of baffles me, why put people in charge of expensive equipment when they can't use it that well?

I wish that I'd have gotten more opportunity to experience the lab (and actually print something!), or even see it again in a few months when the kinks have been worked out, but it was neat seeing the 3d printers in action anyway.

Chicago Public Library: Harold Washington Library Center

Harold Washington Library Center
400 S. State Street

Okay, so I wrote a bunch of shit about the Chicago Public Library, but I'm going to be more positive for a couple of posts. The Harold Washington branch is the big downtown library in Chicago, and while it has many of the problems I discussed in the other posts, I'm going to talk about some cool things.

Actually, first one more bad thing. There's a separate Young Adult section at this library, which is neat. What isn't neat is that _all_ of the YA books and material are there, and it's hours are considerably shorter than the rest of the library. The Library is open 9-9 on many days, while the YA section is only open from 1-8pm. Great!

 

Anyway, on to some good things. There's some neat architecture/sculpture outside.

 

More in the "weird' section, they have a huge card catalogue for music scores that hasn't been updated in almost 20 years. They also have loads of vinyl records that you can borrow!

 

I honestly barely remember how these are even used.

 

They also had a huuuggee section of clippings from magazines and stuff. It was really weird, and what was kind of weirder was that it was still being updated. While it was really neat, it was also weirdly useless as there was no note as to where any of the clippings came from originally. Sure that's an awesome picture of a 17th century fashion, but where did it come from? I have no idea. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the actual clippings.

There was also a music listening room where I think you could listen to records and stuff if you gave them to the staff to put into bizarre machines inaccessible to patrons, multiple (strangely un-sound proofed) piano practice rooms (two of which were in use), and nobody around.

There were even less people on the next floor up, which had offices, and weird empty corridors and rooms. It was almost like exploring some abandoned location in Bioshock or some other video game.

This was in the lobby of the library. America, you are weird. Putting a flag on the ground is bad, but putting it into a box where people can throw old batteries and garbage on top of it is fine? I will never understand.

Chicago Public Library: Humboldt Park Branch

 

Humboldt Park Branch

1605 N. Troy Street

One of the things that surprised my friend and I when we first went into one of the branches was that there were lots of open computers and there was no line to get internet access.  At first we thought this was awesome, but then we realized that there are two pretty big causes for why this is.

1. The library system in general is underused. The central branch is incredibly empty.

2. The software that runs on the computers is awful. Like, super slow, can't do anything, things crash and then you can't even open a new browser window you have to wait until the computer realizes things crashed and then opens a new one. 

I was told they're running Internet Explorer 5, but that they're updating to IE 7 this year (the newest version of IE is 10). There are multiple campaigns to get people to stop using IE 6 (one of them is even run _by_ Microsoft), but apparently technology isn't a priority for the Chicago Library system. Of course, that is how you make things relevant.

I wasn't even able to use the super slow internet at this library because there was nobody at the reference desk to give me a guest pass. (And getting a guest pass requires having out of state ID, if your ID is from somewhere else in Illinois you have to get a library card from your local branch first.)

Chicago Public Library: Bucktown-Wicker Park Branch

Bucktown-Wicker Park Branch
1701 N. Milwaukee Avenue

So I recently went to Chicago for the American Library Association annual conference, and the conference in general was really fun! I helped run the Zine Pavilion, got to interview some comic creators, ran a library themed session of Call of Cthulhu, and did other fun stuff.

While I was in Chicago I also went and checked out some of their public libraries. They made me sad. I've heard from a couple of people that the current mayor of Chicago doesn't care about libraries, and is of the opinion that as long as the lights are on and there's someone to check out books then that's all they need. Geeze.

The fact that the library system is really understaffed was obvious at every branch I went to, and things I heard from people that work there made me even sadder. One thing that really bothered me was how poorly kept the shelves were. They need to hire some shelvers ASAP. Below are some photos from the Bucktown-Wicker Park branch, but it was no better or worse than any other in terms of messiness of the shelves.

Books are just piled on top of other books, while rows fall over.

 

Those are just pages that have fallen out of a comic and are just lying there.

Books are spine in on shelves, or in the completely wrong section.

Meanwhile (and I didn't get a photo of this) there are masses of carts filled with books waiting to be put back on the shelves. Someone told me that all of the returns and hold requests are done through the central branch, so that books are sent there, and then sent back to other branches. But that they have so few people working that there is a six week backlog. ie. if you request a book today that is on the shelves, it will take them at least six weeks to send it to the branch you want to pick it up from, and then maybe another week or two in travel time. So inefficient I can't even joke about it.