Foster City Library

12/1/2017 Edited from a post on FB

The Foster City Library Makerspace held a Townhall meeting.

Foster City library is carving out a portion of the library to create a maker space. The space itself is fairly small by Techshop standards (about 660 sqft). There was concern about it being too open, thus limiting what sort of maker activities could take place there, but they haven't ruled off closing off the space to accommodate machines and maker activities that would require special ventilation, noise control, and power needs.

It seems aimed to be more of craft station with no (or minimal) battery required activities. So it's not likely that there will be laser cutters, 3D printing, and certainly no metal shop or wood working. They are still very much in the concept phase of what the space will be, so it looks like nothing will be happening there any time soon.

There was a poll taken where people could vote on a variety of different categories for what sort of activities people would like to see there. The most popular category was electronics, followed by prototyping. The electronics activities mostly included using computers with high end software, arduino, robotics, breadboard electronics, LEDs, and offering classes to teach all of the aforementioned skills. Prototyping included 3D printing, laser cutting, vinyl cutter, 3D modeling.

The designated space is an open area that would require some construction to properly prepare it for heavier equipment and, and I suspect they may not revamp the area to accommodate things like proper ventilation and rewiring for ample power supplies that a proper prototyping station would require - not to mention the cost of said equipment.

Their next steps are to review community input and priorities. I asked about their timeline and the answer was they aren't to that point yet. My best guess is that they will take at least a couple of months to come to the same conclusions as I've outlined above. Updates will be provided on the library website SMLC.org