This is an event planned for Open Access Week. Speakers Maggie Melo, assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science, and Drew Robertson, technical supervisor at BeAM, will describe how makerspaces are resources for opening access to research, innovation, and collaboration across various communities. They will present a dichotomy often found about makerspaces that just because a resource is openly available does not mean it is accessible, and suggest various scenarios in which makerspaces can be used in different ways depending on the needs of the user. Example tools and objects created in BeAM will be passed around. An Arduino workshop in the Kenan Science Library's BeAM location will follow this presentation, at 4 p.m.

About the Speakers

Maggie Melo is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research specialization resides at the intersection of innovation, critical maker culture, and the development of equitable and inclusive collaborative learning spaces (e.g., makerspaces) in academic libraries. Her work has appeared in portal: Libraries and the Academy, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Computers and Composition Online. She co-founded the University of Arizona’s first publicly accessible and interdisciplinary makerspace – iSpace – and strategically facilitated its growth from a 400-square-foot room in the Science-Engineering Library to a 5,000-square-foot facility soon to be housed in the university’s main library. She is also a serial maker! She enjoys embedding circuits into things, additive and subtractive fabrication, dabbling with AI, digital world making, and more. She is also the founder of the Women Techmakers Tucson Hackathon, the Southwest’s first women’s-only hackathon.

Drew Robertson is technical supervisor at BeAM, Murray Hall.

Find Makerspaces at Carolina

BeAM is a network of makerspaces where any UNC-Chapel Hill student, staff, or faculty member can join the Carolina maker community in the design and creation of physical objects for education, research, entrepreneurship, and recreation. Tools available for use include power drills, 3D printers, sewing machines, band saws, soldering irons, Arduino kits, and more. Makers can participate in open studios, training sessions, workshops, hosted classes, and group activities. Locations are Kenan Science Library, Hanes Art Center, Murray Hall, and Carmichael Hall.

Learn more about UNC-Chapel Hill’s 2019 Open Access Week. With questions, contact Anne Gilliland, agilliland@unc.edu.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to enjoy and participate in this event, please direct your inquiries with as much detail as possible to Lynnee Argabright in the Scholarly Communications Office, at lynnee@live.unc.edu, by Tuesday, October 8.

Speaker notes for this even are available for download on the Open Access Week 2019 web page.