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Department/School
Library
Abstract/Excerpt
Collaboration is central to the work of librarianship, including technological initiatives such as the establishment of a makerspace. Librarians typically understand collaboration as a rational process in which partners reach agreements to yield efficiencies. However, this predominant understanding of collaboration ignores the nature of institutions founded on structural inequities and aligns with neoliberal ideology and objectivist understandings of technology.
In this chapter from an edited anthology that critically examines makerspaces and the Maker Movement, I reframe technology as relational and grounded in the needs of human communities, and I propose an alternative understanding of collaboration as a process of dialogue, drawing on the ideas of Paulo Freire. This alternative understanding of collaboration impacts what motivates us to establish a new partnership, the way we draw up formal documents and generate ideas with our partners, and the methods we choose to learn about our users' needs.
Document Type
Chapter
Book Title
Re-making the Library Makerspace: Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices
Editors
Maggie Melo and Jennifer T. Nichols
Publisher
Library Juice Press
Place of Publication
Sacramento, California
Publication Date
11-2020
Pages
227-245
ISBN
9781634000819
Keywords
collaboration, makerspaces, dialogue, neoliberalism, systems librarianship
Disciplines
Library and Information Science | Science and Technology Studies
Document Version
Postprint
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
