One of my new duties as Experiential Learning Librarian in Program Services is to oversee the 3D printing programs at the branches. We currently have 6 Lulzbot Mini version 1 available for public use at several branches. In December 2018, I held a staff training for the branches receiving 3D printers.
So, how do we make our 3D printers available for the public? There are a few levels of programming we provide. Our 3D printing programming grew naturally from public need:
Public Demos
Passive programming
The printer is out in public areas, actively printing.
A staff member may or may not be around to answer questions about the printer, but it definitely gets the patron's attention.
Leads to great conversations about what community members are interested in (both 3D printing and other random interests)
Printing Open Lab
Planned program
A staff member provides information about the 3D printing process.
Patrons may be able to select their own items to print (not really recommended...sets up the expectation that patron will be able to leave with an object)
Pre-print a bunch of simple objects (headphone holders are useful...until Bluetooth headphones make corded headphones obsolete...)
Patrons watch the printer work and get to take home a pre-printed object
More great conversations happening. You start to see patrons connecting to one another based on their interests.
Certification Staff-led workshop on safety, basic troubleshooting, and library policy around 3D printing.
Patron attends this one-hour workshop after completing Intro to Design and Open Lab (this requirement is waived if the patron has previous 3D printing experience from other sources).
After the workshop, all patrons sign the Certification Guidelines saying that they understood all the information provided in the workshop.
The patrons are added to the Certified Users list and can drop-in to use the printer on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Our road to certification:
Patrons who decide 3D printing is for them always want to print more things. Unfortunately, our library district isn't equipped to print on demand for all patron requests. I also wasn't a fan of the disconnect that happened in the learning process for the patron. They would request a print and a staff member would have to do all the troubleshooting to get it to print. The patron picks up their printed object without really getting a better understanding of the technology. I looked at what it really took to run an average print and came to the conclusion that the basic knowledge is easy to transfer to new users. There is a huge 3D printing community online and patrons, given the right direction and some guidelines, are able to take control of their own learning and mastery of the subject.
All of these steps are easy to accomplish at our biggest branch. We have over a dozen staff members knowledgeable about the 3D printer leading and assisting with programming. This was not true at our smaller branches. We tried to think of how to increase our certification offerings, but the feedback we have been receiving (and true of all programming) is that the timing was never convenient for one reason or another.
I thought some more on how to make the certification training more accessible and floated the idea by the branches of providing an on-demand certification training that patrons access through our website. The patron watches the certification video, which still covers everything in the certification guidelines, then makes an appointment at the branch of their choosing where a designated staff member reviews the information and signs off that the patron has the skills necessary to run the printer safely. After they're signed off, the printer can drop into any of the branches with 3D printers to use the printer on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Originally, I was just going to do a screen capture of my Google Slides Certification presentation and provide the voiceover. This set-up didn't quite provide enough information as the in-person training. In person, I actively have the printer running while I'm talking and refer to things it does while we work through the information. It's difficult to translate that experience to video. I also realized that if I attempted to do a one-and-done video, I would have to re-record everything if one piece of information changed.
I ran into a few bumps trying to round up the appropriate equipment to create the content. Our Library district has several new iPads with the limited version of iMovie, but no access to a Mac to access full editing. I couldn't find a free video editor for Windows that would open movies shot on the iPad. I couldn't find a free video converter to translate videos from the iPad into a usable format on Windows. I had to go to a branch to record footage of the printer printing and had to use my laptop to screen capture in Cura while I was printing. Figuring out how to make this all work was the worst kind of puzzle. In the end, I used an iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro to create the video, edit the footage and post to Youtube.
Draft one was only supposed to take a week or so. It realistically took about a month with the technical issues and re-editing the information from an in-person presentation to a recorded presentation. I sent out my draft to our 3D printing branches to get their feedback. I received a lot of great info from the group and did a pretty big overhaul of the outline, the information covered, and how the information was covered. My biggest rewrite involved a lot more information on Cura, the slicing software.
Our Library district also recently added Niche Academy to our arsenal. I originally tried to upload my videos directly to Niche Academy, but there were a lot of auto-play issues and our patrons requested closed captioning. I decided to stay with YouTube and link the videos into Niche Academy to take advantage of YouTube's Smart CC tool. It wasn't perfect, but I figured out how to download the auto-generated transcript (with timing) and make the few corrections needed.
The training is now posted through Niche Academy and also available as a playlist on Youtube. I plan to follow up with the 3D printing branches after summer reading to gauge how things are going and see what changes we need to make to our process.
Intro to 3D Design
Planned program
A staff member leads patrons through a basic 3D design project on Tinkercad. Keychains have been a successful project for us. It meets that dual goal of showing patrons how to make something practical with a 3D printer and simple enough to teach a lof the necessary design skills but still getting a printable object.
We often end up using our Printing Open Lab program to print the objects designed in Intro to Design.
Certification Staff-led workshop on safety, basic troubleshooting, and library policy around 3D printing.
Patron attends this one-hour workshop after completing Intro to Design and Open Lab (this requirement is waived if the patron has previous 3D printing experience from other sources).
After the workshop, all patrons sign the Certification Guidelines saying that they understood all the information provided in the workshop.
The patrons are added to the Certified Users list and can drop-in to use the printer on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Our road to certification:
Patrons who decide 3D printing is for them always want to print more things. Unfortunately, our library district isn't equipped to print on demand for all patron requests. I also wasn't a fan of the disconnect that happened in the learning process for the patron. They would request a print and a staff member would have to do all the troubleshooting to get it to print. The patron picks up their printed object without really getting a better understanding of the technology. I looked at what it really took to run an average print and came to the conclusion that the basic knowledge is easy to transfer to new users. There is a huge 3D printing community online and patrons, given the right direction and some guidelines, are able to take control of their own learning and mastery of the subject.
All of these steps are easy to accomplish at our biggest branch. We have over a dozen staff members knowledgeable about the 3D printer leading and assisting with programming. This was not true at our smaller branches. We tried to think of how to increase our certification offerings, but the feedback we have been receiving (and true of all programming) is that the timing was never convenient for one reason or another.
I thought some more on how to make the certification training more accessible and floated the idea by the branches of providing an on-demand certification training that patrons access through our website. The patron watches the certification video, which still covers everything in the certification guidelines, then makes an appointment at the branch of their choosing where a designated staff member reviews the information and signs off that the patron has the skills necessary to run the printer safely. After they're signed off, the printer can drop into any of the branches with 3D printers to use the printer on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Originally, I was just going to do a screen capture of my Google Slides Certification presentation and provide the voiceover. This set-up didn't quite provide enough information as the in-person training. In person, I actively have the printer running while I'm talking and refer to things it does while we work through the information. It's difficult to translate that experience to video. I also realized that if I attempted to do a one-and-done video, I would have to re-record everything if one piece of information changed.
I ran into a few bumps trying to round up the appropriate equipment to create the content. Our Library district has several new iPads with the limited version of iMovie, but no access to a Mac to access full editing. I couldn't find a free video editor for Windows that would open movies shot on the iPad. I couldn't find a free video converter to translate videos from the iPad into a usable format on Windows. I had to go to a branch to record footage of the printer printing and had to use my laptop to screen capture in Cura while I was printing. Figuring out how to make this all work was the worst kind of puzzle. In the end, I used an iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro to create the video, edit the footage and post to Youtube.
Draft one was only supposed to take a week or so. It realistically took about a month with the technical issues and re-editing the information from an in-person presentation to a recorded presentation. I sent out my draft to our 3D printing branches to get their feedback. I received a lot of great info from the group and did a pretty big overhaul of the outline, the information covered, and how the information was covered. My biggest rewrite involved a lot more information on Cura, the slicing software.
Our Library district also recently added Niche Academy to our arsenal. I originally tried to upload my videos directly to Niche Academy, but there were a lot of auto-play issues and our patrons requested closed captioning. I decided to stay with YouTube and link the videos into Niche Academy to take advantage of YouTube's Smart CC tool. It wasn't perfect, but I figured out how to download the auto-generated transcript (with timing) and make the few corrections needed.
The training is now posted through Niche Academy and also available as a playlist on Youtube. I plan to follow up with the 3D printing branches after summer reading to gauge how things are going and see what changes we need to make to our process.
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