The Convivial Capabilities Checklist: Translating Makerspace Research into Practice

Public library makerspaces are said to empower users, yet this empowerment has previously been undefined and unresearched. Is empowerment occurring, how, and for whom? Libraries need to explore empowerment, defined here as “the processes by which libraries support people’s capacity or capabilities to achieve their self-defined goals,” by evaluating their support for users’ goals and thus the success of a makerspace. This article addresses this need with a checklist developed from ethnographic research and Ivan Illich’s theory of “convivial tools,” which forward power to their users to decide how, why, and when to use them. The checklist translates research into practice and can assist librarians to explore the impacts of their services, facilitate social justice and power-sharing from the users’ perspectives, and develop spaces, programs, policies, and practices that equitably support their users’ actual needs. It can help makerspaces to remain sustainable, given libraries’ limited resources.