Dear ARLIS,

I am hoping to learn from your collective wisdom.

I recently chatted with an MFA student at UMaine who has developed a practice of helping people make and fix things for free. In his words, he aims "to democratize basic material knowledge." He is interested in working with libraries to expand the public reach of his practice and asked if there might be possibilities for integrating his work into library catalogs. In other words, he would like to serve as an item in the catalog, as a resource for people to learn about creative practice and maker culture. I think this is an intriguing idea, and follows in the steps of recent information practice to include open access books, freely available online archives and websites, and other items in our catalogs, particularly as catalogs expand their suite of resource discovery options.  

I am aware that public libraries have been lending people as resources (http://www.mprnews.org/story/npr/211697593). Does anyone know of examples of academic libraries lending people through their catalogs, and what that looked like?

Thanks in advance for your insights, 

Jen

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Jen Bonnet
Social Sciences and Humanities Librarian
Fogler Library, University of Maine
207.581.3611
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