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As the novelty of makerspaces in libraries slowly fades, this study examines how participation, expertise, and embeddedness in the library organization and surrounding community are sustained in library makerspaces. Based on interviews with makerspace practitioners in 13 Danish libraries, practices of maintaining, scaling, replicating, and evolving library makerspaces are analyzed. The findings propose a variety of practices and tensions concerning sharing ownership with user communities; scaling and prolonging users' participation; building expertise through documentation, repetition, and sharing; collaborating with local community partners; and embedding makerspace practices into existing library practices, resources, and values. The results inform a discussion of participation, expertise, and embeddedness, which are distilled into three guiding principles that can help libraries reflect and address the sustainability of their makerspace over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makerspaces are places for construction and creative expression using tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and sewing machines. In this study, we investigate how makers obtain information for their makerspace projects. The study focuses on four sources of information: people, documents, experimentation, and prior knowledge. On the basis of interviews with 13 makers, we analyze their use of these information sources in relation to different knowledge areas, creative‐process stages, and relevance criteria. Our main findings are that (a) experimentation is a prime source of information, (b) ease and pleasure are the dominant relevance criteria, (c) process and situation receive little attention, and (d) information sources vary across process stages. Specifically, experimentation is the dominant information source during the construction stage. In addition, the relevance criteria show that the makers turn to people because it is pleasurable, to documents because it is easy, and to experimentation because it results in quality products. These results emphasize the importance of experimentation and suggest that it warrants closer attention in studies of the information behavior of makers and, more broadly, creative professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]