Comparisons+EF


 * MEMO: Comparisons**

Comparisons between various skill-sharing community centers, museums, and makerspaces will help to generate insight into my object of concern. How these spaces manifest themselves in different countries will also be helpful. Looking at the different operation standards and practices between Online and physical community spaces may be enlightening. I nvolvement and reach of programming within different areas will be of interest to look at and may bring to light certain attributes of different spaces and issues of organization or approach to running a space and interfacing with the public. I think exploring the reach of makerspaces in relation to museums may be particularly interesting. The difference in numbers of those involved and who go to makerspaces as opposed to those going to museums will probably be quite large. In that same vein, a comparison of community centers vs makerspaces would also touch on some interesting topics -- who has the money and means to go to makerspaces that often cost money, what kind of publics are free services at community centers more open and helpful to?

A historical comparison of skill-sharing community centers and who was involved in such programming will be helpful -- possibly focusing on Science Shops, but hopefully I can find some interesting things even further back in time. Looking at what museums were historically in relation to today is particularly intersting when considering many started out as personal collections or research centers that had a public aspect to them -- but that were first and foremost research centers. Could possibly civicly minded science skill-sharing centers be a type of throw-back to these research institutions, except instead of being closed to the public initially, they are meant to keep research open to and involve the public.