Natural disasters are a period of uncertainty and instability for those affected. It becomes important for members of the public in a disaster zone to access up-to-date information about their environment. Currently, solutions are only set up for information from official sources to flow through existing infrastructure to members of the public. This approach has been criticized for being incomplete and slow to respond. The authors propose an integrated communications solution that would leverage the networked potential of localized actors, whether they are affected members of the public, aid workers, or official agencies sent to provide support.

Makerspaces, designated spaces to foster creativity and technology skills, are increasingly being incorporated into libraries. Although makerspaces in libraries are depicted positively in the literature and are praised by professional organizations, there is little exploration of the acculturation that results as libraries and makerspaces learn to coexist. In keeping with Matt Ratto's model of “critical making,” we used the process of collaboratively building an interactive Readers’ Advisory Device (RAD) that runs on a Raspberry Pi computer to elicit introspection. In this poster we describe how our interdisciplinary group faced challenges working with unfamiliar tools and technology through a non‐hierarchical, collaborative, and iterative process, seeking knowledge and skills from the maker community. We then engaged the wider community around both how and why we developed this device by exhibiting it at a Maker Faire. Our experience taught us about the making process and helped us think critically about the intersection of libraries and makerspace cultural values. We found that making is as much an act of networking as of creation.