I live in Chicago and I have to say that the Harold Washington Library is one of the few things I'm extremely proud of. I will definitely go check this out next time and I hope it spurs more Chicagoans to explore this treasure located in the heart of the city.
In practice, sharing a lab is an uphill struggle when the people you share it with are your coworkers/fellow students. When they're just people that wandered in off the street, I could imagine that without very careful control of the situation the place will end up with piles of crap and absolutely no tools.
I suppose it completely depends what type of lab they've built. I hope this idea spreads (because I would like to have access to this kind of resource), and I hope it works!
As much as I like libraries and the services they provide, (books, internet, study and meeting spaces), I don't think this is a good match.
As a member and former member of various robot and ham radio groups, shared spaces are a pain to run. They work much better as a paid coop where everyone has skin/money in the game.
All the classes are pretty much full, they don't have very good infrastructure but I will camp out there if that is what it will take for me to use a 3-D printer to make an action figure.
