I’ve been reflecting for several weeks on a growing emotion within me, not quite depression, not quite anger. Today I’m settling on the word despair, the loss of hope. In past years I would look forward in anticipation to the Christmas season — not the shopping, never the shopping — but the moments with family, the… Continue reading Despairing Christmas, Hoping for Advent
I’m excited to be teaching three courses this spring. Below are the short descriptions and links to the syllabus for each course. It would be great to have each class max out on enrollment! Community Informatics Studio, LIS 490ST: (Syllabus) Studio learning brings together the collective knowledge of the class to work on and implement a… Continue reading My Spring 2015 Courses
Engagement, especially when qualified with words like community, public, or civic, shows up in a lot of contexts. I recently wrote a post about librarians as engagement leaders, and in this post I want to follow up a bit further regarding my current thinking about the purpose of engagement. In a 2012 paper about community-based research, Randy… Continue reading Engagement and Two Forms of Social Change
I appreciate Virginia Eubanks’ expansion of information technology expertise outlined in her 2011 book Digital Dead End. This is not to say that everyone has the same expertise, by any means. But it is to challenge the primacy of those whose expertise is in the physical or software domains. A recent post touched on the concept… Continue reading EVERYONE is a Technology Expert
A number of past American Library Association (ALA) presidents have had initiatives related in some way to libraries and community/civic engagement. The 2012 ALA president, Maureen Sullivan, helped to lead a successful Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant proposal to work with the Harwood Institute to advance library-led community engagement. I strongly agree… Continue reading Librarians as Engagement Leaders
