University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Community Workshop Series: A Case Study for Community-Engaged Learning in LIS

Johnson , Matthew Weirick; Lasher, Meggie

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/110203

Description

Title
The Community Workshop Series: A Case Study for Community-Engaged Learning in LIS
Author(s)
  • Johnson , Matthew Weirick
  • Lasher, Meggie
Issue Date
2021
Keyword(s)
  • digital literacy
  • computer technology
  • community members
  • public libraries
Abstract
For over a decade, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) has offered some variation of the Community Workshop Series (CWS), a partnership to provide digital literacy and computer technology classes to community members at local public libraries. Both authors have served as coordinators of the program as library science graduate students at the UNC School of Information and Library Science. We situate this program within existing literature on digital and information literacy, community engagement, and the graduate student experience to show the utility of this program and similar programs for training graduate students, enhancing the graduate student experience, supporting the needs of community members, and bolstering the capacities of public libraries. The authors provide an overview of the program and encourage others to start similar programs. To this end, the authors present a case study of the CWS, including discussion of creating the program and keeping things going, and provide a how-to guide for creating your own. The authors identify four recommendations for creating a similar program to clearly delineate takeaways that might inform readers’ attempts to create similar programs, and they provide additional materials and documentation in appendices to support the creation of new community-engaged programs in LIS.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 69 (4). Spring 2021
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110203
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2020.0045
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2021 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 69 (4) Spring 2021: Researching Practice / Practicing Research: The Public Library in Partnership with Academia. PRIMARY
Library Trends 69 (4) Spring 2021: Researching Practice / Practicing Research: The Public Library in Partnership with Academia. Edited by Joyce M. Latham and Noah Lenstra.