ALISE17 : Engaging Communities Through Research and Practice

Community engagement in curricula.  Presenters: Kathleen Campana and Elizabeth Mills

How can libraries continue to built on their current community engagement efforts?
How can we prepare MLIS students to be a part of that engagement?

LIS educators need to:

• Help students learn how to engage with user communities
• Allow student to engage with a community of practitioners
• ....and ...more

Classes at University of Washington:

• LIS 571: Research in Action - which includes collecting, coding, and analyzing data
• LIS 598: Community engagement strategies for libraries - including gathering data about the community and doing community discovery
• LIS 567: Libraries as learning labs in a digital age - used research-based frameworks. Students had access to a community of practitioners.

One of the things these courses taught was the need for librarians to go out into the community, rather than waiting for the community to come to them.  Research-based frameworks made the interactions more structured and fruitful.

What they learned from those classes was used to develop the course LIS 564: Multicultural resources for youth. This class is focused on research through conversations with researchers and scholars.  Students had to create a diversity service project as part of the class.

Conclusion:



Questions to ponder:

• How do you use curricula to support MSLIS students' interactions, with other practitioners, user communities and community partners?
• How do you bring the community into the MSLIS curricula to underscore the importance of emphasizing community focused thinking and planning when designing libraries' programs and services?
• What other community engagement aspects are important for MSLIS curricula to emphasize?