NATURALIZING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN INFORMATION STUDIES

Abstract

Researchers and professionals in the information fields are increasingly recognizing that they should engage themselves more closely with local, marginalized and under-empowered communities in addressing a range of challenges in diverse information contexts. Education employing critical pedagogy and dialogic action can provide a fertile ground for preparing future graduates for such engagement, and break down over-simplified dichotomies between academic and external community identities. The authors argue that non-traditional, mutually beneficial partnerships between grassroots communities and graduate students in information studies that have been nurtured through this pedagogical approach can help to raise students' consciousness of and sensitivity to authentic grassroots community information needs. At the same time, such activities can provide communities with a low-overhead entry-point into academic partnerships. In support of this argument, and using a basic qualitative descriptive approach, the authors provide a picture of the complex of community–student collaborations undertaken with a social justice orientation by information studies students at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Keywords:

• community archives
• community engagement
• critical pedagogy
• dialogic action
• service learning

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge and thank all of the partners in the initiatives described in this paper, including the more than 40 organizations that have served as service-learning sites over the past eight years; the multiple generations of students and alumni of the Nidorf Collective and Library and Archive OUTreach; the staff of the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Office of Education, and Probation Department, as well as the children and teens resident in Nidorf Hall; the staff of the UCLA LGBT Campus Resource Center; the artists involved with Machine Project; the many individuals, community organizations and sites that have partnered with students in the Information Services in Culturally Diverse Communities and Community-based Archiving courses; and the instructors and doctoral assistants associated with all the courses discussed in this paper, especially Dr Clara Chu, Dr Virginia Walter, and Dr Chon Noriega.

Notes

Although academia is itself a meta-community comprising multiple communities that might be identified or self-identify on the basis of such aspects as discipline, professional field, ideological or methodological approach, geography, or personal backgrounds and experiences, this paper will use the term ‘academic-community partnership’ to refer to instances where academic activities such as research and learning are conducted through mutually beneficial collaborations with groups who are external to the academic programme participating in those collaborations.

The addition of the ‘Q’ in LGBTQ represents growing inclusiveness from the previous LGBT designation to include individuals who may identify themselves as queer or questioning rather than as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Variations of the intialism are not always consistent and may shift according to context.