The

Jared Dunn, Will Kent, and Martin WolskeGraduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

A New Prairienet.org History FeedbackPrairienet was founded in 1993 by faculty, staff, and students at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois in order to: • strengthen community organizations by helping them provide and retrieve networked information; • empower individuals to access and effectively use networked information; • facilitate information and resource sharing in support of community development efforts; and • promote equity of access to computer resources for everyone.

•Do you have projects that span semesters and different groups of students? If so, how do you coordinate activities between semesters?•Do you have projects that span different departments and

groups of students? If so, how do you coordinate activities?•What kinds of different capabilities would you like to see

added to increase the Prairienet.org site’s functionality? •What are some challenges you have had with past

scholarship of engagement projects?  Could this site help you to address these issues?•What processes would be valuable to capture, preserve and

make available for future groups? How do you do that now?•How would you like to use this site?

Problem Approach For Further InformationLeave a comment and your email address!Visit:http://www.prairienet.orgContact:Martin Wolskemwolske@illinois.edu217-244-8094

An online interactive tool for communication, collaboration, documentation and project management.

Many sites also partner with multiple university departments and entities, that are not aware of one another’s work. These issues can make fostering sustainable and growing relationships over time difficult, and point to a need for tools to facilitate better collaboration with community partners and documentation.

Supported in part by:

University of Illinois has a long and rich tradition of community engagement locally, regionally, and internationally. An ongoing challenge for engagement projects has been effective communications between University and community partners. These efforts often span several years, and the academic calendar can fragment long-term partnerships.

We have begun exploring how blogging software hosted on Prairienet.org can be used to capture the dynamic communications and knowledge-sharing among University and community partners that are part of the process of the project work occurring at various partner sites within community. Blog space for each partner organization; parent page with sub-pages for specific courses and grant-funded short term projects partnering with the organizationThe goal of the project pages are to:

• capture and preserve project plans;• identify key decision points that impact project outcome;• document the reasoning behind certain decisions that impact the shape of the project.

By raising awareness of past and current projects, we hope to encourage greater collaboration between various engagement courses and projects on campus to enhance the outcomes for both the university and grassroots communities.