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Library Education Connecting and Building Communities: Engaging Students in Diverse Communities
Clara M. Chu
Libraries are cultural agencies that can both connect as well as build communities. This is especially vital in the case of multicultural
libraries.
• Are librarians trained and able to engage with community? or are librarians expecting users to only come to the library? and are librarians engaging in “drive-by” practice where they only come to deliver library services and then leave?
ProBiblio http://dutchlibraries.web-log.nl/dutchlibraries/2006/03/drivein_library.html
Drive-in Library
Multiculturalism in LIS:A needle in a haystack
• Multiculturalism in practice: socio-demographic response, celebratory, best practices, workforce diversity/recruitment, limited & descriptive research
• Multiculturalism in LIS education: diversity as a value, COA Standards, core learning in Master’s programs
• SDAG – anti-racist, social justice education • NEED> Multicultural engagement in LIS education• In order for librarians to commit to the community in
which they work and consider working “with” community a priority, the seed needs to be planted early on.
Mission
• GSE&IS is dedicated to inquiry, the advancement of knowledge, the improvement of professional practice, and service to the education and information professions. We develop future generations of scholars, teachers, information professionals, and institutional leaders. Our work is guided by the principles of individual responsibility and social justice, an ethic of caring, and commitment to the communities we serve.
The IS VisionThe IS VisionThe Department of Information Studies defines, studies, and evaluates interactions among
people, information and information technology in a pluralistic society. The Department values and promotes equity, diversity, accountability and intellectual openness.
The Department integrates wide-ranging scholarly, professional, technological and institutional
perspectives in its teaching, research and public service. Across each of these activities, the Department engages with and is driven by real world information issues and community and institutional needs. The Department also promotes the essential role played by information institutions such as libraries and archives as social, cultural, educational, and intellectual centers in our society.
In particular, we examine and encourage: – The design of information systems and services for individuals, communities, cultures,
disciplines and literacies;– The creation, preservation, documentation and curation of information in all media and
settings;– Access to information, in all its manifestations, that empowers and enfranchises
individuals and communities in and over time; and– The framing of ongoing policy and institutional dialogue related to the social and
intellectual implications of a global information society.
IS 201. Ethics, Diversity and Change in the Information Professions (Spring 04-present)
• A complex information-intensive society presents ethical issues, such as access, intellectual property, freedom of expression, privacy, security and human rights, among others that require critical reflection. This service-learning course serves as a forum to discuss, learn and understand these ethical challenges of a multicultural information society that inform our societal, professional community and individual views, and impact our professional practice, decision making and public policy. An applied ethics approach is used to understand ethics in practice, the challenges presented in a dynamic multicultural user environment and the transformation that accompanies it in a rapidly changing world. This course also focuses on the role of information studies students in supporting equity of information access by utilizing campus resources, including their academic skills.
IS 201. Learning Objectives http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/chu/edc/
1. Students will study various ethical frameworks and develop a personal approach to being an ethical information professional.
2. Students will use service learning experiences to develop their understanding of issues of equity and information services in diverse and/or underserved communities.
3. Students will develop a critical perspective of diversity and information practices.
4. Students will learn about strategies for effecting change in information institutions.
5. Students will consider approaches to advocacy and social justice in the information professions.
What is service-learning?
• Even though there are many different interpretations of service-learning as well as different objectives and contexts, we can say that there is a core concept upon which all seem to agree:– Service-learning combines service objectives with learning
objectives with the intent that the activity change both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content. (http://www.servicelearning.org/)
– NOT volunteer work, internship
Critical Service Learning (Masucci and Renne, 2000)
• “an important opportunity to integrate and facilitate the ideals of a more radical democratic engagement with one’s society. In other words, democracy can be viewed as a radical social practice that requires one to take a critical inventory of one’s social location in terms of power and privilege and by understanding our relationship and responsibilities to others.”
• Four phases: Pre-reflection, Theory, Action, Reflection
Four Steps of Critical Service Learning
1. Pre-reflection – “one should reflect upon and politicize oneself (i.e., investigating who we are and what we stand for, as well as investigating our past service experiences, our preconceptions about the project and our predictions as to its outcome).” Theories assist in gaining an understanding of individual subjectivities, identities, positions and localities.
2. Theory – understand the construction of the world in theoretical terms and examine its relation to action (service learning). Potential theories to be examined are those posited by Bourrdieu (habitus, meaning-construction), Foucault (in relations to power), Freire [and others] (in pedgagogy), Gramsci (organic intellectual and hegemony), Matsuda [and Crenshaw, Delgado, etc.] (critical race theory), and others on feminist, post-colonial and queer theories. (See for example, PopCultures.com http://www.popcultures.com/theorist.htm)
Four Steps of Critical Service Learning (cont’d)
3. Action – “Drawing from a cultural studies tradition, action must be the accompanying harmony that helps inform and update theory.” Action in service learning can take on many forms as is particular and appropriate in the community partnership. It is suggested that the “action include some type of dialog and/or dialectical understanding with those whom you are partnering in order to assure that the voice of that partnering organization is evident in the action.”
4. Reflection – the foundation for the entire endeavor which “through critical reflection one has the opportunity to integrate and personally contextualize the experience of service learning.” A sharing space is created with the instructor and fellow students.
“Working from within”• Whether one is an insider or outsider of a
community, engaging with community requires cultural competence that is based on an emic perspective (insider knowledge), participatory engagement, cultural respect, academic preparation and resources, and professional integrity.
• engagement with culturally diverse communities in learning and practice that considers the voice of the community partner(s) and members/users, which may lead to community building, organizing and empowerment
Activities: “Working from within”
• Service Learning (20 hours) - practice within community
• Journal (25%) - looking within self
• Paper (50%) - probing within profession
• Class discussion and presentation (25%) -- learning within classroom community (ethics, diversity,theory, service learning, policy issues)
Community Partnerships
• arranged by instructor or student• Community partners have a working relationship with
instructor or referrals (familiarity, trust, communication, reciprocity, confidence)
• Criteria: Sites should be ones where the community environment would either be new to the students or it is a community-based or non-profit organization (information, social service, government, cultural, educational, etc.) which needs assistance (i.e., they don't have the resources to achieve all their priorities or they rely on volunteer base to implement many of their activities) AND student will be doing information-related work
• site responsibilities: coordinate/supervise/facilitate student activities, communicate with class instructor with any concerns, evaluation of the service-learning experience)
• Types of sites
• Experiences
• Unexpected Outcomes
Transformation (Amy Guy, Spring 2007)
• …The CSRC provided me a vehicle in which to acquire an acute awareness of the exigency of the issues of access, diversity, power, and social justice. My brief stay at CSRC helped me acquire a greater appreciation for the need of specialized research centers to house, highlight, and excavate the texts of marginalized peoples. Without this important information archaeology, voices can slip into the dark recesses of history reducing the fullness and clarity of our historical narratives.
http://www.lgbt.ucla.edu/library.htm
Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Detention Facility (Sylmar, California)
• Young Adult and Children's Services @ UCLA Nidorf Project http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/yalsa/service.html
• The Nidorf Collective, a group of librarians and MLIS students at UCLA collects book donations for booktalks and distribution at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Detention, a facility in Sylmar, California that houses 600+ incarcerated children and teens, ages 10-17.
• Dissemination/Outreach: conference presentations, blog entries
A Reader’s Observations (Shari Lee, Spring 2008)
Based on classroom responses and journal entries, I think the class is an intervention that worked – engaging the complexity of diversity through service learning and ethics as a core requirement. By the end, many had a shift in thinking or seemed open to rethinking biases they initially held. This was evident in the words they used and the way they approached difficult topics. It seems the class provided a comfort zone – a safe environment – where people felt that they would be respected. No one seemed visibly upset when hard issues, such as racism, were raised; students saw the value in discussing things openly and honestly, even though they may not have agreed with everyone or everything. I also think that the deliberately and thoughtfully inserted voices of the under-represented, in the speakers you invited, provided significant exposure to the perspectives of the "Other." This, along with your counter-narratives, was beneficial in a class where the students were predominately white.
