Community inquiry bibliography

Inquiry cycle

Inquiry cycle

Community inquiry is inquiry conducted of, for, and by communities as living social organisms.

Community emphasizes support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge, which is connected to people’s values, history, and lived experiences. Inquiry points to support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement. Community inquiry is thus a learning process that brings theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner.

See more at What is community inquiry?

Foundations of Community Engagement

Antecedents

Citizen Participation

Civic engagement

  • American Psychological Association definition
  • The following videos illustrate what civic engagement means in various communities:
    • Civic Engagement. “At Collin County Community College, we define civic engagement as individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern. Civic Engagement can take many forms, from individual volunteerism to organizational involvement to electoral participation. It can include efforts to directly address an issue, work with others in a community to solve a problem, or interact with the institutions of representative democracy.”
    • UTB Center for Civic Engagement. Introduction to Service Learning at UT Brownsville.
    • Kellogg Found – Anne Mosle Civic & Philanthropic Engagement
  • The 2006 Civic and Political Health of the Nation: A Detailed Look at How Youth Participate in Politics and Communities. Details many components of civic engagement and how young people interact with them. This includes civic activities, electoral activities, political voice activities, disparities in engagement, loss of confidence in government, political knowledge, the importance of following the news for civic engagement, views of politics and elections, and other important findings. Shows where youth of today were in 2002 as compared to 2006 regarding their civic engagement knowledge as well as insight as to how initiatives of today have evolved.
  • Civic engagement case studies
  • Freire, Paulo (1970). The adult literacy process as cultural action for freedom. Harvard Educational Review, 40, 205-225.
  • Milam, Danielle Patrick (2001). Access for all: Public library contributions to civic connectivity.  National Civic Review, 90(3), 213-219.
  • Oak Park Coalition for Truth and Justice (2009). Works alongside various organizations to promote awareness of global and local events, to explore humanitarian alternatives to war, and protect civil liberties.
  • Standards that collectively create civic engagement. This includes collecting (6), using (8), and communicating (10) public knowledge. The final standard focuses on the culture, norms, reflexes, and habits of civic engagement.

Community engagement

Non-US community engagement

  • Bender, Gerda. Exploring Conceptual Models for Community Engagement at Higher Education Institutions in South Africa [Journal Articles. Reports – Research] Perspectives in Education. v26 n1 p81-95 Mar 2008. A critical conceptual analysis of the South African Higher Education context reflects the lack of a structural and functional framework for the conceptualization of community engagement (CE) in higher education.
  • Bednarz, Sarah Witham. Chalkley, Brian. Fletcher, Stephen. Hay, Iain. Le Heron, Erena. Mohan, Audrey. Trafford, Julie. Community Engagement for Student Learning in Geography [Journal Articles. Reports – Evaluative] Journal of Geography in Higher Education. v32 n1 p87-100 Jan 2008. Examines the role and purpose of community engagement as a learning and teaching strategy within higher education geography; six case studies drawn from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA.
  • The Global Learning Portal facilitates development and education initiatives by linking online educators, international development practitioners, ministries and civil society organizations.
  • TakingITGlobal enables a collaborative learning community which provides youth with access to global opportunities, cross-cultural connections and meaningful participation in decision-making.
  • Timmons, Vianne; Kim Critchley; Barbara Ruth Campbell; Alexander McAuley; Jennifer P Taylor; Fiona Walton (2007, Summer). Knowledge translation case study: A rural community collaborates with researchers to investigate health issues. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 27(3), pp. 183-187. Knowledge translation implies the exchange and synthesis of knowledge between researchers and research users, employing a high level of communication and participation, not only to share the knowledge found through research, but also to implement subsequent strategies.

Civic Renewal Movements

Age-friendly communities

Citizen journalism

  • definition on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism
  • Benson, Chris, & Christian, Scott (Eds.)(2002). Writing to make a difference: Classroom projects for community change. Teachers CP. Projects in which young people write for community change.
  • Boyd, danah. 2007. “Information Access in a Networked World.” Talk presented to Pearson Publishing, Palo Alto, California, November 2.
  • Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. (New York: Holt, 1927). “No man and no mind was ever emancipated merely by being left alone.” In this chapter, Dewey notes that all the public discourse and education in the world is irrelevant to community improvement without a means of mass dissemination. He also calls to task the purveyors of “news” for concentrating on the sensational and prurient, and calls them to a higher purpose: “the perfecting of the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action.”
  • The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Funding research in journalism and media studies, the Knight Foundation specifically seeks “to enable all residents to participate in their communities and to assume the full rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy.”
  • Matheson, Donald. “Weblogs and the Epistemology of the News: Some Trends in Online Journalism.” New Media Society 2004; 6; 443. Journalism has been slow to develop distinctive forms in response to the new contexts provided by the internet. One rapidly developing form, unique to the world wide web, is the blog. This article reviews the claims made by proponents of the form and explores, through the case study of a blog produced by the British Guardian newspaper, epistemological differences to the dominant Anglo-American news form. It argues that the rearticulation in this institutional product of the relation between journalists and users, of the claim to authority made in the news text and of the news text as product, provides historians of both journalism and new media with a case study of the adaptation of journalism to new contexts.
  • Rheingold, Howard (2008). Using participatory media and public voice to encourage civic engagement. In W. Lance Bennett (Ed.), Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 97–118. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.097 Teaching young people how to use digital media to convey their public voices could connect youthful interest in identity exploration and social interaction with direct experiences of civic engagement. Learning to use blogs (“web logs,” web pages that are regularly updated with links and opinion), wikis (web pages that non-programmers can edit easily), podcasts (digital radio productions distributed through the Internet), and digital video as media of self-expression, with an emphasis on “public voice,” should be considered a pillar—not just a component—of twenty-first-century civic curriculum.
  • Michael Sculty, Professor at Roger Williams University discusses Civic Journalism as it’s been affected by the web, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPRJ0BcqIcQ
  • Seiter, Ellen. “Practicing at Home: Computers, Pianos, and Cultural Capital.” Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected. Edited by Tara McPherson. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 27–52. This essay reviews the connections and divergences between old and new media in terms of the acquisition of cultural capital. In investigating media literacy, it will consider the developmental abilities, the kinds of scaffolding, and the economic and technological thresholds for domestic usage that are required to reap the greatest benefits from new media.
  • CPN: The Wichita Eagle . Fed up with coverage of the 1988 presidential campaign, Wichita Eagle editor Davis Merritt challenged his newsroom and the community to find a better way to report pre-election information. Forsaking soundbites and mud-slinging, the Eagle held community forums (dubbed “The People Project”) to determine the issues that mattered most to readers, then focused ongoing pre-election coverage of the 1990 gubernatorial race on those issues.
  • The Journal Star Leadership Challenge: Building a New Generation of Leaders. Peoria, Illinois: A town so ordinary it’s used as shorthand for average middle America. But in the mid 1990s Peoria found itself in the midst of high crime and low civic participation–without Boy Scout leaders, neighborhood watch captains, or even prospective candidates for Congressional seats. The Peoria Journal-Star launched The Leadership Challenge to engage the community in identifying communal problems, and solutions.
  • Pew Center for Civic Journalism
  • Rosen, Jay (1999). What are journalists for? New Haven: Yale.
  • Rosen, Jay (1996). Getting the connections right: Public journalism and the troubles in the press. New York: Twentieth Century.
  • Rosen, Jay (1993). Community connectedness passwords for public journalism. New York: The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Key issues that the journalism community must debate.

Community design

  • Beatly, Timothy, and David J. Brower. 1994. “Representation in comprehensive planning: An analysis of the Austinplan process.” Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 2: 185. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). Analyzes the representativeness of the Austinplan process implemented in Austin, Texas involving citizen participation in city planning. Importance of representation; Policy differences between participants and the general public; Austin residents as naive populists.
  • Day, Diane, 1997. “Citizen Participation in the Planning Process: An Essentially Contested Concept?” Journal of Planning Literature 51, no. 11: 421-434. Sage Journals Online (accessed November 12, 2008). This article contains a brief survey of the history of civic engagement in the United States and some of the theories about civic participation in public affairs. One of the goals of the article is to examine the citizen participation poses for the planning process
  • O’Connell, Kim A. 2006. “Building diversity.” American City & County 121, no. 13: 44-47. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost(accessed November 13, 2008). The article focuses on the efforts of U.S. local government and private organizations to include affordable housing into their city revitalization projects. According to a report by Smart Growth Network and the National Neighborhood Coalition, redevelopments often unintentionally force lower-income residents to move away to find affordable housing. Thus, city leaders are factoring in affordable housing of which its benefits have been proven. Home ownership have been an ultimate goal of many municipal housing efforts.
  • Greco, JoAnn. 2008. “Old Tool New Uses.” Planning 74, no. 6: 38-43. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). The article reports on the growth of cities establishing comprehensive plans for community development in the U.S. It states that the plan focuses on carrying out redevelopment in urban areas and the construction of infrastructure that will address the needs and demands of local residents. These include Planning Raleigh 2030 in North Carolina, housing development in New Orleans, and reform in commercial business in Washington, D.C. It reveals that comprehensive plans play essential role in identifying the issues facing communities and develop solutions that will help promote the growth of towns and cities across the country.
  • Lipow, Hershell. 2005. “Living Cities: Using Focused Investment to Develop and Revitalize Communities.” Journal of Housing & Community Development 62, no. 3: 24-29. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 14, 2008). Discusses the emergence of the comprehensive community initiatives, a potential model that created and empowered sustainable communities in the U.S. Efficiency of the system in promoting urban revitalization; Role in uniting financial institutions, foundations and government with committed stakeholders on for urban investments; Citation of organizations with successful comprehensive community initiatives.
  • Community Design Collaborative.
  • Innes, Judith E., and David E. Booher. 2004. “Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21st Century.” Planning Theory & Practice 5, no. 4: 419-436.Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). Makes the case that legally required participation methods in the US not only do not meet most basic goals for public participation, but they are also counterproductive, causing anger and mistrust. Both theory and practice are dominated by ambivalence about the idea of participation itself. Both struggle with dilemmas that make the problems seem insoluble, such as the conflict between the individual and collective interest or between the ideal of democracy and the reality that many voices are never heard. Cases are used to draw on an emerging set of practices of collaborative public engagement from around the world to demonstrate how alternative methods can better meet public participation goals and how they make moot most of the dilemmas of more conventional practice.
  • Toker, Zeynep. 2007. “Recent trends in community design: the eminence of participation.” Design Studies 28, no. 3: 309-323.Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). This paper reports a recent study asking current community design practitioners to identify the most influential people and key issue leaders in the community design field and to define the concept itself. The results of the study show that in addition to the continuing concepts such as participation, there are new concepts such as new urbanism and sustainability which are now associated with community design. The most important conclusion, however, is that community design field is in fact in search of new perspectives.
  • Manzo, Lynne C., and Douglas D. Perkins. 2006. “Finding Common Ground: The Importance of Place Attachment to Community Participation and Planning.”Journal of Planning Literature 20, no. 4: 335-350. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). Draws connections between the environmental and community psychology literature on place attachment and meaning with the theory, research, and practice of community participation and planning.
  • Vidal, Avis C., and W. Dennis Keating. 2004. “Community Development: Current Issues and Emerging Challenges.” Journal of Urban Affairs 26, no. 2: 125-137.Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 12, 2008). The emerging issues in the community development movement with an emphasis on the work of community development corporations in the U.S. Factors affecting the sector’s ability to continue their tasks; Contributions of leadership and seasoned practitioners in community development projects; Implications of the future of community development corporations.

Community organizing

  • Alinsky, S. (1971) Rules for radicals. New York, NY: Vintage Books. (chapter 1). Saul Alinsky is one of the first and most famous community organizers. He worked as an organizer in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood.
  • Alinsky, S. (1989). Revielle for radicals. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Written before Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. It is a sort of ‘call’ to community organizing, defining who the Radicals are and what they do.
  • Chaskin, R., et. al. (ed.). Building community capacity. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Chapter 4 offers various strategies for community organizing.
  • The Citizen’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Community. Charles Dobson, Vancouver Citizen’s Committee. Gives a great overview of Community Organizing. It contains both tools and suggestions for organizing within a community.
  • Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Great example of community organizing. This community organization was granted eminent domain in their neighborhood and used that to improve the neighborhood.
  • Ecklein, J. (ed.) (1984). Community organizers, (2nd ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley &Sons. (Introduction) Gives a great overview of community organizing in the introduction. The rest of the book contains case studies.
  • Noden, Kirk. (2002-03). Building Power in Forty Languages: A Story About Organizing Immigrants in Chicago’s Albany Park. Social Policy, 33(2), 47-52. About community organizing in Chicago; a good example of how to do community organizing in a neighborhood that is very diverse.

Community schools

  • Dewey, John (1902, October). The school as social center. The Elementary School Teacher, 3(2), 73-86.
  • Ritzo, Chris; Nam, Chaebong; & Bruce, Bertram C. (in press). Building a strong web: Connecting information spaces across communities. Special issue of Library Trends on school media and Information science.

Community technology, digital divide

Engaged campus

Food security

  • Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN).
  • Feenstra, G. (2002). Creating space for sustainable food systems: Lessons from the field. Agriculture and Human Values, 19(2), 99–106.
  • FoodShare Learning Centre and Library. A resource center with a broad range of food-security-related learning materials and links. “FoodShare promotes policies such as adequate social assistance rates, sustainable agriculture, universal funding of community-based programs and nutrition education that will make food a priority at all levels of society.”
  • Lister, N-M. 2007. Placing food: Toronto’s edible landscape. In J. Knechtel (ed.) Food. Boston: MIT Press. pp.148–185.
  • McCullum, C., et al. (2004). Mechanisms of Power Within a Community-Based Food Security Planning Process. Health Education & Behavior, 31, 206–222.
  • Ogoye-Ndegwa, C., Abudho, D., & Aagaard-Hansen, J. (2002). New Learning in Old Organisations: Children’s Participation in a School-Based Nutrition Project in Western Kenya. Development in Practice, 12 (3/4), 449–460.
  • Rabinowicz, J. (2002). Urban food security and the potential for urban agriculture. Working paper. Santropol Roulant.
  • Rooftop Garden Project video.
  • Ryerson University, Centre for Studies in Food Security. Various resources related to food security issues.

Healthy communities

Healthy environment

Youth courts and community justice

Youth development

  • After School Matters (2009).
  • Agosto, D. E. (2001, Spring). Bridging the culture gap: ten steps toward a more multicultural youth library. Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, 14(3), pp. 38-41. Considers how awareness of the social value of multicultural materials could make youth librarians realize the need for the inclusion of such materials in public and school library collections. Linguistic diversity can bridge the cultural gap that minority students face when learning to read and write. Itemizes steps enabling changes in library culture to meet these needs, including the library’s physical environment, collection diversity, model bilingual and multicultural materials, fostering dialogue and community engagement.
  • Bruce, B. C. (Ed.) (2003). Literacy in the information age: Inquiries into meaning making with new technologies. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
  • Burn, Debra (2007, September). VerbYL: Yeppoon’s Unique Youth Lounge / Youth Library. Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services, 20(3), pp. 99-102. VerbYL is a standalone shopfront youth space incorporating a library service and general youth services for young people aged 13-25, located in the main street of Yeppoon, Central Queensland. Critical success factors include the equal partnership between council’s youth services and library services; the development of a distinctive brand for the service; and the engagement of young people in the design and ongoing operation of the service.
  • Carver, R.L. & Enfield, R. (2006). John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education is Alive and Well. Education & Culture 22(1), 55-67.
  • Catalano, Richard F. et al (2004). Positive youth development in the United States: Research findings on evaluations of positive youth development programs. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 591(1), 98-124.
  • Chicago Public Schools Office of Research, Evaluation and Accountability  (2008). All schools report.
  • Connell, J. P., Gambone, M. A., & Smith T. J. (2001). Youth development in community settings: Challenges to our field and our approach. In P. J. Benson, & K. J. Pittman (Eds.), Trends in youth development. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic.
  • Dewey, John (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.
  • Diehn, Gwen (1999/2006). Making books that fly, fold, wrap, hide, pop up, twist & turn: Books for kids to make.
  • Diehn, Gwen (2006). The decorated journal: Creating beautifully expressive journal pages.
  • Enfield, R. P. (2001). Connection between 4-H and John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education. Focus University of California, Davis.
  • Fletcher, Adam (2008, November). The architecture of ownership. Educational Leadership, 66(3).
  • Flores-Gonzalez, N., Rodriguez, M., & Rodriguez-Muniz, M. (2006). From hip-hop to humanization: Batey Urbano as a space for Latino youth culture and community action. In S. Ginwright, P. Noguera, & J. Cammorota (eds.), Beyond resistance! Youth activism and community change (pp. 175-196). New York: Routledge.
  • Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary edition, with introduction by Donaldo Macedo. New York: Continuum.
  • Gewertz, C. (2008). Chicago students to play lead role in dropout project. Education Week, 28(13), 4-4.
  • Halpern, R. (2006). After-School Matters in Chicago: Apprenticeship as a model for youth programming. Youth & Society, 38(2), 203-235.
  • Haythornthwaite, C. & Kazmer, M. M. (Eds.) (2004). Learning, culture and community in online education: Research and practice. NY: Peter Lang.
  • Illinois Council of Students (2009, September 12).
  • Irish, Sharon (2009). Turning point ; Teens and violence.
  • Jonassen, D. (1999). Computers as mindtools for schools: Engaging critical thinking. Prentice Hall. Mindtool Website.
  • Joseph, Barry. Why Johnny can’t fly: Treating games as a form of youth media within a youth development framework.
  • Kaptizke, C. & Bruce, B. C. (2006). Libr@ries: Changing information space and practice. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Joining Forces: Engaging with Community To Improve Rural Student Achievement. Community Engagement Guide. Educational reform poses problems for administrators in rural areas who have limited time and resources. This guide offers a process that can be used by rural administrators to engage the community in activities that will enhance children’s success in the classroom and in their adult lives.
  • The Mash (2009, September 12).
  • Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
  • Moses, Robert (2001). Radical equations: Civil rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon.
  • National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC), Learn and Serve America–an organization that supports the service-learning community; explanation of service learning; studies on the impact of service learning.
  • Ogletree, R., Bell, T., & Smith, N. (2002). Positive youth development initiatives in Chicago. New Directions for Youth Development, 94, 41-63.
  • Prins, Esther. Individual Roles and Approaches to Public Engagement in a Community-University Partnership in a Rural California Town [Journal Articles. Reports – Research Journal of Research in Rural Education. v21 n7 p1-15 Jul 2006. Examines the roles that a professor, graduate student, consultant, and communityeducation specialist at a public university in California have played in a partnership with an elementary school and a community-based organization in a nearby rural town.
  • Schutz, A. (2006, Winter). Home is a prison in the global city: The tragic failure of school-based community engagement strategies. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 691-743.
  • Street Level Youth Media (2009). Offers educational opportunities in emerging technologies and media arts for underserved youth; promotes learning through exploration and individual inquiry.
  • Student achievement in math and science: Putting community members into the equation. The ARSI community engagement implementation manual. [Guides – Non-Classroom], The Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) aims to stimulate sustainable systemic improvements that enhance student performance in mathematics, science, and technology in 66 Appalachian counties characterized by persistent poverty.
  • Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) (2008).
  • Wiggins, G. & Mctighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
  • Woodson, Stephani Etheridge. Good work: Ethics and community cultural development with children and youth. Community Arts Perspectives, Community Arts Network.
  • Youth Community Informatics. A Library and Information Science and Institute of Museum and Library Services initiative at the University of Illinois. YCI is a collective of graduate students, professors, and youth leaders, that seeks to actively engage youth in their communities to take on the issues that affect them the most. Across Illinois, YCI is creating partnerships in communities through school districts, community organizations and local leaders in an effort to produce solutions through the use of technology-rich activities to the issues they face.
  • Youth urban planning in Richmond, CA.

Tools for Understanding and Engaging Communities

Art for understanding and engaging communities

Asset mapping

Community archives

Community of Practice (CoP)

Community-based research


Community needs assessment

Deliberation

  • Alita, John (2001, December).  Creating an Internet policy by civic engagement.  American Libraries, pp. 49-50.
  • Author (2007, October). Local government managers and public libraries:  Partners for a better community.  ICMA Management Perspective, pp. 1-4.
  • Brown, Juanita; Isaacs, David; the World Cafe; & The World Cafe Community.  The World Cafe. San Francisco:  Barrett-Koehler, 2005. A fuller description of the World Cafe exercise than is available in The Change Handbook, with an intriguing variety of case studies of organizations that conducted World Cafe (businesses, not-for-profits, universities.
  • Europe in one room.
  • Holman, Peggy; Devane, Tom; & Cady, Steven.  The Change Handbook:  The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems (2nd edition).  San Francisco:  Barrett-Koehler, 2006. Over 60 input-eliciting exercises, including World Cafe, Conversation Cafe, Study Circles, Six Sigma and many others.  There are planning exercises as well as exercises designed to lead to implementation in business settings.
  • Iowa Partners In Learning (video).
  • Kranich, Nancy (2000, November).  Libraries as civic spaces.  American Libraries, 7.
  • Lankes, Dave. Social activism in libraries. Library Journal summary
  • McCoy, M. L. & Scully, P.L. (2002). Deliberative dialogue to expand civic Engagement: What kind of talk does democracy need? National Civic Review, 91(2), 117-135. How to enhance civic engagement using community dialogues. Emphasized is the importance of engaging communities in deliberative dialogue.
  • Moran, Tom (2004, Spring).  Deliberation in libraries.  Texas Library Journal, 32-34.
  • National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation.
  • National Issues Forum.
  • Pollard, Beth (2008, March).  Libraries: Partners in sustaining communities.  Public Management, pp. 18-22.
  • Willingham, Taylor (2008).  Libraries as civic agents.  Public Library Quarterly, 27(2), 97-110.
  • World Cafe.

Inclusion, anti-racism

Leadership

Libraries

  • Smallwood, Carol (Ed.) (2010). Librarians as community partners: An outreach handbook. American Library Association. ALA Editions. [ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-1006-1]. Includes 66 focused snapshots of outreach in action, this resource reflects the creative solutions of librarians searching for new and innovative ways to build programs that meet patron needs while expanding the library’s scope into part of the community.

New media

  • Howley, K. (2005). Community media: People, places, and communication technologies. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  • Lewis, P. & Jones, S. (Eds.) (2006). From the margins to the cutting edge: Community media and empowerment. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.
  • Linn, K. (2008). Building commons and community. Oakland, CA: New Village Press.
  • The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on digital media and learning (2009).
  • Rennie, E. (2006). Community media: A global introduction. Toronto, ON: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Smith, Aaron; Schlozman, Kay Lehman; Verba, Sidney; & Brady, Henry (2009, September 1). The internet and civic engagement. Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Service learning

Visioning

  • Alexander, C. (1977). A pattern language: Towns, buildings, construction. New York: Oxford University Press. A fascinating resource when planning community spaces as well as individual dwellings.
  • Ames, S.C. (Ed.). (1993). A guide to community visioning: Hands-on information for local communities (pp. 13-22). Portland: Oregon Visions Project. A basic guidebook to community visioning. Chapter Three, “Visioning in Your Community”, is a good stepping off point for this topic.
  • Ayers, J. (1996). Essential elements of strategic visioning. In N. Walzer (Ed.), Community strategic visioning programs (pp. 21-36). Westport, CT: Praeger.
  • Big Small All. Chapter 3 – Moving forward: Objectives and action strategies: Collaborative. Part of Champaign County’s recent visioning project report, detailing goals related to creating collaborative communities.
  • Bishop, A.P., et al (2001). Afya: Social and digital technologies that reach across the digital divide. First Monday, 6(4). The Afya project, a participatory action research project, “designed to engage African American women in assessing and increasing their access to quality health information and services.” A good example of how much better technology works when it is designed by the people it is meant to help.
  • CDC Web site. Outline of what healthy community means from the perspective of public health officials. This is good to look at because it shows all the different aspects of community health.
  • Charrettes. “A charrette is a meeting to resolve a problem or issue. Within a specified time limit, participants work together intensely to reach a resolution.” Similar to visioning, but less vision-y.
  • Dunn County (WI) visioning. 10 min. presentation made before community members in Wisconsin about a forthcoming visioning process.
  • Community Voices on Champaign Schools. “WILL is interviewing people who come to community planning forums created by the Unit 4 school district in Champaign, Illinois. Voices of Great Schools Together captures on video some of the hopes, challenges and perspectives of community members, parents and students regarding Champaign public schools.”
  • Future Search. Focused, three-day conferences that foster planning and visioning-type activities.
  • Great Schools, Together. “Conceived of by the Unit 4 School Board and supported by the Administration, this initiative brought community members together to share their vision for our schools, now and in the future.”
  • Healthy People 2010 (2000). This is a report on the federal government’s goals to improve community health by 2010. The top-down approach compared to the goals of individual communities.
  • Lasker, R., & Weiss, E. (2003). Broadening participation in community problem solving: A multidisciplinary model to support collaborative practice and research. Journal of Urban Health, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 80(1), 14–47. A model for improving community participation in problem-solving. This article seeks to overcome perceived shortfalls of community-based research.
  • Latham, J. R. (1995). Visioning: the concept, trilogy, and process. Quality Progress, 28(4), 65-68.
  • NCDD’s visioning and planning. The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation’s clearinghouse for visioning resources.
  • Carl Neu, consultant. Like Steven Ames, Carl Neu is a consultant to local governments and organizations on the topics of improved governance and strategizing/visioning.
  • Policy Link and the California Endowment (2007). Why place matters. Connects health, place, race, and socioeconomic status; case studies and recommendations for how to solve community health problems.
  • Schindler-Rainman, E. and Lippitt, R. (1992). Building collaborative communities. in M.R. Weisbrod (ed.), Discovering common ground (pp. 35-44). San Fransisco: Berrett-Koehler. Discusses how to foster a collaborative spirit at visioning/planning conferences.

Writing

  • 826 Chicago. A nonprofit writing and tutoring center located in the Wicker Park, Chicago; offers free on-location and in-school tutoring, after-school workshops, help for people learning English as an additional language, and assistance
    with student publications.
  • 826 National.
  • Alvermann, Donna E. (2002). Effective literacy instruction for adolescents. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(2), 189-208.
  • Barron, Brigid J. S.; Schwartz, Daniel L.; Vye, Nancy J.; Moore, Allison; Petrosino, Anthony; Zech, Linda; Bransford, John D.; & The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (1998). Doing with understanding: Lessons from research on problem- and project-based learning. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 7(3 & 4): 271-311.
  • Bayne, Martha. A heartwarming work of staggering generosity (2005, December). Chicago Reader, 10.
  • Benson, C., & Christian, S. (with Goswami, D., & Gooch, W.H.). (Eds.). (2002). Writing to make a difference: Classroom projects for community change. New York: Teachers College Press.
  • Berdan, Kristina, et al. (Eds.) (2006). Writing for a change: Boosting literacy and learning through social action, Jossey-Bass.
  • Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press.
  • Easton, John Q.; Luppescu, Stuart,; & Rosenkranz, Todd (2007, June). 2006 ISAT Reading and Math scores in Chicago and the rest of the state. Rep. Consortium on Chicago School Research.
  • Chicago Public Schools Office of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability (2009). Illinois Standards Achievement Test over time report.
  • Ross, Catherine Sheldrick; McKechnie, Lynne; &  Rothbauer, Paulette M. (2006). Reading matters: What the research reveals about reading, libraries, and community. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.

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