Paseo Boricua Community Library Project

Ann Peterson Bishop (abishop@uiuc.edu), Suhua Fan, and Terry Kuster

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

Community as Intellectual Space, June 17-19, 2005

American pragmatism andcommunity inquiry

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) William James (1842-1910) John Dewey (1859-1952) Jane Addams (1860-1935)

See Menand’s The Metaphysical Club

The cycle of inquiry

“Genuine intellectual integrity is found in experimental knowing.” John Dewey

Community inquiry: how do we learn together?

”It is the democratic faith that [intelligence] is sufficiently general so that each individual has something to contribute, and the value of each contribution can be assessed only as it entered into the final pooled intelligence constituted by the contributions of all." --John Dewey

Community inquiry:how should we live together?

“…the desire to make the entire social organism democratic, to extend democracy beyond its political expression.” --Jane Addams

A natural alliance: community inquiry and informatics

Study and practice of enabling communities with information and communications technologies (ICTs) (Gurstein, in Journal of CI, 2004)

A rich variety of social experiments in what we term community informatics (CI) are giving community-activists, policy-makers and citizens a new set of possibilities for fostering social cohesion, strengthening neighborhood ties, overcoming cultural isolation and combatting social exclusion and deprivation

(Keeble and Loader, 2001)

Community Inquiry Laboratory

Community: Collaborative activity around creating knowledge that is connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences

Inquiry: Open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement

Laboratory: Bringing theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner

The Community iLab Collaborative - developing a conceptual framework and set of free, open source web software

Community inquiry inPaseo Boricua

Mile-long section of Division Street in Chicago's Humboldt Park

“Barrio autonomy” (Rinaldi, 2002): autonomous cultural, political, and economic space for Puerto Rican and Latino/Latina residents that came into being as a response to encroaching gentrification and displacement in nearby sections of the city (Flores-González, 2001)

Puerto Rican Cultural Center http://www.prcc-chgo.org

30 years in Chicago’s Paseo Boricua neighborhood

Philosophy of self-actualization and critical thought, self-determination, self-reliance

Galvanizes residents around local issues: cultural preservation, economic development, gang violence

Includes many affiliated organizations that help people “learn how to learn” about/in the community

La Casita de Don Pedro Museum: Simple house

from Puerto Rico Built by HS students Cultural space: Bomba

dancing, artist fairs

Café Teatro Batey Urbano Organized by college

students

Safe place for teens to meet and express themselves

Without fear of discrimination or violence

Poetry with a Purpose, neighborhood projects, homework help

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos HS

Alternative HS:

More comfortable

Safer

Small classroom settings and local projects

Teachers care!

Vida/SIDA Puerto Ricans in Chicago

affected disproportionately by AIDS

Local artist & ex-prisoner Luis Rosa painted mural

Education and prevention regarding AIDS

AIDS clinic also started

Family Learning Center

For young mothers to earn HS diplomas

Provide daycare

Supported by federal funds

We learn about our culture, parenting skills

National BoricuaHuman Rights Network

Support for PR political prisoners

Active in movement to remove US Navy from Vieques, PR

Defends civil liberties and educates against repressive legislation (Patriot Act, etc.)

Paseo BoricuaCommunity Library Project goals (1/2003)

Create a distributed community of inquiry whose participants come from all walks of life University and community collaboration Each has something to learn and contribute

Learn how to mobilize neighborhood info and cultural resources for community development activities

Address digital divide

Enrich library and information science with experiences and knowledge of Paseo Boricua residents

Who’s involved

Students from the HS and Family Learning Center

Neighborhood activists

Faculty and students from UI’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science

Faculty and students from University of Illinois at Chicago, other universities

Librarians, kids, friends…

Experimenting with modes of inquiry

Spring/Summer 2003: Weekend work sessions - moving books from old to new PRCC

Fall 2003/Spring 2004: Street Academy for HS youth

Spring 2005: Cataloging project (Terry and Suhua)

May 2005: Not Enough Space exhibit at UIUC

June 2005 Community as Intellectual Space symposium

Summer 2005: Cataloging next steps: Community work days, summer camp, short course?

HS student goals Earn high school diploma!

Gain marketable skills within workforce People skills: collaboration and presentation Technology skills Cataloging and other library skills

Create comfortable learning place in PRCC for everyone

Learn tolerance, openness to new cultural experiences, and community engagement

UIUC student goals

Collaboratively share resources with Paseo Boricua

Practice library skills within community setting People skills: collaboration and presentation Technology skills: online database, online information

retrieval, digital library expertise Cataloging and library management

Create functional learning resource center that students and community members can operate

Explore community informatics and community inquiry theory as a student researcher

Existing assets: Community Library and Information Center

3d World book collection (4000 vols.)

Community tech center

Posters, sculpture and art, children’s books

Archives: Newsletters, fliers, letters, pamphlets

Never been cataloged

From collections to a library Students & volunteers become

library staff Cataloging Reference

Policies Mission statement Collection policies

Services and programs Family reading night Web gallery for posters

Management Grant-writing, publicity

Cataloging Chose metadata/fields

Flexible-can use for all collections

Meet current standards

Vocabulary and description from community

Not all that hard!

Created own catalog as iLab software

Spring 2005 cataloging work

Reviewed the original goals methodology from 2003 http://leep.lis.uiuc.edu/publish/kmangel/450/paseo.html

Revised the Paseo Boricua Catalog Manual (created first in 2004) Based on knowledge of cataloging from our

courses Tried to make each step sensible to anyone as a

beginner cataloger

Developed a simple system for call numbers

Documenting and sharing our cataloging processes

Uploaded instructions to the Paseo Boricua Community Library Project inquiry lab, so that other catalogers can get access:

http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/pbcl/

Instructions for ordering the PRCC bookshelves

Instructions for assigning PRCC call numbers

Instructions for adding new entries to the PRCC web catalog

Library project collaborators in Paseo Boricua - Thanks!

José E. López, Alejandro Molina – Original invitation and ideas (2003)

Alejandro Molina, Laura R. Johnson, Mayra Hernandez, Robin Daverso, and the Street Academy students (2004)

Yarimar Bonilla – next steps with the library project and further activities involving the youth in learning (2005)

Next steps in the library project (Summer 2005 and beyond) One or two school library work days

A mini course or workshop for youth leadership training Training in cataloging Developing a proposal for cataloging and library

club

Transfer our cataloging tools and processes to neighborhood activists for further development

Conclusion: library developmentas community inquiry

Neighborhood organizations, libraries, universities join together as a community of inquiry

Everyone learns librarianship and community development together

Co-designers of iLab software: developed free and simple online catalog that others can use

Conclusion: library developmentas community inquiry

Every individual must be consulted in such a way, actively not passively, that he himself becomes a part of the process of authority.

Dewey, Democracy & Education

Resources

Bishop, et al. (2004). Supporting community inquiry with digital resources. Journal of Digital Information, 5(3). http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v05/i03/Bishop/

Bishop, A. P., & Molina, A. (2004). Felicitaciones, Paseo Boricua! (cover story in the magazine Voice of Youth Activists) http://www.voya.com

Bishop, A. P., Bazzell, I., Mehra, B., & Smith, C. (2001). Afya: Social and digital technologies that reach across the digital divide. First Monday, 6(4). http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_4/bishop/index.html

Chivhanga, B. M. (2003). Web knitter's manual - A people approach to produce web content. London.

http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~ck521/papwec/

Resources

Elshtain, J. B. (Ed.) (2002). The Jane Addams reader. NY: Basic Books.

Greenwood, D. J., & Levin, M. (1998.) Introduction to action research: Social research for social change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hickman, L. A. (1990). John Dewey's pragmatic technology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. (1999). Returning to our roots: The engaged institution. Washington, DC: Nat’l Assn. Of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.

Kennedy, D. (1996). Forming communities of inquiry in early childhood classrooms. Early Child Development and Care, 120(1), 1-15.

Resources

Menand, L. (2001). The metaphysical club. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Reardon, K. M. (1998). Participatory action research as service learning. In R. A. Rhoads and J. P. F. Howard, eds., Academic service learning: A pedagogy of action and reflection (pp. 57-64). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. NY: Basic Books.

Stanfield, J. H. (1999). Slipping through the front door: Relevant social scientific evaluation in the People of Color Century. American Journal of Evaluation, 20(3), 415-431,

Whitmore, E. (ed.). (1998). Understanding and practicing participatory evaluation. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Community Informatics: players

CIRN (Community Informatics Research Network)

http://www.ciresearch.net/index.htm

Association for Community Networking http://www.afcn.org

CTCNet (Community Tech Centers Network)

http://www.ctcnet.org/

Journal of Community Informatics

http://ci-journal.net/index.php

Living and learning together:“pragmatic technology”

The common language notion of how to design tools to meet real human needs, accommodate to users, and situations

A conception of design from pragmatist theory, which sees technologies as developed within a community of inquiry and embodying both means of action and forms of understanding. Technology is an end result of, as well as a means to accomplish, community work.

Technology = library call number system, project website, digital library catalog, ways of collaborating

The challenge: creating technologies that help communities work

How do actual communities work to address their problems?

What theory adequately accounts for the complexity and diversity of (distributed) collective practice?

What tools are needed to mediate work on concrete tasks within communities?

What is the most effective process for developing shared capacity in the form of knowledge, skills, & tools?