When Your Community of Practice becomes a Community of Support
Type of Presentation
Individual paper/presentation
Conference Strand
Diversity and Inclusion
Target Audience
Higher Education
Second Target Audience
Higher Education
Location
Session 7 Papers
Relevance
Information literacy instruction librarians often form communities of practice to inform our knowledge and improve our practice of information literacy skills. This presentation will be discussing a CoP that became not just solutions based, but also support based, and incorporated all library workers, not just instruction librarians.
Proposal
Forming a community of practice can be an inspirational salve for instruction librarians looking to enhance their teaching. A community of practice (CoP) is meant to foster both sharing and learning opportunities, and can invigorate and infuse teaching librarians with a new approach to our shared pedagogy and teaching skills.
In the summer of 2022, new to the profession and mid-career librarians joined a CoP around the book Dear Data. Their goal became to put into practice inspiration derived from the book, particularly for teaching and learning, such as data visualization lesson plans, outreach programming around data initiatives, and library-focused public facing programming that involved all library workers, not just professional librarians.
While the CoP did benefit innovative instruction initiatives, a side-effect that was not apparent initially was the community of support it created. In this presentation, we will discuss the opportunities the CoP created for the practitioners, particularly how we used data to inform our assumptions about our classes, our roles, and each other, and to inform our practice with support, particularly support for all library workers. We will share lesson plans, outreach programming ideas, and how our practice led to a more inclusive working community of practice.
Learning Outcomes: Participants will…
-
Understand the prevalence of exclusion and separation between library faculty and staff across the profession
-
Develop an appreciation and be inspired to create their own inclusive working communities of practice
-
Identify opportunities for programming that uses data visualization across their organization
Presentation Description
In the summer of 2022, new to the profession and mid-career librarians joined a CoP around the book Dear Data. Initially, their goal was to put into practice inspiration derived from the book, particularly for teaching and learning, but instead became focused on creating and sustaining a more inclusive and supportive workplace of community.
Keywords
community of practice support exclusion division library staff data visualization
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Cumbo, Piper L., "When Your Community of Practice becomes a Community of Support" (2023). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 29.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2023/2023/29
When Your Community of Practice becomes a Community of Support
Session 7 Papers
Forming a community of practice can be an inspirational salve for instruction librarians looking to enhance their teaching. A community of practice (CoP) is meant to foster both sharing and learning opportunities, and can invigorate and infuse teaching librarians with a new approach to our shared pedagogy and teaching skills.
In the summer of 2022, new to the profession and mid-career librarians joined a CoP around the book Dear Data. Their goal became to put into practice inspiration derived from the book, particularly for teaching and learning, such as data visualization lesson plans, outreach programming around data initiatives, and library-focused public facing programming that involved all library workers, not just professional librarians.
While the CoP did benefit innovative instruction initiatives, a side-effect that was not apparent initially was the community of support it created. In this presentation, we will discuss the opportunities the CoP created for the practitioners, particularly how we used data to inform our assumptions about our classes, our roles, and each other, and to inform our practice with support, particularly support for all library workers. We will share lesson plans, outreach programming ideas, and how our practice led to a more inclusive working community of practice.
Learning Outcomes: Participants will…
-
Understand the prevalence of exclusion and separation between library faculty and staff across the profession
-
Develop an appreciation and be inspired to create their own inclusive working communities of practice
-
Identify opportunities for programming that uses data visualization across their organization
