Collaborations between Public Library Educators and Practitioners to Apply a Theory of Change and Promote Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in the American South
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2024.1654Keywords:
American South, civic engagement, collaborations, racial justice, theory of changeAbstract
The Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Leadership Grants for Libraries program recently awarded a $332,939 grant titled “Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries” (RJ@PL) to the University of Alabama and the Chicago State University. The grant’s purpose is to build the capabilities of public librarians and selected communities to promote civic engagement for racial justice and achieve the following objectives: 1) Assessment of public library efforts to advance racial justice (externally and internally); 2) Operationalization of strategic participatory planning process using a theory of change to develop roadmaps and action plans that further racial justice in select community domains (economy, education, health, etc.); 3) Implementation of key strategic components of information-based offerings in six/eight library settings. This paper reports ongoing collaboration to further the three design components via applying a theory of change for an intended impact of increased community wellbeing resulting from improved racial climate.
References
Cooper, William J., Jr., and Thomas E. Terrill. (2009). The American South: A History (4th ed.). Vol. 2. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Coward, C., McClay, C., and Garrido, M. (2018). Public Libraries as Platforms for Civic Engagement. Seattle: Technology & Social Change Group, University of Washington Information School.
Escott, P., Goldfield, D., McMillen, S. G., and Turner, E. H. (1999). The New South. Major Problems in the History of the American South: Documents and Essays (2nd ed.). Vol. 2. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Graham, L. R., and Zentella, A. N. (2010). Language in the U. S. Census: Problems and Progress. In Focus. Anthropology News 51 (5), 6.
Harvey, P. (2016). Christianity and Race in the American South: A History. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Kranich, N. (2012). Libraries and Civic Engagement. Rutgers University Community Repository, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3VX0DWS.
Mehra, B., Bishop, B. W., and Partee II, R. P. (2016). Information Science Professionals as Community Action Researchers to Further the Role of Rural Public Libraries in Small Business Economic Development: A Case Study of Tennessee. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 40(4), 289-299. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/649271.
Mehra, B., Black, K., Jaber, B., and Williams-Cockfield, K. C. (2023). A Logic Model Using Theory of Change Applied in Grant Development of Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries: Implications for LIS Education (poster abstract). Proceedings of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) 2023: Bridge the Gap: Teaching, Learning, Practice, & Competencies, Milwaukee, WI, October 2-5, 2023.
Mehra, B., Black, K., Singh, V., and Nolt, J. (2011). Collaboration between LIS Education and Rural Libraries in the Southern and Central Appalachia: Improving Librarian Technology Literacy and Management Training [Brief Communications and Research In Progress]. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 52(3), 238-247.
Mehra, B., Black, K., Williams-Cockfield, K. C., and Jaber, B. S. (forthcoming). “Why Should We Care?”: Motivations of Public Librarians in the American South to Expand Civic Engagement for Racial Justice (short paper). Proceedings of the 87th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (Putting People First: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Care in Information Research and Practice), Calgary, Alberta, Canada, October 25-29, 2024.
Mehra, B., and Gray, L. (2020). An “Owning Up” of White-IST Trends in LIS to Further Real Transformations. Library Quarterly 90 (2), 189-239. https://doi.org/10.1086/707674.
Mehra, B., Sikes, E. S., and Singh, V. (2020). Scenarios of Technology Use to Promote Community Engagement: Overcoming Marginalization and Bridging Digital Divides in the Southern and Central Appalachian Rural Libraries. Information Processing & Management 57 (3). Article 102129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2019.102129.
Ray, C. (2003). Southern Heritage on Display: Public Ritual and Ethnic Diversity within Southern Regionalism. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.
Reinholz, D. L., and Andrews, T. C. (2020). Change Theory and Theory of Change: What’s the Difference Anyway? International Journal of STEM Education 7 (1), 2. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-020-0202-3.
RJ@PL. (n.d.). Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries (RJ@PL). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama. http://civicengagement4racialjustice.ua.edu.
Singh, R. (2020). Promoting Civic Engagement through Cultivating Culturally Competent Self-Reflexive Information Professionals. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association 69(3), 302-315.
Together Team. (2023, August 22). 4 Types of Collaboration Styles to Use in the Workplace | Together Mentoring Software. https://www.togetherplatform.com/blog/4-types-of-collaboration-styles-to-use-in-the-workplace.
United States Census Bureau. (2019). Geography: Regions. Washington, DC: United States Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/webatlas/regions.html.
Weiss, C. H. (1995) Nothing as Practical as Good Theory. New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, Contexts. Vol. 1. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from http://www.aspenroundtable.org/vol1/weiss.htm.
Wood, D. J., and Gray, B. (1991). Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27(2), 139-162. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886391272001.
Woodman, H. D. (1979). The Old South: Global and Local Perspectives on Power, Politics, and Ideology. Civil War History 25 (4), 339–351. https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh.1979.0036.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Bharat Mehra, Kimberly Black, Baheya S. Jaber, Kauri C. Williams-Cockfield
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.