Abstracts
Abstract
Recently community engagement has emerged as a priority among universities, offering new opportunities for their libraries. A literature scan of community-centred work in libraries reveals diverse examples but a lack of conceptual definitions or frameworks to help practitioners advance their work for social impact. We present a case study using the Carnegie Foundation definition of community engagement and apply two conceptual frameworks: living lab constructs and boundary spanning theory. The living lab constructs provide a framework to describe an innovation process that addresses a social challenge, experiments with specific actions for change, and defines specific returns or social impact. Boundary spanning theory provides a framework to help university leaders conceptualize linkages to community in ways that account for institutional complexity and foster reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationships with community partners. We use these two frameworks to describe the Making Research Accessible initiative which has three goals: i) increase the accessibility and impact of research done in the community; ii) increase the availability to researchers of community-generated research; iii) create opportunities for community and university members to share information and learn from each other. From the case study, we summarize what we have learned about community engagement to be of general relevance to library practitioners.
Keywords:
- community engagement,
- living labs,
- open access,
- boundary spanning,
- academic libraries,
- technical innovations,
- marginalized communities,
- scholarly communication
Résumé
Récemment, la participation communautaire est devenue une priorité importante au sein de plusieurs universités offrant de nouvelles possibilités pour les bibliothèques. Un aperçu de la littérature sur le travail axé sur la communauté dans les bibliothèques révèle plusieurs exemples diversifiés mais aussi un manque de définitions et de cadres conceptuels pour aider les praticiens dans leur travail visant un impact social. Nous présentons une étude de cas en se servant de la définition de la participation communautaire de la Carnegie Foundation et en appliquant deux cadres conceptuels : l’approche du laboratoire vivant et la théorie du passage de frontière (« boundary spanning »). Le concept du laboratoire vivant fournit un cadre pour décrire le processus d’innovation qui aborde un défi social, qui expérimente avec des actions spécifiques pour le changement et qui définit des retours spécifiques ou un impact social. La théorie du passage de frontière (« boundary spanning ») fournit un cadre pour aider les dirigeants d’universités à conceptualiser les liens avec la communauté de manière à tenir compte de la complexité institutionnelle et à favoriser des relations réciproques et mutuellement bénéfiques avec les partenaires communautaires. Nous utilisons ces deux cadres pour décrire l’initiative « Making Research Accessible » et ses trois buts : i) accroître la disponibilité et l’impact de la recherche menée dans la communauté; ii) accroître la disponibilité des chercheurs menant la recherche dans la communauté; et iii) créer des occasions pour que les gens de la communauté et de l’université puissent partager de l’information et apprendre les uns des autres. À partir de l’étude de cas, nous rassemblons ce que nous avons appris au sujet de l’engagement communautaire qui peut être d’une pertinence générale pour les praticiens des bibliothèques.
Mots-clés :
- engagement communautaire,
- laboratoire vivant,
- libre accès,
- délimitation des frontières,
- bibliothèques universitaires,
- innovations techniques,
- communautés marginalisées,
- communication savante
Appendices
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