By J.I. Abbot
I grew up in libraries—that’s a long story for another day—and also worked in libraries from public ones to two major university library archives. So I have always viewed librarians as my fellow educators—as well as some of my greatest mentors.
Further, the Action Humanities initiative is grateful to have teamed up on several occasions with our College Library / (Library Instructional Technology—LIT), both via joint recommendations of empowering library holdings on the HiA / AH blog and the rollout of the OED Online project (among other efforts). Now, AH is grateful to have LIT as a formal partner in its formal community-building and ERGO / retention efforts. Longtime LIT reference librarian—and a 2012 winner of the highly esteemed national “I Love My Librarian” award (sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and New York Public Library)—Rachel Hyland inspired me with a metaphor she says is being invoked a lot these days to refer to academic and research libraries as “The Front Porch” of a given institution of higher education.
That fitting image doesn’t at all surprise me; in my research and meetings recently with a range of AH’s partners, the topic of the large 2017 study “The impact of Information Literacy Instruction on Student Success,” has come up a few times. That key study, conducted by Joni Blake, Melissa Bowles-Terry et al., yielded the crucial finding that retention, GPA, and successful completion of credit hours were higher in students who had library instruction in information literacy. Empowering libraries (in particular, our LIT) and helping establish the library as a more sought-after hub promises an improved student bond with the college—what many retention experts call “connection”—and hence overall likely enhanced enrollment, retention, course success, graduation, and lifelong skills and habits.
Stay tuned to this new regular AH blog section—“From The Front Porch”—for more news and info on “Paying It Forward @ the Library: The Library-College Partnership for Community Empowerment.” AH’s formal project expressly created to build community-based partnerships.
There is an element to this work in my own backstory: my own modest work in the early 2000s as an employee of a locally-based, globally networked NGO at the heart of leading Participatory Action Research (PAR) was a key inspiration for both much of my instructional model and the Action Humanities initiative itself. PAR is auspiciously also at the core of the equity work the College is doing with such organizations as Achieving the Dream, so in general, the power and promise of community partnerships and community-based research is fostering rich capacity building at the College overall these days, and AH is honored to have a modest role in such community-empowering efforts and discussions.
Contact Prof. J.I. Abbot at jabbot@tunxis.edu or (860) 249-1724 to learn more about this developing project.
Photo: J.I. Abbot, November 2016.
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