Community Inquiry Laboratories

Bertram (Chip) Bruce

Library & Information Science
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Community Inquiry

• collaborative action to create knowledge and technology connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences;
• the development of models of engagement that are just, democratic, participatory, and open-ended;
• the integration of theory and practice in an experimental and critical manner.

Community Inquiry Laboratory

a place where members of a community come together to develop shared capacity and work on common problems; http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu

Community Inquiry Laboratory

a place where members of a community come together to develop shared capacity and work on common problems; http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu

iLabs bricks

• Communication — bulletin board, listserv, address book, timeline, syllabus tool, signup sheet, bookmarks, blog, ...
• Content — document center, digital library, cataloguer, quotes database, image gallery, wiki, ...
• Collaboration — lab notebook, remote instrumentation, data aggregation & visualization, ...
• System — authentication, user and group profiles, community awareness, language packs, ...

Collaboration tools

Opening the process

Shift towards formal and distributed

Aspects of CIL's

• "Community" emphasizes support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences.
• "Inquiry" points to support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement.
• "Laboratory" indicates a space and resources to bring theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner.

Credits

This slide show was created and presented using a standards-based template (i.e., no Powerpoint) developed by Eric Meyer.