I recently attended a workshop about how we can deepen students' reflections, which was led by one of Wright State's experienced service-learning instructors, Karen Hayes.  I came away with a new reflection question to include in my arsenal.  In fact, I love this question so much that it may never be removed from my arsenal.  The question was posed by my colleague, Stephanie Dickey, in our small group discussion during the workshop.  She suggested that we should challenge students to think about their role in relation to the problem or issue addressed by any servic

The new issue of LOEX Quarterly is out, and my article is finally published!  Thank you, Brad Seitz, Managing Editor, for your patience and guidance while I was working on this article.  Part II will be published in the next issue. Barry, M. (2011).  Librarians as Partners in Service-Learning Courses (Part I).  LOEX Quarterly: 38(1), Article 5. Check it out if your library belongs to LOEX!

This summer, I'm working on several projects that will support several service-learning courses with which I will l partner beginning fall semester.  As I've said many times over, service-learning students and community partners often need local or otherwise unique data - outside of the usual "find some scholarly articles" kind of assignments.

Those of you familiar with the service-learning literature have likely seen the name Dr.

Last week, hundreds of instruction librarians gathered in Columbus, Ohio for the biggest LOEX conference ever.  I was thrilled that the planning committee included a presentation about service-learning in the program.  Chris Sweet, Information Literacy Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University, presented a case study of a course with which he was involved at his institution.  He was embedded in an environmental studies senior seminar that empl

The ethic of inefficiency is a phrase that we discussed on our spring break trip quite a bit.  It's hard to define in concrete terms.

As you may know, I have been an embedded librarian for a course this quarter:  Social and environmental sustainability in Appalachia.  We leave tomorrow morning for our service trip to Athens County in southeast Ohio.

We made it!  Our students learned some crucial information literacy skills, helped solve a community problem (illiteracy) and turned in a pretty solid research portfolio to Project READ.  Yesterday, we met one final time this quarter to reflect as a group, along with Becky Garvin, Director of Project READ and Cathy Sayer, Director of Service-Learning at Wright State University.  In preparation for this reflection, the students write responses to 4 or 5 reflection prompts.  Then we discuss as a group what they have learned about information literacy, about themselve

I am very fortunate to have the opportunity this week to travel with the Social and Environmental Sustainability in Appalachia (UH 202-203) course to southeastern Ohio (Athens County).  We are learning a ton and making lots of new friends as we complete social and environmental projects in the community.

Earlier this week, I attended a book discussion about Dan Butin's book "Service-Learning in theory and practice:  The future of community engagement in higher education." One of the main arguments Butin makes is that service-learning should have a discipline-based home in the academy.  He compares it to how feminism, which began as a social movement, became women's studies within the academy. Of course, this leads to hundreds of questions.  What would this look like?  Would the focus be on citizenship in our democracy? or community studies?