Community Informatics & I

Identity, Intersections, Growth and More

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/joci.v20i2.5938

Keywords:

community informatics, identity, intersections, professional growth

Abstract

In this essay, inspired by the timeliness of our chronologically shared symbolic birth (the journal’s inaugural issue and my professional career as a faculty member) I briefly discuss and critically analyze the influence of community informatics upon my professional journey, in our mutual symbiotic growth, intersections and divergences. I also share my insights and reflections of the process that might influence readers’ own thinking about the past, present, and future of community informatics and its identity, intersections, growth, and more. This opportune moment allows me to draw upon intersections with my current work in social justice and inclusion advocacy and trace my privileged positionality to the “nurturing intellectual embrace” of community informatics that opened many proverbial doors and areas of impact over the years. In the process, I use evidence chronicled in my current curriculum vita that serves as a roadmap providing documentation “on the record” of milestones and activities referenced along the journey as I also develop ponderings of the past, current, and future emergence and growth of community informatics. In tracing key directions of growth through my own lens of experience and reality with community informatics shows how broader aspects in the larger society, academic world, and information field have strongly curtailed its emergence and adoption. Considering such factors directly might be helpful to shape its positive placement and positionality moving into the future. 

Author Biography

Bharat Mehra, University of Alabama

Bharat Mehra is EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. His research focuses on diversity and social justice in library and information science and community informatics or the use of information and communication technologies to empower minority and underserved populations to make meaningful changes in their everyday lives. Over the past 25 years, he has applied action research to nurture a just society while collaborating with racial/ethnic groups, international diaspora, sexual minorities, rural communities, low-income families, small businesses, and others, to represent their experiences and perspectives in the design of culturally appropriate, community-based information systems and services. Dr. Mehra primarily teaches courses on social justice and inclusion advocacy, diversity and inclusive leadership in information organizations, outreach services to diverse populations, community-engaged scholarship, public library management, collection development, and grant development for information professionals. Homepage: https://bmehra.people.ua.edu.

Downloads

Published

2024-10-27

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 2 (2024)

Section

Points of View