Experience Community Informatics

LIS451: Students helping to build a community computer lab in Paseo Boricua

A bold venture in archival collection, CIMA (Community Informatics Multimedia Archive) immerses visitors in the sights and sounds of innovative and compelling community-driven university projects and collaborations. ‡ more

Featured Video

Other Heroes by Damien Duffy

Damian Duffy: Other Heroes

A showcase of the work of talented African American comics artists, a consideration of African American characters in comics, and a meditation on racial representation in sequential art, Other Heroes is an exhibition about the idea of race as presented in and through comics and graphic novels. Curated with assistance from Art and Design Professor John Jennings, the exhibition duly reflects Damian Duffy’s drive to bring together art, community, social justice, and informatics. A vibrant and virtuous ensemble of African American comics creators, characters, and thought-provoking archetypes, Other Heroes is the ever evolving result of Damian Duffy's drive to bring together art, community, social justice and informatics. Featuring significant displays of work by Black comic (graphic novel) artists, the show seeks to diversify the medium, as well as critically question traditional racial representation in media.

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Featured Photo Galleries

  • Paseo Boricua Artist presentation
  • ESLARP LIS 451
  • Community Tech Training
  • Community as Classroom

Project Spotlight

Community Engagement Mini-Documentary

  • introduction
  • WRFU
  • Prairienet computer and internet training
  • Cunningham Children's Home
  • Books 2 Prisoners
  • Outro

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[ or watch the whole video ]

See a lively half hour documentary constructed of a series of videos capturing many elements of the different community engagement projects taken on by students in Ann Bishop’s Fall 2008 LIS490CE class. Travel with the narrator and producer, Jeff Ginger, as he visits several major community informatics initiative partner sites, including the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center's Books to Prisoners and WRFU Radio Station as well as the Urbana-based Cunningham Children's Home. The feature also includes a spot on the Prairienet Computer and Internet Training Program and an introduction to all of the projects from the class. If you're looking to get an idea of what CI is all about, this should be one of your first stops.

These videos were meshed together in order to both inform and showcase—each video includes information about:

  • The students conducting the project
  • The history of the community organization or partner
  • What drew the students to the project and what they found interesting
  • Some shots of what the students actually did during their project
  • The relationship it has to library science and/or community informatics
  • How future volunteers might pick up where they left off or get involved