Community Wealth Building LibGuide

After a year of work, I’m pleased to announce the release of our Community Wealth Building (CWB) LibGuide (Library Guide).

During my 2025-2026 research leave, I had the pleasure of working with the leadership of the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) in Montgomery County, Maryland. A primary objective of this placement was to help USG identify ways to advance its CWB strategic goal (below). [As an aside, USG is perhaps the only academic institution in the world – please correct me if I’m wrong – that has made advancing CWB a central part of its strategic mission. Other institutions that have centers, courses, or offices advancing CWB include the University of Central Lancashire, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Birmingham, Washington University in St. Louis, New York University (course), Metropolitan State University, and University of Maryland, Baltimore, among others.]

Given USG’s strategic commitment to CWB, we decided that creating a resource on the topic for faculty, students, and partners would be essential to advancing the idea. The initial plan was to write an academic scoping review, but after working with the Priddy Library we decided that turning the scoping review into a library guide (LibGiude) would be more useful in the near term. The scoping review paper will come later.

During the development of the LibGiude, we were fortunate to engage with members of The Democracy Collaborative’s Global Academic Research Network (GARN) who provided advice on how to structure the content for ease of access. One outcome of this engagement has been the creation of CWB case study pages documenting what has been happening in Cleveland (US), Preston (UK), Scotland (that just passed the first national CBW law), the UK (in general), and Northern Ireland. We are also tracking the emergent literature on CWB in Chicago and Richmond. In addition, the LibGuide captures the government entities, place-based organizations, and anchor collaboratives working to advance CWB. Please let me know who we have missed.

The CWB LibGiude is a live site and will be updated as new content is published and from feedback we receive from CWB academics and actors.

Finally, we decided to include an embedded spreadsheet that contains all of the material we have identified. This spreadsheet will be continually updated and can be downloaded by anyone interested in reading broadly on the topic.

We (Franklin Ofsthun, Jaini Jogani, Sarah McKinley, and I) hope the CWB LibGuide is of value and would be happy to engage with anyone interested in learning more about the topic and website.

Future of Library Space + Open Textbooks

This afternoon I attended the fourth meeting of the Dean’s Advisory Committee (DAC) for University Libraries at Virginia Tech. During this session the DAC members discussed the future of library spaces (focusing mainly on physical environments) and the type of data/information discovery and user experiences that could support research and teaching. What is evident from these discussions is the significant transformations that are underway in libraries around the world and specifically at Virginia Tech. The library experience in the coming decade is likely to be radically different – both from a physical and virtual environment perspective – to what it was a decade ago.

During the meeting, David Ernst (University of Minnesota) and Anita Walz (Virginia Tech) provided an informative discussion on the growing field of Open Textbooks. The slideshow below includes a number of images from their presentation, which outline the need for open textbooks.

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DAC Discussion of Research and Teaching

During the third meeting of the Dean’s Advisory Committee (DAC) for the University Libraries this morning, VT faculty and staff engaged in a productive discussion of research and teaching practices at the university. The focus of the conversation was on how university libraries could support emergent trends in areas such as the measurement of research impact, the communication of scholarly material, and teaching/learning environments. The (slightly blurred) images below (taken through Glass) capture the main questions the working groups were asked to explore during the 1.5 hour session.

For me, the value of the DAC meetings is the exposure I have to the broad variety of research and teaching approaches that are used by faculty at VT. A key challenge facing the university (and especially university libraries) is how to support innovative approaches while ensuring the traditional models of research, teaching, and engagement are supported.

A lingering question I have is how to advance VT’s “hands on, minds on” vision via the platforms I use to support my classes. My use of Google Glass and Apps has enabled the fluid sharing of information among class participants (and with the public in some cases). It is also allowing me to provide personalized (and private) video feedback on assignments to students via YouTube. The deeper question is whether or how this platform can help me advance the “hands on, minds on” vision. In some courses it can be difficult to find ways to provide hands on experience – e.g., think about international development courses where it is not feasible to take students overseas – but technology can be leveraged to close the distance gap. This evening I plan to take part in a Twitter conversation with VT students and the author of the Crisis Caravan (see below). Such opportunities provide new ways for students to engage with professionals and the general public. While not “hands on” in the traditional sense, there are certainly aspects of this engagement process that require students to demonstrate their social media skills (=hands on) and mastery of the subject matter (=minds on).