Promoting Educational and Community Engagement with Institutional Repository Content

Room B

The breadth of contemporary institutional repositories provides potential to reach beyond higher education scholarly dialogue and into the wider community. This presentation will discuss a recent Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Education doctoral externship that examined VCU's institutional repository for potential high school curriculum expansion and reuse. An area of primary focus was educational uses for the VCU Libraries Gender-Inclusive Library Workgroup Report. A lesson plan was designed to promote discussion around gender-neutral spaces and policies, and connections were made between current events in Virginia schools that would encourage students to think thoughtfully and critically about the power of language and policy in the news, in schools, and in their daily lives. A second lesson plan was developed that highlighted the repository and other content that focused on race, regionalism, monuments, and Richmond's history relating to those topics. Networking with local educational stakeholders was also cultivated as part of the externship. In addition to discussing the specific project, the presenters will address how this fits into the larger context of institutional repository mission, impact, allies, and structure.