Mission and Purpose:

The Community Information Corps (CIC) Student Group draws upon the fundamental concepts of community informatics in order to facilitate student engagement and activity outside the classroom. Through student-industry discussion, community involvement and outreach, and alumni and inter-school connections the CIC Student Group both learns from its surrounding knowledge base and presents its ideas and efforts to the community.

Governing structure:

While maintaining a more informal and open planning and organizational structure, the CIC Student Group will delegate specific responsibilities, such as financial and meeting management, to designated individuals. The CIC Student Group future events and scope are developed by a planning committee consisting of a wide group of interested parties including CIC Student Group members, CIC faculty advisors, other interested faculty, interested alumni, and other i-School interested parties.

Membership:

Membership is open to all current and previous graduate and doctoral students within the School of Information, with special requests from students outside SI being considered on a case-by-case basis.

From the CIC site:

The Community Information Corps provides students with readings, lectures, practical engagement service opportunities, research projects and social and professional networking connections to launch them into careers as public interest information professionals - "public informationists." Upon completion of their studies, many CIC graduates typically work for nonprofit organizations, public libraries, government agencies, and museums, or they engage in entrepreneurial social ventures. CIC benefits from a growing Alumni Network.

The mission of the Community Information Corps is to prepare information professionals -- through academic inquiry, practical engagement and professional development -- for careers in community and public information work.

There are a handful of fundamental concepts about community and the public good that we study in the Community Information Corps (CIC) Seminar at the School of Information (SI). These key concepts give students a conceptual lens for reflecting on the details of project activity and policy developments that they observe and encounter. They also create a point of common knowledge and a lingua franca with which students can interact and share ideas.

CIC Fundamental Concepts

Public Goods and Common Pool Resources
More formally, a public good is non-excludable, so that everyone has access to it, and non-rival, so that use by some people does not reduce the value of the good to others.

The notions of public goods and common pool resources are critical to community informationists for two reasons. First, information itself is sometimes thought of as a public good, since it is relatively inexpensive to distribute once it is created. Second, many of the solutions to problems of underproduction of public goods and overconsumption of common pool resources involve organizing information flows. By reducing certain production and transaction costs or making people’s contributions more visible, people may be induced to produce more public goods.

Social Capital
Social capital is an umbrella term that refers to all kinds of productive resources that inhere in social relations. A group of people that trusts each other can accomplish more than one that does not. For individuals, participation in communities leads to social ties, learning of norms, and a sense of belonging. An awareness of the power of social capital and how it develops is important to anyone who will be doing community or public interest work.

Inequality, Diversity, Identity and Power
The “digital divide” is a term that has been used to refer to inequalities in ability to make effective use of those technologies. Increasingly, access to economic, political, and social rewards in society depend on technology access and skills. Thus, the digital divide is indeed a problem of public Efforts to bridge the digital divide often involve professionals or other privileged members of society working in communities where people are predominantly of a different race or class. Complex phenomena of identity and power play out in these relationships, and it is valuable for professionals to have some tools for reflecting on their roles.

Citizenship and Democracy
Citizens should govern themselves’ is the lofty ideal of democracy. Here, the term ‘citizen’ refers not to the people carrying passports of a particular country but more broadly to anyone exercising their proper role in self-governance. But there are many conceptions of the proper roles of citizens. In one view, the ideal role of citizens is to choose privately, by voting, among representatives or directly among policy alternatives placed on a ballot. In another, the ideal role of citizens is to deliberate publicly about policy alternatives. A third conception places citizens in production roles, especially producing public goods. A fourth conception values voluntary membership in associations that can make moral claims on members but have limited means of enforcing those claims. All but the first of these conceptions of democracy allows for a transformative effect of participation in public life.

Non-profit Sector and Philanthropy
The non-profit sector is sometimes called the independent, voluntary, civil society or third sector (after the business and government sectors). It creates an arena for privately chosen action that claims to be for the common good. Due to shifting cultural norms and public policies, this sector faces continual pressures to evolve, and it is useful for community informationists to understand both the history and the current trends.