Martin B. Wolske: a community-minded network thinker providing a real-life platform for students.(LJ TEACHING AWARD 2011)

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Martin B. Wolske and his students do their learning and teaching with the people who live in marginalized and underserved communities. Wolske, research scientist and adjunct lecturer at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (GSLIS), teaches the introduction to Networked Information Systems class. Students in the course begin to understand how the use and application of technology reflect our society, and as Wolske puts it "what is encountered when you try to use that technology in communities already dismissed by that society."

The course has developed in tandem with Wolske's growing involvement with the University's Community Informatics Initiative (CII), a program that aims to empower marginalized communities in Illinois through access to net worked information, computer technology, and resources.

Rumyana Hristova, in her second year as a student at GS-LIS, was chosen by fellow students Anna Coats, Stacey Snyder, Sayer Jackson, and Zachary Matthews, all of whom took the course last spring, to write their group nomination of Wolske for the LJ Teaching Award.

"The work with the community has served as a real-life platform for introducing us to the core values, philosophy and principles of public librarianship and community work: collaboration, equality, intellectual freedom, tolerance, respect for difference, team work, comradeship, leadership, …