Empowering Community Voices

To support our communities is to support the students, faculty, and staff who live there; the politics, society, and environment upon which our campus is situated; the potential of our future students; and an empowered, educated, and engaged populace. Towards that goal, in 2015, the Cal Poly Humboldt Library opened their institutional repository and library publishing services to the community. In the ten years since, the library has added three online community collections and experienced a steady growth of community publications across the first six years before leveling out at 10-15 publications annually. These community engagements have brought a wide range of benefits to the campus and community, including: • scholarly communications work for student assistants, advancing their skills, engagement, and post-graduation opportunities • expanded educational programming and opportunities to students across campus • greater collaboration between the university with the community • fundraising and marketing for both the community and the university • raised awareness to local environmental and social justice issues This presentation will detail the operations of the program; the benefits to the community, students, and university; and the resources expected to sustain a community publishing service.