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With increasingly precarious work contracts, more remote work, and additional flexibility in the timing of the workday, the new world of work is creating both relational opportunities and relational challenges for modern workers. In this chapter, we pair recent research on human thriving with trends we observe in organizations' efforts to create and maintain a sense of community. Key in these efforts is a new kind of built environment – the coworking space – which brings together remote and independent workers and, increasingly, traditional employees as well. We show that in curating community, or perhaps even the possibility of community, coworking spaces may support the interpersonal learning and vitality that help workers to thrive.

A growing body of literature suggests that creating a just sustainable society will require reorganizing economic arrangements and, in particular, rethinking work. Previous studies have recognized alternative organizations, such as cooperatives and intentional communities, as sites for building more democratic, sustainable models of work. This study contributes a description and analysis of work and sustainability at Twin Oaks Intentional Community, an 80-person income- and resource-sharing commune in Louisa, Virginia. Some measures show that Twin Oaks members live more sustainably in terms of energy consumption than the average US resident. In this article, I investigate the relationship between sustainability and work at Twin Oaks. I find that sustainable work is linked to the following key principles: broadening definitions of work, prioritizing community well-being, and democratizing decision making. In doing so, I contribute to previous literature on work, sustainability, and alternative organizations by suggesting that (1) sustainability in intentional communities is deeply intertwined with systems of work; (2) broadening definitions of work to include social reproductive labour contributes to sustainability; and (3) the democratization of work can further goals of sustainability.

Purpose – At the turn of the 21st century, popular claimsmakers made a series of claims about the benefits of volunteer work for youth: that volunteering would reduce youthful self-absorption with peer groups, introduce youth to people different from themselves, foster macro-level understandings of social problems, and connect youth to the community. This article examines youths’ experiences of volunteer work in order to determine which claims are realized and how.

Methodology/approach – I conducted in-depth interviews with 45 youth, aged 15–23, who engaged in volunteer work with a wide variety of organizations.

Findings – Youth did not always realize these claims and when they did, many did so through mechanisms different than those suggested by popular claimsmakers.

Research limitations/implications – Because this is an exploratory study which uses a purposive sample, the findings provide direction for future researchers to more fully investigate how youth realize the benefits of volunteering and under what conditions.

Practical implications – In order to make volunteering a valuable experience for as many youth as possible, volunteer coordinators need to be cautious of uncritically absorbing public claims.

Originality/value of paper – Youth speak for themselves about the value of volunteering and challenge popular claims made about youth and volunteerism.

A lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) community’s hunger for its history became an arena for creative, unorthodox work involving a library and information science (LIS) educator, librarians and other educators, and even a university library. The result was fundamentally collaborative, involving community and educational organizations; all inspired by social responsibility and community engagement goals, some of which can be found in a university mission statement. The story of these individuals and organizations begins with a drive toward a greater awareness of LGBTQ+ history, a goal that led to creating inclusive high school history curricula. Along the way, these efforts generated information resources such as a community-generated database, a temporary history exhibit, a conference, and a workshop geared to gay straight alliance (GSA) organizations in high schools. GSAs and their statewide supporting organization, the Illinois Safe School Alliance, were also the part of this work. While the larger goal of this work was to help diverse constituencies understand the importance of their history by developing, curating, and utilizing information resources that fulfill overlooked community information needs, this chapter comes to focus on a piece of that work, the development of Illinois’s first LGBTQ+ history elective. Consequently, this chapter can show how librarians and libraries can actualize social justice aims and thereby expand traditional library practices through sustained efforts that may lead to smaller specific goals, some of which may develop in unforeseen ways. The key is to expand the existing aims of libraries into sustained community engagement while remaining open to the opportunities that arise along the way.

Although there is great potential for diversity, library and information science (LIS) is a relatively homogenous profession. Increasing the presence of librarians of color may help to improve diversity within LIS. However, recruiting ethnic minorities into LIS has proven to be difficult despite various initiative including scholarships, fellowships, and locally focused programs. The central questions explored in this research can be divided into two parts: (1) Why do ethnic minorities choose librarianship as a profession? (2) What would motivate members of minority groups to join a profession in which they cannot see themselves?

The research was conducted through semi-structured, qualitative interviews of 32 ethnic minority students from one of four ethnic minority groups (African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American) currently enrolled in an LIS graduate program. Eleven themes emerged from the data: libraries, librarians, library work experience, LIS graduate program, career plans and goals, education and family, support, mentors, ethnicity and community, acculturation, and views of diversity.

The findings seem to support many assumptions regarding expectations and career goals. The findings related to libraries, librarians, mentors, and support illustrate that many recruitment initiatives are starting in the right place. However, the most noteworthy findings were those that centered on identity, acculturation, and diversity because they dealt with issues that are not often considered or discussed by many in the profession outside of ethnic minority organizations.

This book provides a deeper understanding of what it means to promote social justice and equity work in schools and communities around the world. Throughout this book, narratives describe how authors continue to reshape the agenda for educational reform. They remind us of the significance meaningful relationships play in promoting and sustaining reform efforts that address the injustices vulnerable populations face in school communities. Their voices represent the need for engaging with obstacles and barriers and a resistant world through a web of relationships, an intersubjective reality (see Ayers, 1996). As authors engaged in thinking about addressing injustices, they describe how their thoughts transformed into actions moving beyond, breaking through institutional structures, attempting to rebuild and make sense of their own situations (see Dewey, 1938).

We propose that off-the-job embeddedness (OTJE) be reconceptualized as a separate and distinct, albeit related, construct from job embeddedness. We conceptualize OTJE as the totality of outside-work forces which keep an individual bound to his/her current geographical area and argue that this construct includes important factors which do not fall under the umbrella of “community embeddedness.” Moreover, we propose that these outside-work forces may embed individuals in their jobs either directly or indirectly (through the perceived or expressed preferences of spouses, children, and extended family). This paper identifies the key components of OJTE, addresses the measurement of OTJE, explains the relationships between job embeddedness and OTJE (and their respective components), highlights how OTJE can either amplify or counteract the effects of job embeddedness, and illustrates the direct and indirect effects of OTJE on both work-related and personal outcomes.

What makes employees feel well within an organization? The aim of the present chapter is to start from a paradigm that emphasizes human relationality, affectivity, and intersubjective systems, and accordingly focuses on how well-being is emerging from contextual interrelations between employees. Applying this perspective to a qualitative study of nurses in a nursing home, I came to see the work community as a well-being-generating system in which the well-being of individual members is constructed together as an ongoing social accomplishment. In addition, I identified four systemic processes within the work community that greatly influence the well-being-generating capacity of the system.

This chapter presents a preliminary model that frames public library workers as the foundations of how public libraries help build and support sustainable communities in the twenty-first century, particularly in the United States, specifically in rural America. For public libraries to continue to be key partners in sustaining their communities, and in supporting the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is essential that public library work be valued, visible, and sustained over time. The UN defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Four studies of public library work during the COVID-19 pandemic found that public library workers are facing challenges in both meeting their own needs and meeting the needs of their communities. That finding led to a consideration of what is needed to place public library work at the center of sustainable thinking. Sustaining library workers will strengthen the library as a community hub, and help those workers in turn sustain community relationships necessary for the work of the library. These, in turn, will contribute to more sustainable communities.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.