Collaborative Cartography: Creating an Asset Map for Student and Community Success

Collaborative Cartography: Creating an Asset Map for Student and Community Success

Jost Room

In this workshop participants will learn key steps in creating campus and community asset maps to help discover areas of strength in communities, including resources and various supports. The workshop will address the following: (1) defining the purpose and audience of the map; (2) creating a shared controlled vocabulary across departments and/or disciplines; (3) choosing the appropriate mapping software; and (4) the process of sharing data with the wider world. Learn from our experience in bringing campus and community projects together with the library to create maps that serve multiple purposes, including interactive databases of campus resources and supports, and data analysis platforms to conduct needs based assessments. Rhode Island College’s Learning for Life (L4L) is a project at RIC that links students to a wide range of services, supports, and opportunities for college success. Rhode Island College and the Central Falls School District are partners in The Central Falls/Rhode Island College Innovation Lab (the Innovation Lab). This unique, first-in-the-nation collaboration has the potential to provide a PK-12 and post-secondary urban education model that offers a new paradigm for state and national replication. With the metadata and information management knowledge of the library, we created maps for each project, L4L and the Innovation Lab, built on shared mission, strong collaboration and a focus on leveraging our resources to best serve our students across campus.