Our shelves, ourselves: online book clubs for open knowledge

This session is facilitated by Naomi Penfold, Daniela Saderi, Elsa Loissel

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About this session

#OpenAsInBook is an online book club for open science enthusiasts to share knowledge and reflections on issues related to the emerging global open scholarship movement.

In this session, we will share and gather insight on how to run an online book club to build and sustain a network of people from different horizons and allow them to learn in a constructive and enjoyable way. We will discuss our goals, our vision and our experiences (positive and negative). The key topics we hope to discuss include: drawing parallels with in-person book clubs; fostering trust and constructive dialogue; planning structure, programming and content; considering who’s invited; identifying shared goals. We are excited to learn from participants about their book club hopes and experiences.

Goals of this session

Our goals are to inform future directions for #OpenAsInBook and other online book clubs as a way of using the internet to improve knowledge and connection between distributed community members.

Why do people join book clubs? Why do they stay?
Do you have to have finished reading the set text in order to participate?
How can book clubs break down barriers or build trust between siloes?
Which kinds of books help bring more people into the discussion?
How can we deal with texts written in languages other than English?

After introducing the session topic and our goals, we will invite participants to share their experiences with book clubs (local and online) and discuss these questions.

With the help of note-taker(s), we will document the discussion as a skeleton how-to guide for thinking about running book clubs on the internet for community building and knowledge exchange.