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This interview features a conversation between a library and information science educator (Cooke) and three archival and special collections professionals with varying levels of experience in the field (Warren, Brown, and Jackson). Among the goals of this frank conversation is to highlight the lived experiences of practicing archivists and educators and discuss why it is becoming increasingly important to talk about empathy, diversity, equity, and inclusion in greater context. As part of that context, we must discuss the need to continuously infuse these values into graduate education, professional development, research, writing, and peer mentoring. Espousing and implementing an ethics of care is an ongoing and necessary process and commitment—to ourselves, to the information professions, and to our communities.

As online education expands, research should identify how students interact and learn online. Because of the technological, proximal and asynchronous uniqueness of online education, learners face challenges not native to face-to-face education. As such, online students may seek alternate relationships and methods of interacting, forming their own “Small Worlds.” Online students have their own “view of social reality, and ways in which they satisfy their intellectual, social, and physical needs” (Chatman, 1991, p. 438). Small Worlds allow people “to share a similar cultural and intellectual space” (Huotari & Chatman, 2001, p. 352), and members “share a repertoire of resources and sensibilities communally developed over time” (Wenger, 1998, p. 2). Chatman’s theory of Small Worlds is a spatial and social lens through which to examine information behavior; in this instance the online learning environment is a virtual space that fosters and shapes the information behaviors of its participants. The purpose of this study was to investigate the information use behaviors of graduate students in an online learning community, and to elucidate the information interactions and exchanges that occur within course threaded discussions. Additionally, this study intended to determine if and how graduate students in Library and Information Science programs created community in the online classroom, and how, if at all, the presence of community influenced information use behaviors. With respect to the learning online, the literature clearly addresses distance education, Internet communities, communities of practice, and the development of community in traditional on campus classrooms. Some of this research begins to encompass various aspects of human information behavior as applied to the online setting. However, the literature does not marry these components and does not examine nor address the specific information needs and dynamics that occur in an online graduate classroom. The goal of this research was to provide a detailed analysis of the nature and dynamics of information behaviors in an asynchronous graduate online classroom, to identify factors that shape these behaviors, and to determine their relationship to the process of knowledge construction.