Abstract

e were newly appointed graduate WPAs at Ohio State. Both of us were interested in connecting Ohio State's First-Year Writing Program to the surrounding Columbus community, but neither of us were sure how to go about it-how to navigate the various institutional, social, and ethical issues involved in university-community engagement. We carried many of those uncertainties into a meeting with the Columbus Metropolitan Library's community engagement representative. During our first meeting, we learned that, for many students, the library serves as a 'third space' or a space where students spend the greatest amount of time between school and home. We didn't know it then, but this use of third space dovetails nicely with an academic theory of third space that has helped us work through the institutional, social, and ethical issues we have grappled with during our university-community collaboration.