You are currently viewing an introduction to one of our many articles hosted on SAGE Reference Online. If you would like to view this article in full, please check with your local library for availability of the complete print or online version. For more information about our online encyclopedias, please visit www.sage-ereference.com

Community is a concept, an experience, and a central part of being human. It is a subject that touches every one of us, a subject so complex and interdisciplinary that it takes a work like this to provide the depth and breadth of information that students, scholars, information specialists, and professionals in both public and private sectors need if they are to understand the nature of community fully. We need The Encyclopedia of Community because we live at a time when our desire for community seems to grow in proportion to our sense that it is declining. Yet there have never been so many efforts under way to build, restore, find, and study community as there are today. Some of these efforts reflect a longing for an earlier era when, we imagine, we could find common values. Many images of community—trick-or-treating in handmade costumes, World War II victory gardens, Encyclopedia ...