Image by Trace Meek on Flickr

I. What we talk about when we talk about collaboration

On April 7, 2011, I published “Collaborating with Faculty Part 1: A Five-Step Program,” a post that described my strategies for developing collaborative relationships with disciplinary faculty. To briefly summarize my “program,” I identified five steps to collaboration as: (1) Be confident, (2) Make the connection, (3) Reinforce the connection, (4) Build the relationship, and (5) Go collaborate. These steps are admittedly simplified, but they do serve to remind us of the importance of cultivating relationships beyond email updates or visits to department meetings. In this article, Part 2, I’ll share some of the most common and most innovative approaches to librarian-faculty collaboration that I’ve heard about or seen in the literature. As I was researching this post I created a spreadsheet of some of the notable projects I discovered in the literature of the past ten years that may be helpful to others. This is not intended to be comprehensive, and I invite you to review, comment, argue, and/or add to it, as you see fit (I’m drawing primarily from the published literature here, but descriptions of non-published projects are also welcome). It is my wish that these examples will help us reconsider our existing collaborative efforts, and will be useful for hopeful librarian collaborators in reassessing and expanding their own initiatives. Partnering with faculty on projects, instruction, and other initiatives offers a whole array of rewards such as improved services, greater student learning, and the ability to grow as a professional. Plus, working with others on campus allows us to extend our reach and achieve more of our goals than we could do alone.

However, “collaboration” is a broad term that can be difficult to define. In thinking about librarian-faculty partnerships, I find it helpful to consider them on a spectrum of possibility. There are two models I think are useful for this. The first is Pritchard’s (2010) scale to describe various levels of librarian-faculty partnerships on information literacy instruction. Pritchard makes the following distinctions between different types of support that may be offered by librarians for information literacy instruction in coursework:

1. Supplemental, which happens outside the curriculum through workshops and instruction, reflecting no cooperation between librarian and faculty member.
2. Integrated, which involves librarian support for a course without input into the curriculum.
3. Embedded, which implies co-development of course curriculum and/or assignments

While Pritchard’s criteria are specific to teaching, we can extrapolate the same concepts to address collaboration more broadly. To expand these definitions to our discussion of librarian-faculty partnerships, we can identify parallel levels at which individuals may work together, as follows:

1. Communication: In which librarians and faculty members may notify each other of their activities and work with the same students, but without actually consulting one another, such as when a faculty member alerts a librarian to an existing assignment that will send students to the library, or a librarian sends a newsletter to faculty.
2. Cooperation: In which faculty and librarians work together on a project or initiative, with one partner supporting the other’s goals, such as through typical instruction sessions (where the librarian is asked to support an existing curriculum or assignment), or through faculty workshops offered by librarians to educate faculty about library resources.
3. Collaboration: In which librarians and faculty work together in an equal partnership that requires them to align their different perspectives on a project, such as curriculum design and co-teaching or co-writing an article or grant, develop common goals, and reach a new shared understanding.

The second model I find useful was created by Black, Crest, Volland (2001), who came up with a simple flowchart that presents a comparable scale of librarian-faculty partnership. The major difference is that they view partnerships as a progression instead of a spectrum, and assert that each step along the scale leads to the next. In their minds the process begins with relationship-building (librarian and faculty getting to know each other) and faculty development (librarian teaching faculty about library resources), leads to collaborative instructional design (both parties working together to achieve course goals), and results in tailored instruction for classes.

The fact that both of these models provide similar “levels” of partnership reinforces the idea that collaboration can be achieved in a variety of ways. While all levels of partnership have intrinsic value, this post will focus primarily upon initiatives that embody the definitions of cooperation and collaboration as described above.

II. Cooperative partnerships between librarians and faculty

Cooperation requires that the librarian and faculty member work together at some level to identify and achieve a common goal. This often involves a one-way direction of effort, as one partner becomes involved to support the other’s established goals. These partnerships are more in-depth than communication partnerships as there is some combined effort between the two participants, but the two individuals generally work independently of each other. For instance, at my institution I developed a tiered instructional plan to support a series of courses in my liaison department. The plan included a breakdown of the various research assignments that were required of students in the different courses, and described my strategy for building their skills throughout the series. While I consulted the faculty member who taught these courses and ensured that she was on board with my plan, my work did not have an influence on her course content. I created the plan to support her existing curriculum, assignments, and goals.

Cooperative partnerships come in several common formats, including:

• Faculty training
• Technology assistance
• Collection development
• Information Literacy instruction

I describe each of these in more depth in the following sections.

Faculty training

Faculty workshops typically involve librarians planning and executing sessions intended to teach and/or raise awareness among faculty about the resources and services offered at the library. These sessions usually involve one or both of the following goals: (i) encouraging faculty to use the library more, e.g. marketing, and/or (ii) “training the trainer,” with the purpose of empowering faculty to pass on deeper knowledge about the library to their students, e.g. instruction. For an example of faculty workshops in action, Lucas (2011) provides a helpful case study of the faculty in-service approach at D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York. Lucas defines the in-service as “the act of collaboratively introducing new and existing faculty to the library resources and services.” The article lays out the details of what they cover in their in-service sessions.

Faculty workshops may also be targeted to specific audiences such as distance faculty, as noted by Miller et al. (2010). At the University of Maryland University College, librarians have taken a slightly different approach to the in-service model by presenting asynchronous online workshops lasting seven to twelve days that introduce distance faculty to the library. These sessions are cofacilitated by a librarian and the academic director of a given department, but content is created solely by the library. Miller et al.’s article includes detailed descriptions of the workshops that are likely to be useful for anyone considering a similar approach.

Cooperative faculty training occasionally goes beyond the typical workshop. Take, for instance the work of librarians at Jinwen University of Science and Technology (JUST) in Taiwan. They serve as a example of a library that trains faculty to serve as stand-in librarians, or “library specialists,” for a semester at a time. Yu (2009) explains how, to expand the library staff’s limited reach, they advanced a proposal to train one or two faculty representatives from each academic department as volunteer “library specialists.” These faculty members were required to attend special library skills training, as well as to serve two hours of reference a week and function as consultants for subject-specific reference questions. The faculty become stand-in librarians for the purposes of helping students, and acted as consultants to the library on collection development and subject-specific reference. This unique program enabled faculty to become intimately familiar with their library while expanding its ability to serve a growing student body.

Technology assistance

In some cases librarians leverage their tech-savvy to raise their profile on campus beyond the scope of research, for instance by assisting them in creating websites or media. Bailey, Blunt, & Magner (2011) describe how librarians can leverage technology skills, in this case video and multimedia creation, to support faculty goals, instruction, and conference presentations. This reasserts the importance of librarians on campus and may potentially build a foundation for greater partnerships. In addition to video creation, it is common for librarians to work with faculty in groups or one-on-one to assist them with new technologies such as blogs, mobile access, social media, and RSS.

Collection development

Collection development is an area in which librarian-faculty partnerships have long been common, typically at the communication level but sometimes evolving into cooperative relationships with the intention of expanding a particular part of the collection to support relevant coursework. As one example, Ratto & Lynch (2011) describes an effort at the University of Southern New Hampshire to supplement traditional textbook access with a program to provide focused course content for a Marketing course through the use of electronic textbooks. The texts were licensed and cataloged by the library in coordination with the faculty member.

Another example of cooperative relationships in collection development is the designation of specific funds either as “new faculty funds” or as internal grants. Horava (2005) described a program at The University of Ottawa to get new faculty more involved in working with librarians to expand the collection in their research areas through the use of designated funds in the amount of $2,000 per faculty member. The program met with some success in building bridges between librarians and faculty and increasing collection development in current research and teaching areas.

Information Literacy instruction

The most common cooperative efforts between librarians and faculty relate to IL instruction in a wide variety of ways. The traditional “one-shot” instruction session is a classic example of this. There are also an array of variations on the “one-shot,” from a similar “two-shot” to strategies that many refer to as “embedded” librarianship, in which a librarian is present as some level throughout the entire course. Kobzina (2010) describes a scenario at the University of California at Berkeley in which librarians embed in a prominent environmental studies course, with multiple library sessions, access to the online course site, and the ability to respond to course content on an ongoing basis. The only thing separating this effort from collaboration as defined in the introduction to this post is the fact that they don’t contribute to the creation of the course curriculum or assignments.

III. Collaborative partnerships between librarians and faculty

Before taking this discussion further, I’d like to restate my own belief that collaboration, as distinct from communication and cooperation, requires an equal partnership between librarian and faculty member. I make this assertion because collaboration, as I define it, requires both parties to acknowledge, understand, and even embrace the other’s viewpoint, with the result being a shared vision or product that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is not easy. More casual partnerships, in which participants align their goals but don’t blend them, often accomplish great things but don’t achieve the same shift in perception for those participating. I base this perspective on my own collaborative experiences with my institution’s first-year writing program faculty, which has entirely changed my perspective on teaching research to first-year students. By working together to build a shared curriculum for our co-requisite research and writing courses, we all become more fully cognizant of the differences between our two approaches and the natural ways we could bridge them. The effects of our work together have rippled outwards into the way our two units interact and understand each other’s work.

Thus, collaboration takes the initiatives described in the “Cooperation” section above and stretches them further by adding a give-and-take element to the relationship between librarian and faculty member. In collaboration we are forced to consider the other person’s perspective, compromise, and often walk away with a new understanding of the project at hand. Collaborative partnerships result in a product that reflects the contributions of both parties. These efforts may take the following forms:

• Information Literacy instruction
• Professional (writing, research, presentation, grant, etc.) projects

As I did above, I’ll now discuss each of these in more depth with some examples, though there are fewer examples of collaboration as I define it.

Information Literacy instruction

When it comes to teaching, collaboration often involves the librarian and faculty member partnering on curriculum design and development, and often extends into co-teaching. The literature of instructional collaboration is extensive, but Mounce’s (2010) literature review covering articles published in 2000-2009 is helpful in gaining a big picture perspective.

For instance, Gaspar & Wetzel (2009) describe a case study in which they participate in an Institutionalized partnership for specific programs in which librarians and writing professors collaborate on curriculum and assignment development. The beautiful thing about this example is that The George Washington University created a program requiring this collaboration and recognizing its benefits. As a result the program has central administrative support that makes it sustainable for the parties involved.

There are also models of embedded librarianship that meet the same criteria without the co-teaching element. In addition to presenting the useful model of integrated instruction that I described in Part I above, Pritchard describes an embedded experience in a nanoscience course at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Students in the course write an article for a locally published academic journal for which the librarian serves as editor-in-chief, and partners with the faculty member and students to ensure that their research and articles are up to par. This unique example of embedded librarianship involves extensive collaboration with several individuals on campus. Pritchard includes advice for collaborative-minded librarians at the end of her article, much of which echoes my Part 1 Lead Pipe post. She says:

Entering into faculty–librarian partnerships is not a simple matter of introducing oneself to teaching faculty and announcing our plans for embedding IL and AL into their courses. It involves the careful cultivation of collegial relationships, the clear and consistent communication of the specialized knowledge and expertise we bring to the curriculum development process, and a sustained commitment to staying visible, available and involved (389).

Professional projects

Another project area that requires deep collaboration is the librarian-faculty co-written article, conference co-presentation, or co-administered grant project. Cross-disciplinary professional contributions are challenging for any faculty, but the benefits to the collaborators and to the field can be substantial. Fonseca & Viator (2009) recommend that librarian faculty act more like faculty and cultivate multi-disciplinary expertise by entering into collaborative projects (writing, grant proposals) with non-library faculty, and by engaging in active service on campus, particularly in leadership roles. Fonseca & Viator’s highly readable article is a call to action for academic librarians around the nation. While it is common for librarians to serve on campus committees, I wonder how often we actually step up to the chair or president position to assert ourselves as professionals on our campuses. Local leadership by librarians not only allows the individual librarian to increase his skill set but raises the library’s profile on campus by making it clear to faculty that the library is interested and engaged in campus issues at more than an administrative level.

There are a few examples out there of librarians and faculty members co-presenting. As recently as March 2011 the ACRL Conference included a poster session by Ratto (librarian) & Lynch (Marketing professor), entitled “Collaboration unleashes e-book database potential for replacing traditional textbook options.” Their poster describes the cooperative collection development described above.

IV. Final thoughts

The variety of possible ways in which librarians and faculty can partner together, and the spectrum of what those partnerships might look like, far exceeds this post. For instance, though I did not find examples in the literature, I could envision many projects similar to those describe above that involve graduate students as future faculty. MyLead Pipe colleague Hilary Davis described a project at her institution in which her colleague worked with a graduate student association to plan workshops for their members. This program creates the opportunity not only to help graduate students build their research skills, but also to set a foundation for future collaboration when those individuals have moved on to faculty positions.

Overall I have attempted to capture a snapshot here of the wealth of opportunities at hand to remind and inspire us to extend beyond the limits of our buildings, our offices, and our daily interactions. It can be challenging  at times to find the space and the emotional energy to cultivate the relationships required for productive cooperation and collaboration. However, the benefits to students, to faculty, and to our own job satisfaction are guaranteed to make the effort worthwhile.

Notes

For information about the references cited in this post, please view my spreadsheet. You are also welcome to add to it if you know of great collaborative models that might interest our readers.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Brooke Ratto, Ellie Collier, Hilary Davis, and Emily Ford for their feedback that helped to shape this post.

by StefanB on Flickr

Introduction

Like many academic librarians, I spend a lot of time reaching out to and trying to build connections with faculty members in my liaison departments. I love this part of my work, but it can be extremely challenging. I bring a somewhat unusual perspective to this challenge as I happen to be married to a faculty member, which gives me the ability to see things from the faculty side as well as from my own perspective. Interestingly, the book Compatibility Breeds Success by Marvin Snider compares collaborative partnerships to marriages, so there’s a double point of relevance here.¹ According to Snider, these partnerships involve a long-term commitment, accountability for one another’s behavior, a commitment to resolving differences, a strong emotional commitment, and “are likely to have a major impact on each other even after the partnership ends.” Instead of love and family, academic participants share a goal of improved teaching, expanded publishing opportunities, or the like.

Recently I’ve broken down my approach to relationship-building with faculty into identifiable steps in order to be more deliberate about my efforts in the future. Those steps are the subject of this post. This program is a proposed set of goals I’ve built for myself, and which I share with the Lead Pipe readership in the hope that you’ll find it useful. For the record, this “program” is still in beta (so to speak), and I welcome your feedback and thoughts in the comments below. I presented a skeleton of this at ACRL’s Ideapower Unconference in Philadelphia last week.

One dictionary² defines collaboration as “Traitorous cooperation with an enemy,” which is a humorous yet apt starting point for the conversation. It seems to me that many librarians have an uneasy relationship with our faculty for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which are the different letters that follow our names. Fortunately, the anxiety that comes from our different backgrounds and job descriptions is based more in misunderstanding than substance, so we can learn to shed those feelings on the way to a new partnership. Instead, let’s redefine collaboration and set our goal as an equal partnership between one or more non-librarian faculty members and ourselves. Personally, I’m interested in the relationships that push the boundaries of the day-to-day working relationships that many of us already have with other faculty on campus.

I recently attended a presentation at the ACRL National Conference in Philadelphia entitled, Engaging Faculty, Creating Allies. I expected the presentation to inform this post and expand my ideas of what collaboration with faculty could look like. While the presentation was good, I was a little disappointed that the “engagement” of faculty described was largely through workshops or colloquia organized by librarians and to which faculty were invited (and, in some cases, paid to attend). While collaboration can happen at such events, I just don’t see that as putting us on the equal footing that is necessary for deep collaboration.  As Jean S. Caspers describes, we can look at librarian-faculty relationships as occurring along a continuum of  three stages: parallel work is the most basic sort of relationship in which we’re working alongside each other for similar goals; cooperative work involves basic coordination of efforts; and collaborative work is the deepest type of partnership (21).³ Sometimes having parallel goals is enough, but collaborative work is more likely to yield the greatest benefits for student learning or research.

That said, it’s time to discuss the five-step program. It begins with a little self-reflection.

Step 1: Be confident

In a 1977 article, H. William Axford commented on the librarian movement for faculty status, and the nervousness of some librarians about the shift. “Part of the problem,” he wrote then, “can be attributed to the nature of library education which simply does not engender in students the attitudes necessary to feel at home within the traditional values of the academy, particularly its canons of scholarship.”⁵ Not to pin the whole problem on library school, but the truth is that librarians are not initiated into our field in the same way that faculty are: by reading scholarship, identifying our own specific area(s) of specialization, presenting at conferences, and building a network of colleagues whose interests overlap our own. This is in part because library school students may go on to work at a whole variety of different organizations. And some of this happens in library school for more motivated students, but the vast majority probably do not have this set of experiences. The result is graduates who have been schooled as professionals but not as scholars. It’s a different way of looking at the world, and a different way of looking at a career. So our challenge is to adopt the scholar’s worldview once we’re actively in the field. It’s ours for the taking.

In fact, a recent study of faculty attitudes found that faculty have a very favorable view of various aspects of collaboration with librarians (rated overall as a 3.98 out of 5).⁶ An earlier study fleshed out some of the differences in how librarians and faculty see each other, pointing to an awareness problem that has led to faculty being ignorant of the scope of librarians’ work.⁷ Considering both of these studies together, it is clear that faculty are not deliberately disregarding librarian expertise, nor are they averse to collaborative opportunities. The door is open.

Step 2: Make the connection

How do we make these connections with faculty? It starts just by reaching out. We can make connections at the reference desk or on a committee, but they’re more likely to happen when we get out of our comfort zones. Getting involved in new faculty candidate interviews. Coffee dates. Going to after-hours socials, plays, exhibits, speakers, and more. Attending campus events and breaking away from the same, comfortable group to meet new people. One librarian at The University of Saskatchewan decided to methodically arrange in-person meetings with a subset of her liaison department and later surveyed them to see whether her personal attention had an effect. It did, with 92% of faculty reporting that their use of the library had increased after the meeting.⁸

As an example, I started my current position and was assigned as a liaison to several departments. For one of those departments I lacked any notable background in the field and wasn’t sure what to expect. Still, with my new librarian enthusiasm, I contacted the department chair and got myself invited to a faculty meeting. They gave me five minutes, and while they were cordial, my reception was less than enthusiastic. I left that meeting feeling that I had failed in making the connection I’d hoped for. Still I regrouped, and decided to focus my energy and time on the department’s faculty liaison to the library (let’s call her Jane). I proposed that Jane and I meet for coffee, and the two of us spent an hour awkwardly sipping hot drinks and trying to find common ground to discuss. It was a challenging conversation, but it was a start.

From the very beginning, building collaborative relationships requires boldness. There’s no hiding behind a mask of introvertedness. The hard part, typically, is making conversation with strangers. Fortunately for us, this is a learnable skill, not an inborn characteristic. Since I was a child, I’ve watched my mother conduct long, effortless conversations with just about anybody who comes near her. Over the years, I’ve discovered that what comes naturally to her—making connections with people—is not just a personality trait, but an attainable skill. The key is: ask them about themselves. Sounds obvious, right? It is, sort of.

And just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you meet someone and then launch into twenty questions and interrogate them. The best conversations are a give-and-take between two people sharing information about themselves or their viewpoints. But of all the great things I’ve learned from my mother over the course of my lifetime, possibly the most valuable and useful on a daily basis is: people love to talk about themselves. Not in an egotistical way, but in a very straightforward and human way. We all have our unique passions, and we all love to share them. If you can steer the conversation to some of a person’s interests, hobbies, family life, or other passions, you can usually have an effortless conversation for hours. This simple strategy is something we can all adopt in our everyday lives to make friends, network with colleagues, and yes, build collaborative relationships with faculty.

Be bold, be friendly, and be inquisitive: that’s all it really takes. Don’t forget to be yourself, too, and share your own responses to questions they ask. Be a whole person, just as they are. Not everyone on campus will embrace spontaneous conversation with a librarian, but most of them will. And even if someone clearly doesn’t want to connect with you, don’t take it personally. It’s their loss.

Step 3: Reinforce the connection

At this point, the most important thing is to connect with them on their level, not yours. Don’t immediately set up a blog or LibGuide or start bundling RSS feeds unless you know they’re tech-savvy enough to appreciate it. One of the biggest downfalls I see when librarians connect with faculty is an expectation that those faculty will be as technophoric as we are. Don’t count on it. Choose a platform that they’ll use and find comfortable, regardless of how much you love Twitter. If you’re just dying to put your love of technology to work, you can harness RSS feeds or email alerts to track the topics the faculty you know have mentioned as interests. Newly released books or articles make great conversation topics, and you can drop a line when you see their work get published.

It’s also important to be multi-dimensional and not sound like a library salesperson trying to make the sale. If you went from friendly and personal in the initial meeting and now bury them in library paraphernalia, you’re going to lose the personal nature of the connection that is so critical to relationship-building. I’m not suggesting sending them photos of your kids unless they’ve asked for them, but in whatever communication you send, mention something you discussed during that first meeting. Even if it’s work-related, it reinforces the sense that you were listening (which you were, right?). Be personal and professional. Remind them that you are, indeed, a whole person.

Step 4: Build the relationship

Jane and I started meeting for lunch every semester, and I made a point of sending an invitation by email every time unless I heard from her first. As we got to know each other better our conversations got easier and we learned about each other’s jobs and families. We spent most of our time talking about the research classes she taught, and the ways that I might help, but we also talked about a whole array of other topics. Our exchanges became friendlier, more comfortable, and much more fun for both of us.

At this stage, you’re getting to know them as a person as well as a professional, too. Continue to ask questions: how are they doing? How are classes? How is their research? How is whatever they might have mentioned from their personal life? Even more importantly, listen to the answers and learn as much as you can. Take notes afterwards, for future reference, especially if you have a less-than-stellar memory. It may sound mercenary, but taking the time to remember details about someone means you care, and that’s a good thing. Hyun-Duck Chung from North Carolina State University is a great example of a librarian who embraced a business librarianship role fully by putting herself in a position to learn about her liaison department from the inside out.¹⁰ Chung notes, “Genuine excitement about a common goal can help ignite the relationship-building process, but cultivating it requires sustained engagement with individuals over time, and being open to learning from each other” (165).

Step 5: Go Collaborate

Once you can see the potential for collaboration, go ahead and talk to the individual. Be sure to describe the project you have in mind as well as the benefits to both of you. Ruth McCorkle concisely describes “four main components of research kinship: a willingness to share ideas and the ability to critique and respond to others’ ideas; the recognition of one another’s talents; the joint sharing of an idea and crafting of a hypothesis; and, the commitment of time and resources in a shared venture” (539).¹¹ Be willing to give and take, consider other directions, or change the project completely in response to their feedback and ideas. A professional collaboration is a negotiation, and you’ll have to be flexible to make it a success.

Jane and I talked about an idea I had to tier instruction for a series of courses she taught that required research papers. The same cohort of students moved through all these classes together, so I thought it would be worthwhile to introduce research skills to them gradually, building each semester on what they had learned last time. She liked the idea, so I reviewed all her syllabi and put together a proposal. She liked the proposal, made a few suggestions that I incorporated, and then we put it into action. I was happy to move from typical one-shots to a deeper way of working with her students, and Jane was delighted to see the improvements in her students’ work at the end of the series.

So the collaboration is on! After that, you just have to maintain your end of the deal: meet your deadlines, do your share of the work, and most crucial of all, keep in touch. Communicate regularly to maintain the relationship. And if something changes in your relationship and you find that you have to work with someone new, don’t be discouraged. Just start the process over again and give yourself time to get back to the same level.

Sound easy?

Further Reading

Notes

Acknowledgements

I hope those reading this post had a warm, happy Thanksgiving, surrounded by family and friends. I spent most of last week in Florida at my parents’ “snowbird” house with my immediate family, all of us having traveled at least 1,200 miles to eat, drink, and laugh together by the pool. While there I spent my downtime reading a moving memoir about homelessness entitled Breakfast at Sally’s. The irony of reading such a book at Thanksgiving did not escape me, nor did the dramatic contrast between my comfortable lifestyle and that of former publishing mogul Richard LeMieux. LeMieux’s business collapsed in 2002 and left him homeless and clinically depressed, after which his wife left him and his adult children turned their backs. About to take his own life, he was stopped from jumping off a bridge only by the barking of his beloved dog.

Breakfast at Sally’s is about LeMieux’s struggles to survive and find new meaning in life, offering a unique if somewhat darker perspective on American culture. Throughout the author’s sad experience some bright points appear, however, including the many churches and organizations such as the Salvation Army (which the homeless dub “Sally’s”) that provide free meals, clothing, and a sense of community for those on the streets. The kindness of those who dedicate their time and energy to keeping these associations running is critical in keeping LeMieux and his fellows alive and fed.

Another bright point that appears early in the story is the public library, about which LeMieux says:

The library was another sanctuary for the homeless. There was always plenty for everyone, rich and poor. Those without a roof over their heads could escape with Wolfe, Kafka, or Robert Louis Stevenson and have shelter from the heat and the cold, the rain and the pain (31).

This passage, along with repeated references to the importance of books to various homeless characters in the story, gave me pause. The small city where I live, Boise, Idaho, may have lower rates of homelessness than larger metropolitan areas around the nation (12 people out of every 10,000 are homeless in Idaho, versus 22 nationally according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness), but even in my university library we see individuals on a regular basis who appear to fit the profile. Have I ever helped them, or has my library been doing anything to help? Not beyond the definitions of what we do for any other community user, and in fact perhaps less. We may watch them out of the corners of our eyes to make sure they don’t cause any trouble, and we tolerate their presence. If they have a photo identification card we’ll let them use a public computer for an hour, and if not they can have ten minutes or so at a quick-use machine. If no students complain, they can nap in one of our lounge chairs upstairs in a quiet corner. That’s not much, particularly when you consider the situation from LeMieux’s vantage point on the streets. The obstacles between his circumstances–with no address, phone number, or job references–and a rebuilt, stable life seemed insurmountable.

Of course libraries aren’t homeless shelters or counseling centers and homelessness is complicated problem that libraries alone don’t have the power to solve. The Madison, Wisconsin, Central Library is an example of the conflicts that can arise when a library is so popular with the homeless that other patrons object. On the one hand, the library is providing a positive experience for homeless individuals. Pat Schneider, author of the above-linked article from The Cap Times, writes:

Ask [the homeless] why they hang out at the library and they’ll talk about comfort. It’s warm. It’s dry. There are public restrooms. But the library offers much more. “They’ve got books and magazines and music. I love the library,” enthuses one young woman.

[T]he crowd on the library patio turns off some, library officials admit. “I hear anecdotally of people saying they prefer to go to branches because they feel safer,” says Theodore “Tripp” Widder, president of the Madison Library Board.

If librarians and others can first recognize their own attitudinal hang-ups, understanding what makes them view welfare mothers and homeless people, for example, unfavorably, and ultimately grasping that poverty—not poor people—is the problem, that poverty can be reduced if not ended, and that the most vulnerable and dispossessed among us are citizens and neighbors who deserve compassion, support, and respect—if we can do these things in our heads and hearts, then there’s a real chance to overcome classism.

Perhaps the strongest response to the Poor People’s Policy has been within the Social Responsibilities Round Table, which created their Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force to advance the objectives of the policy. The Task Force expanded those objectives and provided more specific recommendations for libraries interested in improving their accessibility to all, while working on raising awareness and action. Still, one task force can’t do it alone. To make libraries more welcoming and supportive for the poor and the homeless, individual libraries need to adopt the Poor People’s Policy and take responsibility for those in need in their own communities.

A 2002 article by Lan Shen, “The Dilemma of Urban Library Service for the Homeless,” (Current Studies in Librarianship, v. 26 no. 1/2), breaks down existing library services for the homeless into three categories. The first is partnering with local government or nonprofit agencies to provide learning opportunities for the homeless, perhaps by providing lists of local resources or making meeting rooms available for support groups. The second category is bringing library programs or services out to homeless centers or shelters, such as storytimes for families. The third category is in-library programs and services like literacy programs, “camps” for homeless children, or referral services. Shen’s article is helpful as a starting point in beginning to think about some of the potential ways to serve the homeless in our communities. Some libraries are even finding ways to expand beyond those categories to provide out-of-the-box initiatives in their communities. The H.O.M.E. Page Café in Philadelphia is a prime example.

The H.O.M.E. Page Café

One of the most powerful initiatives in libraries to support the homeless is the H.O.M.E. Page Café at the Free Library of Philadelphia. This library coffee shop grew out of a partnership between the library and Project H.O.M.E. (Housing, Opportunities for Employment, Medical Care, Education), a local nonprofit working on homelessness and related issues. The two had initially collaborated to solve the library’s problem with their restrooms, which were popular with the homeless to the point of alienating other patrons. Project H.O.M.E. offered to fund a program in which formerly homeless individuals in supported housing were hired as restroom attendants to monitor the restrooms and keep them clean. The library watched their restroom problems dissolve, while needy individuals got back on track to supporting themselves. The program has been extremely successful and cemented the partnership between the two organizations (see “The Story of the H.O.M.E. Page Café” in Public Libraries Jan/Feb 2009, pp. 32-34).

When the Free Library of Philadelphia decided to create a coffee shop, Project H.O.M.E. proved to be an invaluable collaborator once again. They proposed a café whose primary purpose would be not revenue but job training for formerly homeless individuals living in supported housing. They obtained a grant, garnered equipment donations from Starbucks, and brought in a local bakery interested in supporting social causes. They hired employees, not based on their knowledge or experience, but their need and potential (there are a few examples in other fields, too, for instance Gould Farm in Massachusetts). The result of this partnership was a library café that helps the homeless get back on their feet while inspiring loyal patronage among socially aware customers. Through collaboration and creativity, the Free Library of Philadelphia and Project H.O.M.E. have built a model that could be constructively reproduced in cities across the nation. Hopefully, it will be.

Crossing Library Types to Serve the Homeless

The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San José, California, combines the San José Public Library and the San José State University Library in one collaborative system to better serve both communities. And they do! In an article last year in The Reference Librarian, “Addressing the Needs of the Homeless: A San José Library Partnership Approach,” Lydia N. Collins, Francis Howard, and Angie Miraflor describe how the libraries joined together not only in a shared building, but also in a combined effort to bring services to the homeless in their community. They formed a task force to identify needs, priorities, and community partners, and began a concerted outreach initiative.

Like The Free Library of Philadelphia, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library partnered with local organizations in San José such as InnVision, which serves low-income people in the San José area. The library brought computer classes and storytimes to InnVision’s centers, and the two organizations plan to expand their joint offerings. Further, the library began to plan their own in-library programming to address the needs of homeless patrons, such as assistance with job applications, legal information, and English as a second language training. The library brings social workers and lawyers into the library to offer advice and guidance to the homeless during free sessions. And to top it all off, the library administration provided customer service training to librarians and staff to increase their sensitivity to homeless patrons. Collins et al report:

There are two on-going programs targeted specifically at the homeless: storytimes for families and computer classes. Both programs are conducted at homeless agencies and bring in 35 to 40 children and adults. There is also a weekly “Lawyers in the Library” program that offers free 20-minute legal consultations, and there is a continuous waiting list for this service (114).

While Collins et al. acknowledge that they need to assess current initiatives and seek new ways to support the homeless in their community, they are actively experimenting with a variety of approaches and adjusting their services and programs based on the feedback they receive. By building an environment of sensitivity and accommodation, they have embraced the Poor People’s Policy and are a model example of a multiple-library-type partnership created for the benefit of the homeless in their area. Although it is unusual for an academic and public library to share a space, that is not a barrier to cross-library collaboration on programs and other initiatives similar to those at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.

Conclusion

I certainly don’t have the answers to homelessness, but perhaps in the writing of this post I have uncovered a few answers to homelessness as it relates to libraries. The first and most obvious conclusion is that libraries that have “problems” with homeless patrons should seek out partners in the community to help them solve those problems in a way that will simultaneously assist the homeless population. No one wants to use the library restroom to bathe, nor is the library anyone’s first choice for napping. The initiatives described in this post—and I’m sure there are more that I haven’t uncovered—reveal that collaboration with organizations already working on homeless or low-income issues can often provide meaningful solutions that can even offer positive press for the library. Further, any library that serves the public would do well to adopt the Poor People’s Policy and consider new, collaborative ways to serve those in need in the local community instead of tossing them out the door.

Another conclusion we can extract from the stories provided here is the undeniable fact that libraries of any type can help homeless individuals rebuild their lives if we can eliminate classist attitudes and policies and stop judging people based on appearance (and aroma). Like the libraries described above, we can plan or host programming targeted to the needs of those on the streets. We can educate ourselves on local organizations and laws that the homeless should be aware of, and reach out to them with that information. These initiatives don’t have to be time-consuming for those of us already stretched thin; they may just require contacting local partners and offering space or other support.

Above all, it’s important for those of us working in libraries to keep in mind that, like it or not, libraries are a lifeline for those without homes. We provide safe spaces, a sense of community, and a means of communication. In Breakfast at Sally’s LeMieux describes the isolating effect of homelessness caused by living outside the daily bustle of work, home, and family. Libraries have the ability to create opportunities that empower people to reconnect with their world. As individuals we can help by putting aside our distractions, digging down into our humanity, and treating all our patrons with compassion, kindness, and generosity. It may not be in our job descriptions, but it is in our power to make a difference.

Suggestions for further reading:

Gehner, J. (2010). Libraries, Low-Income People, and Social Exclusion. Public Library Quarterly, 29(1), 39-47. doi:10.1080/01616840903562976.

LeMieux, R. (2008). Breakfast at Sally’s: One Homeless Man’s Inspirational Journey. New York: Skyhorse Pub.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest author, Markus Wust! Markus is the Digital Collections and Preservation Librarian at North Carolina State University Libraries and works on exciting projects such as WolfWalk (mobile app for exploring NC State using special collections images and geolocation data) and NC Architects (database covering 300 years of North Carolina architects and builders).

Courtesy of Flickr User The Dangler

As a librarian working in a large academic library who once considered a career as an academic researcher and whose friends are mostly academics, I always find dinner conversations between my wife and my father-in-law particularly interesting, even—or rather, especially—when the topic is work. Over the course of several years of graduate school, I became familiar with the academic environment in several disciplines and still have a particular fondness for the humanities.

Now, however, I consider myself more of a neutral observer of academia and try to use these observations to figure out how best to help the researchers and teachers that we are working with. The conversations provide ample inspiration for my work: both my wife and her father are academics, although they seem in many ways to be positioned at opposite ends of a spectrum. She is working in the United States an Assistant Professor, teaching and researching in French Applied Linguistics and Teacher Education, and currently working towards tenure. Her father is an established researcher in Organic Chemistry who recently retired as a Full Professor at a Canadian university.

So when they discuss their professional activities, I am sometimes reminded of communications between people from different countries who are speaking a common language: they can communicate with each other, but there are enough semantic and cultural differences to occasionally cause misunderstandings or communication breakdowns. In their case, they are familiar with academic vocabulary but sometimes a term might have a different meaning or carry certain nuances depending on whether he uses it in the Canadian context or she talks about it from an American perspective. He has taken the last major step in an academic’s career—retirement—whereas she still has to take one of the first—getting tenure.

Finally, there is the main problem: the divide between him, the scientist, and her, the social scientist/humanist. I am not talking about problems caused by the subject matter each of them is working on; since neither one of them can discuss variations in protein structures with the same ease as differences between theories of second language acquisition, a conversation of that sort between them is not possible. However, even the differences in research and publishing traditions between their respective disciplines are large enough to cause a lack of understanding of each other’s situation, such as during discussions about scholarly productivity. For example, while my father-in-law can rely on the collaboration within his research team and on the quick review and publishing cycle of his discipline’s research outlets to ensure a high research output, my wife is still publishing primarily as a single author and has to contend with long waiting times during the peer review process. So, while he can publish many more papers in any given period, this does not mean that she is any less productive in her research; it just takes much longer to gather and analyze the necessary data before disseminating her findings.

Such divergent viewpoints and evaluations of scholarly productivity and rigor can arise even among practitioners of disciplines that are drawing on similar research methodologies and publishing practices. A friend, who is a Sociolinguist, once told us about a conversation she had with her father, a prominent Political Scientist. When she mentioned that, for her current study, she was collecting interview data from twenty participants, he offered little more than a weak smile and pointed out that in his field, he would routinely draw on data from over 50,000 respondents, not taking into account the qualitative differences between his short telephone surveys and the in-depth interviews necessary in her field of work.

Let us return to the previously mentioned dinner conversations. The occasional professional communication problems between my wife and her father bring to mind a phrase coined by British chemist and writer C.P. Snow. In his 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge University titled “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” Snow described a growing chasm between the humanities and the sciences, which would make it increasingly difficult for the two groups to work together to address the social, political, and cultural problems of the time:

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding. They have a curious distorted image of each other. Their attitudes are so different that, even on the level of emotion, they can’t find much common ground. […] The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man’s condition. On the other hand, the scientists believe that the literary intellectuals are totally lacking in foresight, peculiarly unconcerned with their brother men, in a deep sense anti-intellectual, anxious to restrict both art and thought to the existential movement. And so on. Anyone with a mild talent for invective could produce plenty of this kind of subterranean back-chat. On each side there is some of it which is not entirely baseless. It is all destructive. Much of it rests on misinterpretations which are dangerous. (Snow, 4-5)

According to Stefan Collini’s introduction to the 1993 edition of The Two Cultures, Snow was far from being the first to express concern about the split between the two streams of scholarly inquiry. He describes an 1880 lecture by T.H. Huxley at Mason College in Birmingham, England, during which Huxley called into doubt the value of a traditional classical education and promoted a greater focus on the sciences in the British educational system:

Science, [Huxley] affirmed, formed part of culture and offered a rigorous mental training, as well as making an indispensable contribution to national well-being. In tones that were to become familiar in the subsequent century, he denounced the resistance to the claims of scientific education by the defenders of the traditional classical curriculum as, therefore, both unjustified and short-sighted. (XIV)

Matthew Arnold—poet, cultural critic and Professor of Poetry at Oxford University—responded to Huxley during his 1882 Rede lecture with a defense of a humanities-based education:

Above all, [Arnold] insisted that a training in the natural sciences might produce a practically valuable specialist, but it could not turn out an ‘educated’ man: for this, literature, especially the literatures of antiquity, remained indispensable. (XV)

While the exchange between Huxley and Arnold was described as amicable, Snow would face fierce criticism, the most ferocious of which came from literary critic F. R. Leavis during a lecture in 1962. Mooney describes the public impression of Leavis’—partially personal—attacks on Snow as follows:

As one ringside observer put it, Leavis “threw Sir Charles Snow over his shoulder several times and then jumped on him…the whole thing left one with a sense of comradely sympathy for Sir Charles, as it might be for a man who had been involved in a serious motor accident.” The eminent critic Lionel Trilling added that while he had problems with Snow’s argument, there could be “no two opinions” about Leavis’s breach of decorum: “It is a bad tone, an impermissible tone.”

By reacting in this manner, Leavis might have actually given further support to Snow’s argument, at least as far as the lack of mutual understanding between scientists and humanists was concerned.

As Collini explains, Snow’s point of view was in part determined by the particular circumstances of the academic and educational environment of Great Britain in the post-World War II period. Besides associating a humanistic education with a higher social status, the British educational system of that time was designed with an emphasis on specialization by pushing “academically gifted children to start concentrating wholly upon science subjects or humanities subjects from as early as fourteen years old, to study only three of these subjects between sixteen and eighteen, and then to concentrate exclusively upon one while at university” (XVI).

Of course, specialization is a necessary factor in the development of every discipline. Given the growth of knowledge, no single individual can hope to keep up-to-date with every discussion or discovery in his or her broader area of study; the Renaissance generalists who could make groundbreaking contributions in a multitude of fields seem to be a thing of the past. This need for specialization also means that the aforementioned communication problems do not exist only between the sciences and humanities, but can also affect sub-disciplines within each of these broader categories:

But all these fields or sub-fields have increasingly developed their own concerns, methods, and vocabularies to the point where no one division is obviously more significant than all others. The theoretical economist and the critic of French poetry are as mutually incomprehensible in their professional work as ever ‘scientists’ and ‘humanists’ were supposed to be. (Collini, LV)

Now, what can be done to help reduce these communication barriers between the various fields? One important step for members of the academic and research community would be to view their work not only as contributions to their respective disciplines, but as an integral part of the larger academic enterprise:

Rather, we need to encourage the growth of the intellectual equivalent of bilingualism, a capacity not only to exercise the language of our respective specialisms, but also to attend to, learn from, and eventually contribute to, wider cultural conversations. Obviously, it may help if one’s education, has not been too specialized too early, and Snow’s warning remains pertinent here. But more important still will be the nurturing within the ethos of the various academic specialisms not only of some understanding of how their activities fit into a larger cultural whole, but also of a recognition that attending to these larger questions is not some kind of off-duty voluntary work, but is an integral and properly rewarded part of professional achievement in the given field. (Collini, LVII-LVIII)

One interesting example of what can happen when researchers from different parts of the academic spectrum decide to collaborate and find innovative approaches to furthering each other’s disciplines is study by Timothy Stinson, an English professor at my institution, North Carolina State University, and his brother Michael, a biologist at Southside Virginia Community College. In order to be able to more precisely date early medieval manuscripts, they decided to extract DNA from the parchment of manuscripts of known dates and add the genetic information to a reference database. This would then allow future researchers to not only date texts more easily, but even determine which herd served as the source for a specific piece of parchment.

So why am I writing about this on a blog dedicated to libraries and librarians? I think that there are two areas in which this topic affects us as librarians and the way we interact with our patrons. The bilingualism that Collini refers to in his quote requires an openness and curiosity towards other academic and professional traditions. As Hilary Davis discussed in a post on In The Library With A Lead Pipe (“Déformation Professionnelle,” March 17, 2010), this is something that we as librarians should keep in mind. She points out the value of leaving your professional comfort zone—e.g., by attending professional events outside of your field of specialization—in order to get a different view on problems you are dealing with or finding out about problems of which you have not been aware.

Even more importantly, libraries have the potential to improve both collaboration and communication between the various academic disciplines and help overcome at least some of the chasm that Snow and others have described. Librarians are well positioned to serve as people connectors on campus. Through their work as collection managers or library instructors, many librarians have, over the years, formed close relationships with faculty members in many different departments and colleges and are usually more or less familiar with each individual’s work. They are therefore in a better position than many faculty members to see similarities in research and teaching interests across departmental boundaries and could therefore connect possible future collaborators and, in the process, point out the benefits of involving the library in their projects.

This broader involvement in the intellectual campus life is one of many things I enjoy about working in a large academic library: in general, we are not dedicated to any single part of the institution, but the library exists to serve the entire campus community: faculty, students and staff representing every unit of the university. Although we have several branch libraries that specialize for more narrowly-defined user populations, the library as a whole is seen as a place that provides help and resources to every person on campus. In a sense, the library seems like a neutral zone where everybody can come together and get equal access to work and collaboration spaces, collections, and recreational services. It is in our best interest to expand on this aspect of our role within the campus community, even (perhaps especially) in the face of the frozen or reduced budgets many of us are facing. By establishing ourselves not just as a resource and service provider, but a collaborator in the production and dissemination of research, we can justify our existence in an age where an abundance of seemingly free external electronic resources might cause some to question the continued financial investment in our collections and services.

Libraries (of course again depending on the availability of funds) could establish collaborative workspaces that are not governed by specific departments or colleges and thus make it easier for faculty with diverse disciplinary affiliations to work together on an equal footing. Instead of assuming that “if you build it, they will come,” we should, from early on, engage our target audience in the planning of these spaces in order to make them as relevant and, at the same time, as flexible as possible. The facilities and infrastructure should be combined with qualified staff to provide the project management and technical development support necessary to support the collaborative projects, similar to what is already being done at the University of Virginia Library’s Scholars’ Lab, which was initially established to promote innovative work in the humanities and social sciences.

Librarians seem to be well suited for this task. When I was a student in the Humanities Computing program at the University of Alberta, a professor mentioned that he envisioned the program’s graduates as mediators, or translators, in digital humanities projects between academic researchers—the subject specialists—and the technical support who would be responsible for the implementation of a project’s technical aspects. Given the diverse professional and academic experience as well as technical and management skills many librarians have accumulated even before entering the library world, it seems that they would be well-suited to play a similar role when it comes to connecting faculty from different parts of the academic community and encouraging them to exchange ideas.

Besides being connectors and mediators, they could also provide vital support during the final stage of a collaborative research project, i.e., its dissemination. The more diverse the academic disciplines are that are represented in any given project, chances are that the participants’ ideas with regards to the most appropriate publishing strategies are equally as disparate. Again, librarians might be able to provide valuable support and advice on the best course of action.

Although it is illusionary to claim that we can really overcome the increasing compartmentalization of academic disciplines and the resulting communication barriers between many fields, I think that as librarians, we do not just have the opportunity, but also the obligation to encourage and enable more collaboration between different academic disciplines and cultures, such as the sciences and humanities. Not only will it make for better understanding between a father and a daughter, but it will also provide our libraries with a stronger foundation for the future and our society with a better understanding of itself.

I would like to thank Hilary Davis (IntheLibrarywiththe LeadPipe) and Babi Hammond (NCSU Libraries) for their valuable feedback on the first draft and my wife Valerie for her help in editing this article.

References:

• “About Us: Scholar’s Lab.” http://www.scholarslab.org/about/. Accessed August 29, 2010.
• Davis, Hilary. “Déformation Professionnelle.” http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2010/deformation-professionnelle/. Accessed August 14, 2010.
• Mooney, Chris. “The Science Lover and the Snob.” http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/04/the-science-lover-and-the-snob/. Accessed August 12, 2010.
• Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures. Cambridge UP, 1993.
• Thompson, Andrea. “DNA May Reveal Origins of Medieval Manuscripts” http://www.livescience.com/history/090210-dna-manuscripts.html.  Accessed August 29, 2010.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Arnold
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Huxley
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_P_Snow
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._R._Leavis

Photo by Flickr user Nathan deGargoyle

Recently I was lucky enough to come across the publication of a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace in 2005 to a group of wide-eyed graduates from Kenyon College. While it’s difficult to sum up what one takes away from a four-year-degree, this particular rumination helps to qualify the value of a liberal arts education by hitting home a simple metaphor.

Wallace starts with a joke about fish. One looks to the other and says, “So, how’s the water?” The other fish replies, “What’s water?” The speech goes on to point out that a liberal arts education opens our eyes to the world around us by providing experiences that help us move beyond our assumptions. Situations and phenomena in our daily lives become more nuanced and complicated.

Helping students “see the water” is at the heart of the information literacy teaching that librarians-as-educators do. When I think globally about information literacy and what’s outlined by the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards, it seems we want students to open their eyes to the world of information. We want them to recognize that finding and using information isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Not so that they’ll shy away, but instead, graduate with the abilities and understandings they need to shed assumptions, ask questions, and navigate an ever-changing information landscape.

The individual goals and means of library instruction programs may vary, but some form of teaching happens at most academic libraries. Librarians’ teaching takes the form of hosting workshops, teaching courses, and being there for students when and where they need us, from reference desks to chat rooms. And our teaching efforts are driven by goals for student learning, with the hope that we can play an active role in graduating information literate students–eyes wide open in the fish bowl.

But this is a lot to accomplish in a never-ending stream of one-shot library workshops. At this collective realization a few years ago, the librarians at my library decided to face it head on. Not that we thought one-shots weren’t effective, just that we weren’t sure what they were accomplishing, exactly. Plus we were spending a lot of time teaching freshman how to find a book and an article and releasing them into the research paper abyss, and we wanted to consider other forms of teaching.

I know we’re not alone in grappling with this conundrum and I hope to hear how you and your library are working to address our shared challenge: how to design an instruction program that meets our learning goals for students.

A bit of background

To begin addressing the learning goals we had for students, we first looked to the first-year writing courses that streamed through the library, English 101 and English 102. As is most likely the case in academic libraries across the country, we had been actively trying to reach as many students with foundational information literacy know-how in their first years of academic work. No matter how tailored our instruction was to a given assignment, we still felt a bit like broken records; each workshop needed to cover the “basics” and we rarely got past the book-and-article routine. We were left unsure of the impact of our efforts. Like ducks in a pond, we appeared calm atop while our feet below paddled furiously to keep up.  So we began dreaming up our ideal instructional opportunity: a foundational information literacy course that gave students the time and space to meet the learning goals we set for them.

Though Boise State University’s library has been teaching a one-credit library research skills class for the past decade or so, it had yet to reach its potential. Titled University 106: Library research, it has historically been a self-paced course that has students complete a series of question-and-answer worksheets, for instance: “go to the Library of Congress Subject headings and find a narrower term for sports accidents.” More recently it has evolved into a project-based course where students continuously work towards several small or one more substantial culminating paper, bibliography or presentation.

In the past two years, we’ve thrown the course into perpetual beta, ever evolving the curriculum, and have been testing the waters by experimenting with how the course is taught: in-person, online, and as a themed course (for example, one semester we “themed” two courses by focusing on Business Resources and Diversity). We’ve also continuously expanded our offerings of Univ106 from one large section to 23 sections this spring semester, taught by 13 librarians.

The in-person sections of Univ106 typically meet once a week for an hour in one of the computer classrooms in the library. There is also variation in how the online sections are offered. We have one large stand-alone, self-paced course that is capped at 150 students and team-taught by two librarians. We host this online course through Blackboard, our campus course management system, in order to use the time-saving features such as automatic grading for quizzes. We also offer smaller sections online, capped at 25 students, that make use of a variety of tools, including wikis, blogs, Google Sites and Blackboard.

While all Univ106 courses share standard learning outcomes, librarians have free rein to design experiences, activities and assignments that map how students get there. This freedom has led to a lot of creativity and experimentation with teaching techniques–from active learning to building video tutorials. Here’s an example of a typical weekly assignment in the revamped University 106. A student is first asked to find a newspaper article that mentions research on their topic. As a next step, the student is asked to track down the original research article mentioned in the newspaper article. The student then answer a series of questions about the authorship, audience and kind of information they find in each article. This exercise would be supported with how-to instructional videos, step-by-step directions, and worksheets that scaffold the process. As an instructional team, Boise State librarians have shared with one another while developing their own course content. I’ve learned a great amount from my colleagues as we’ve rolled up our sleeves and mucked around in the messy art of teaching.

Student learning has been the focus throughout all of this experimentation. The first semester I taught Univ106 I had my 25 students work towards creating or editing a Wikipedia entry of their choice. They were to add significant content with the support of at least 10  information sources–their justified “top 10” resources on a topic. A lot of things went well that semester: students showed up for our hour of class each week, performed the research-related tasks I asked of them, and even seemed to get excited when it came time to edit Wikipedia live. But at the end of the semester I was left with a sinking hunch that students weren’t making connections between what they learned in Univ106 and the research they would need to do for future courses; a hunch I’ve yet to confirm, but about which I am still curious. We’ll get to more on assessment in a bit.

The problem was I spent much of that first semester fabricating a reason for my students to do academic research. By choosing Wikipedia as the genre for their final project, I’d tried to create a context that was meaningful for them (beyond, “because I said so”), but I still felt as if a majority of the students were a bit too complacent about the work. I was left wondering how to better tap into their innate curiosity; I wanted my students to have genuine questions, an authentic information need to satisfy. But was I asking too much? University 106 is a one-credit pass/fail class, after all. That’s a lot of enthusiasm and engagement to expect for one credit.

Pairing University 106 with English 102

Armed with a renewed enthusiasm for teaching, and with our eyes on the prize–laying a foundation of information literacy in the first years at Boise State –we looked to trends and best practices in the profession. Embedded librarianship has received a lot of interest in recent years, and seems to have had some success as a method of teaching information literacy skills to students at the point of need (Bowler & Street, 2008). The basic idea is to teach more than a one-time workshop in support of a project. Instead, the embedded librarian has an ongoing  instructional presence in a course or project-based situation, either online or in person through a series of tailored workshops. With embedded librarianship in mind, we embarked on a series of conversations with the First Year Writing Program to explore possibilities.

As in many academic libraries, our instruction program had for several years been targeting our teaching efforts towards English 102: Research Writing for a variety of reasons. As the course title indicates, the focus of course is to develop research-based writing abilities, and so is a good fit for library research instruction. Engl102 is also a course all students are required to take and usually take in their first year at Boise State, which opens to the door to the possibility of reaching most incoming students with meaningful information literacy instruction. So librarians set out to proactively explore how to partner with Engl102 faculty in the development of our instructional offerings so that we could identify and meet student needs.

Targeting collaborations with Engl102 also made sense because of existing partnerships with faculty in the First Year Writing Program. Thomas Peele, First Year Writing Program Assistant Director, had already been leading a curricular change to emphasize research (Peele & Phipps, 2007). Based on annual assessments of student work, the First Year Writing Program had identified students’ limited research skills as needing additional instruction. When I started at Boise State University I had assumed that building relationships with key campus partners would take years, but instead I was able to hit the ground running. Within a year of my arrival, we were already discussing possibilities for co-teaching courses or pairing English 102 with University 106 as co-requisites, and the more we talked, the more the doors kept opening wider. It’s been an instruction librarian’s dream come true; a collaboration and mutual goal to support student learning.

So, we’d found our match. The next step was to align the work librarians had been doing to redesign Univ106 with the instructional needs presented in Engl102.

PoWeR-up!

In spring 2009 Kim Leeder and I embarked on teaching four sections of linked Univ106/Engl102 courses, taking two each. Students co-enrolled in paired courses of Engl102 and Univ106. Of course, we needed to come up with a catchy way for students to recognize this new offering, and so it became Project Writing and Research (PoWeR). We pitched it to students as a combined four-credit experience that would strengthen their research-writing skills. University 106 would act as a research lab for writing assignments in English 102 and the curricula would align so that the courses would be mutually supportive at the day-to-day level. Kim and I met individually with our English faculty counterparts and designed a series of weekly activities and developed shared assignments that directly supported the research-based papers and projects students were working towards in Engl102.

Right away I felt a different level of engagement from my students. I didn’t have to spend as much time introducing the “why” for research; the context existed in the paper writing of English 102. I could instead spend more time helping students explore and refine a topic and make it interesting for themselves and their intended audience. Through their reflections and performance on assignments, it was clear students were seeing the applicability of the research side of things. I often received comments from a student who expressed in amazement that they were able to find articles for a biology assignment and other coursework. It was working! Students were becoming better researchers and beginning to understand how these skills could be applied beyond University 106.

Since then we’ve expanded PoWeR course offerings from 4 to 20 sections. This growth has been supported by a state funded grant aimed to integrate technology into teaching in higher education. We’ve spent the past fall leading a series of collaborative institutes in which librarians and English faculty worked together to build the combined English 102/University 106 curriculum and content. The institutes resulted in a series of University 106 modules of research instruction, including content, activities and assessment. The modules currently number 22 in all and cover topics from image and video searching to field research to crafting search terms. Librarians and English faculty also worked to create a combined course schedule in order to ensure the Univ106 modules directly supported the weekly writing and research expectations for Engl102.

This push towards offering 20 sections has been quite an effort for everyone involved. Collaborating closely with English faculty has made our course design that much richer and, well, more fun–certainly for us, and we hope for students as well.

Photo by Flickr user Nathan deGargoyle

But, did they really get it?

Assessment has been a key tool to aid our decision-making processes, from deciding on course offerings to how we deliver and design course content. It was clear early on that if we were to put intensive efforts towards Engl102 instruction, we needed to know if students were actually learning what we intended.

At the end of each semester we’ve collected portfolios of student work from PoWeR sections. The portfolios typically consist of final drafts of their major papers and a reflective letter in response to prompts on both their growth as a research and a writer. Librarians and English faculty developed a rubric to assess the quality of student work in terms of source variety, source appropriateness, citation use, and research strategies employed. The assessment of student work has proven to be an insightful lens into what they’re learning and what they’re not, and this has directly informed the development of course content. It’s also forced us to articulate what proficient research looks like.

The spring 2009 assessment made clear that PoWeR students were using a wider variety of higher quality sources in their work. They were also significantly more able to discuss their research strategies. Students in both PoWeR and non-PoWeR sections of English 102 struggled with citations. In response, we created an annotated bibliography assignment for use during the fall 2009 semester in order to provide formative feedback for students on citations prior to submitting a final draft. The upcoming portfolio assessment this spring will show us whether the added assignment improves student performance.

Course evaluations have also proven useful when considering course delivery and activities. Students made it clear the first semester we taught PoWeR that they would prefer a combined course schedule and course site. This seems like a logical consideration now, but it was reflective of librarians and English faculty still thinking of the courses as separate in that first semester. I think the steps we’ve taken in the last semester to build on our collaborative efforts with English faculty while growing the PoWeR program has helped to create a one-course experience for students.

Opportunities & challenges

Although I’m hopeful heading into the spring semester, I’m also aware of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

First and foremost teaching Univ106, in all of its many forms, has proven a wonderful opportunity for librarians to grow as educators. We have learned to see through the water along with our students, and will continue to learn how to teach in a way that students learn. It’s felt like a cultural shift in librarian identity; my colleagues and I have truly seen ourselves as responsible for students becoming information literate, and therefore had to fully embrace our role as campus educators. Having instructional partners in the English Department, and seeing our teaching from their perspective, has also positively influenced the way we see ourselves as educators.

But with the ultimate goal of reaching all incoming freshman, the task is a bit daunting with finite resources; good teaching takes time and effort. I’m not sure that we’ll ever be able to match Univ106 with all 70 sections of Engl102, but the challenge is there. We would need to develop a scaleable model of course design and delivery that doesn’t take us backwards when it comes to student learning.

Some librarians have expressed interest in matching a Univ106-like-course to key courses in their disciplines. This is a wonderful idea, one that would tier the library instruction program to reach our goal of graduating information literate students. But we can’t be everywhere and do everything, so our course offerings will need to grow and balance over time. The ultimate goal is to have the academic library remain at the heart of teaching and learning on campus to ensure our relevancy as an academic unit and support student success in meaningful ways.

As a next step, we’ll begin an assessment project this spring to follow Univ106 students into future courses and beyond. We’ll be curious to see if students are able to transfer the foundational information literacy skills into their upper division coursework. The hope is to be better informed about what research abilities they’re expected to have in future courses, and we’ll use this insight to inform our course learning outcomes. We’ll see if they’re in fact able to see the water.

Instruction librarians are faced with the challenge of how to design and deliver an instructional program that meets information literacy learning goals. I’d like to hear about the efforts librarians are making at your own institution to address the information literacy needs of your students. I look forward to learning from your comments.

• Bowler, M. & Street, K. (2008). Investigating the efficacy of embedment: Experiments in information literacy integration. Reference Services Review, 36(4), 439-449.
• Peele, T. & Phipps, G. (2007). Research instruction at the point of need: Information literacy and online tutorials. Computers and Composition.

I’d like to thank Ellie Dworak, Emily Ford, Kim Leeder, Ellie Collier and Derik Badman for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions for this post.  And a special thanks to Kim Leeder for offering the opportunity to reflect on our work.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest
author, Lisa Carter! Lisa has just recently been appointed as Visiting Program Officer to work with the Association of Research Libraries Special Collections Working Group. Read more to learn about her vision and thought-provoking ideas about the future of special collections…

I’m beginning to think that what’s wrong with special collections and archives[1] today is that they are considered special.  They are set aside, revered and left as the last great mystery the Library holds.  The collections themselves are special in that they are rare, unique, fantastic and archaic and they do need special handling and care.  However, our regard for these materials has enabled us to treat them so differently that they are not accessible. We have locked these materials up in our processes and our delivery services, which has kept them out of the mainstream of information available to knowledge seekers.  They are only rarely seen as part of the knowledge building conversation[2] and it is because of how we (as librarians and archivists) treat them and present them.  We treat them as special in the sense of “separate,” “extra,” “having special needs” instead of special in that they are what make our library special as “distinctive signifiers,” “our enduring core” and “our unique contribution to the world of knowledge.”

As librarians and archivists redefine ourselves and better articulate how we add value, as we break down long established barriers in our processes, spaces and services, we need to include our most unique collections.  We regularly leverage quickly evolving trends in the information environment by refocusing on the needs and preferences of our users in the context of very real competition and economic difficulty.  In this framework, libraries can embrace their special collections and archives as a locus of distinction, experimentation and core value.  The time has come for libraries to integrate special collections into the flow in every aspect of our work.

Distinctive Signifiers

Libraries and librarians are constantly increasing their coolness quotient. American Libraries declares that “The Bunheads are Dead” and celebrates the diversity of backgrounds and work we all do to help people discover information. By adding learning/information commons and coffee bars, participating in social networks, or hiring technically oriented, experimental, responsive, and adaptable information professionals, libraries strive to stay relevant.  Special Collections areas and the librarians and archivists working in them are similarly adapting to change, focusing on users and experimenting with technology[3].  In many cases, however, they are going at it independently, because they are in separate departments with the special materials.

Today’s archivists and librarians aren’t just cool because we have mad technology skills, because our place has the best coffee and sweet comfy chairs or because we are über-helpful.  We also have the coolest stuff.  What is fundamental to our shared purpose, critical to our central mission, and key to our very identity is our ability to connect our communities to knowledge and the raw materials that inspire knowledge; and those resources exist concretely in our collections.

“As we increasingly share a collective collection of books, it is the special collections that will distinguish our institutions.”[4] The rawest representations of human endeavor and the building blocks of new knowledge are the rare materials and primary sources in our special collections and archives.  These collections are often developed around niche interests and grounded in localized expertise.  They not only address the specific informational needs of their constituency, but also distinguish their institution in the larger research community.  African-American cookbooks are collected at the University of Alabama; Willa Cather‘s manuscripts, letters, and photographs can be found at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; video and audio records in the Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance Collection are hosted at Ohio University; and digital assets of teaching and research are held by MIT in DSpace[5].  Public and special libraries also hold collections unique to their communities that distinguish them around the world. The Boston Public Library and the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are just two high-profile examples.  These libraries stand out from their peers because of their particular collections.  As Nicholas Barker remarks in his introduction to Celebrating Research, “To be unique in some definable way, however recondite, makes [a library] the object of an attention that it would not otherwise attract.”

Connecting our users to information captured in our collective collections is the shared central challenge in our information-laden, dynamic, instant-gratification environment.  As professionals working in libraries with special collections and archives, exposing our singular collections is our unique contribution to the broader world of knowledge.  We must do this in the context of trends in the field, including enhancing teaching and learning, increasing efficiency and productivity in creating access, and seizing opportunities presented by technology.

Improving Teaching and Learning

Information seeking is personal.  Users can be motivated by the paper that is due the next day, a group with which they identify, or a personal experience or interest.  In her November 5, 2008 post on this blog, Ellie Collier discusses “sticky ideas” and the value of simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.  Special collections and archives contain locally relevant, unique materials and are a rich source for those kinds of stories.  In an academic library, the university archives holds materials from the past that reflect today’s student experience.  A public library can connect materials about the immigrants’ lives in the 1900s with the situation of modern-day migrant workers’ families in their community.

Primary sources and other research materials from special collections can get learners thinking critically about how a source relates to their own information seeking (and generating) behavior.  How is a pioneer’s diary about her experiences on the Oregon Trail like a student’s use of Facebook to document her service trip to Costa Rica?  What is the difference between the actual text of JFK’s address at Rice University on the nation’s space effort and your local newspaper accounts of it, and how does that compare to watching President Obama’s inauguration speech on YouTube and watching CNN’s analysis of it the next day?  By leveraging and analyzing special collection materials to enhance learning experiences, the context of information creation, analysis and transmission can become highly personalized.

As you contemplate your next discussion with your users about “the many types of useful information [and] how and when to use them”[6] and engage them in an information source’s “back story,” consider using special collections materials to make your point.  Librarians, faculty and archivists should collaborate on instructional opportunities to ensure that all kinds of information sources are considered during research.  Integrating special collections into the classroom experience and at the reference desk can significantly enrich the library’s contribution to teaching and learning.

Streamlining the Creation of Access

In a time of tightening budgets and web-based information seeking, libraries are reenvisioning the role of and activities around resource description.  This shift could directly impact the availability of special collections and archival materials.  In Karen Calhoun’s 2006 report on The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools, she talks about strategies for keeping cataloging relevant including leading resource discovery by developing information systems that “surfac(e) research libraries’ rich collections in ways that will substantially enhance scholarly productivity worldwide.”

On the Record, a report from the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, provides concrete recommendations for the library field.  These include redirecting resources to enable discovery of special collections; creating basic-level access to all unique materials; focusing on practicable, flexible and user-centered description; integrating special collections into discovery arenas; and sharing special collections’ metadata and authority records[7]. To me this is a clear call to action to redirect cataloging resources to expose hidden special collections and archives, and to integrate discovery of these materials alongside that of our other collections.

While the broader library world considers directing more resources to exposing hidden collections, the archival community is also working to get more collections into the hands of the users more quickly.  In 2003, ARL published the white paper Hidden Collections, Scholarly Barriers, which notes that “the cost to scholarship and society of having so much of our cultural record sitting on shelves, inaccessible to the public, represents an urgent need of the highest order to be addressed by ARL and other libraries.”  Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner’s article “More Product, Less Process” takes the archival community to task for the problem of hidden collections.  They suggest that archivists “give higher priority, in practice, to serving the perceived needs of our collections than to serving the demonstrable needs of our constituents.”  Many in the archival community are refocusing their processing work to expedite access by undertaking only necessary arrangement, minimal preservation steps and sufficient description to promote use.

This new focus has cut to the core of activity in Special Collections and Archives. Some Special Collections have focused on creating collection-level records for all collections, processed and unprocessed, for their library catalogs.  Others are facing the challenges of providing access to minimally processed or unprocessed collections, such as materials security, researcher frustration and processing on-demand.  Archivists are setting aside perfection and learning to embrace the inherent messiness of archival records in order to put access first.  This places the onus back on researchers to find specifics and meaning in massive collections.  We are redefining ourselves from gatekeepers and interpreters of history to facilitators of access[8].

If we could combine the transformation that is taking place in our cataloging departments with the transition in archival practice, libraries could create a revolution in access.  The result will be an explosion of unique descriptive information that could be used to discover distinctive collections worldwide.  The original cataloging skills (analytical and descriptive) that catalogers have honed on circulating library materials can be redeployed (with minimal retraining) to assist with the arrangement and description of significant amounts of unprocessed collections.  Aptitude for manipulating, managing and reusing structured metadata can unlock the unrealized potential of our Encoded Archival Description finding aids.  Catalogers’ understanding of data normalization and metadata mapping can pull data out of home-grown archival description tools and deposit it in places where it can be manipulable and discoverable in user-friendly access systems.  By reenvisioning the work in cataloging and in archives, libraries will be able to offer greater discoverability for their most precious resources.

Web 2.0

Enhanced discoverability can only be truly realized when libraries develop tools that expose the descriptive work of catalogers and archivists to the surface of the Web.  This is where those tech-savvy information professionals come in.  Many special collections librarians and archivists are trying to open online dialogs about their materials with users.  Archives blogs are growing in number (check out the Society of North Carolina Archivists’  blogroll for a sample from North Carolina).  However, blogs’ reach still tends to be limited to existing users or those who seek out the archives and exposure is only on highlighted collections.

The Next Generation Finding Aids research group at the University of Michigan is exploring “new online collaborative technologies, such as filtering and recommender systems, [to] allow for new methods of interacting with and experiencing primary sources.”  Statistics from their test bed, The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections, demonstrate that even a project with a very limited (but passionate) user base can result in significant attention and engagement, particularly when it comes to users contributing descriptive information about materials.[9] Meanwhile the Triangle Research Library Network (TRLN) in North Carolina is investigating whether indexing Encoded Archival Description metadata in its shared catalog can bring combined discoverability to archival collections as it has for circulating materials.  Early challenges have exposed the differences that exist in archival descriptive practice that will need to be overcome to enable cross searching of archival finding aids.

Addressing the challenge from another direction, libraries are realizing increased access after two decades of digitizing their special collections and archives.  Digital copies of selected items are available in a wide variety of institution-based digital repositories and content management systems.  Many of these efforts have been “boutique” or highly focused projects to digitize cherry-picked items.  Just as item-level preservation has been identified as an unsustainable practice in “More Product, Less Process” (MPLP), selective digitization projects have left “our vast collections represented by a relatively small number of gorgeous images, lovingly selected, described, and presented in deep web portals.”[10] If we are to truly explode access to special collections materials, we need to take a less discerning approach to digitizing.

Following on MPLP, libraries are now beginning to test models for mass digitization of special collections materials.  Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get Into the Flow, an essay reflecting on the Digitization Matters forum, encourages libraries to scan for access, scan on demand, scan whole collections or representative chunks, describe scanned items minimally, and focus on quantity and discoverability.  In addition, the authors suggest that “increasing access to special collections needs to be programmatically embedded across the enterprise.  Continuing to give these activities ‘special project’ status implies that providing access is not mission-essential.”  The bottom line: exposing special collections is not a Special Collections problem; it is an enterprise-wide opportunity.

A few institutions have taken on the challenge.  The Smithsonian Archives of American Art received a Terra Foundation for American Art grant to digitize entire collections “with equipment designed specifically for increased levels of production” and to describe materials in aggregations rather than at the item level. The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections has developed a streamlined production model that has reduced their digitizing costs from $1.53 per page to $0.33 per page[11]; however, in usability testing they found that students “reported wanting MORE not LESS metadata.”[12] Experiments with providing digitized images with minimal metadata embody the sacrifice made when choosing quantity over quality.

The Library of Congress found that enlisting users in the description of materials may counteract the initial lack of rich item-level metadata.  As reported in For the Common Good the Library made two collections of photographs available online in the Flickr Commons, inviting users to contribute enhanced descriptions.  According to the report, “7,166 comments were left on 2,873 photos by 2,562 unique Flickr accounts. ….  More than 500 Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) records have been enhanced with new information provided by the Flickr Community.”  With engagement like that, why agonize over description and subject headings?  The ability of users to connect with collections on this personal level also increases their sense of ownership and relationship to history.  Knowledge-building is borne out of this kind of personalized learning.

Additional archives-based efforts to expose unique collections in the Web 2.0 environment are listed on the ArchivesNext blog.  To most effectively contribute their distinctive building blocks of knowledge to the broader research environment, however, libraries cannot relegate digitization and discovery innovation to special projects in Special Collections.  Alongside realigning the description and data-structure expertise provided by catalogers, libraries must apply the technical, programming and development proficiency in their information technology departments to this challenge.  The expertise cultivated in reference, instructional, outreach, and collection-management staff is also critical to insuring that these efforts are relevant in addressing users’ needs.

Convergence

For libraries to contribute effectively to knowledge-building in their communities, the constructed partition that has set special collections aside as “special” must be dismantled.  It is time to integrate the selection, description, research service and technological activities in every library with those needed to connect users to our most distinctive, unique collections.  Libraries must recognize that while the collections are special and even have special needs, the talents and skills needed to expose them are found library-wide.  Additionally, many special collection materials are now born digital and do not require physical segregation in our traditional Special Collections units.  Further, enterprise-wide effort is even more critical to born-digital collections’ exposure and survival.  Users just want the best information for their task and they want it to be available all in the same place.

The Research Library Group outlines a continuum of collaboration in libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) that begins with contact between two entities, moves through cooperation and coordination to collaboration and eventually arrives at convergence.  As LAMs move through the continuum, they grow towards shared investment and risk, but realize more profound benefits.  When collaboration becomes convergence, shared activity becomes infrastructure.[13] In today’s libraries, we need convergence around special collections that erases our existing silos.

Special Collections and Archives may sense a loss of their unique identity during such a transformation.  Partners in other library units may resist activity previously outside their purview. Yet sharing responsibility for our distinctive, valued and unique collections will raise the profile of the whole library and, most importantly, benefit our users.

Special collections reflect our enduring identities by defining who we were, informing what we will become, and distinguishing our communities.  As critical components in the knowledge conversation, special collections must be integrated with other resources, and exposed in the same venues and pathways.  As collections that each library can uniquely contribute to the overall research and learning environment, they must be mainstreamed and acknowledged as mission-critical.  It is only the collections that are special in Special Collections, not the work of making them accessible and not our users.  For the sake of our users and our libraries we need to stop treating them separately.

What you can do:

• Selectors, collection managers and branch librarians, talk to the curators in Special Collections and Archives about how you can help with strategically targeted collection building efforts. What makes a relevant, distinctive collection in your community?
• Catalogers and metadata experts, discuss the metadata generation, manipulation and transformation needs for special collections with lead processors. You’d be surprised at how much assistance you can provide but be prepared to face big challenges and quantities.
• Access and delivery services, you can’t imagine the expertise you can share regarding collection maintenance, security and tracking until you have that cup of coffee with the reference staff in Special Collections.
• Reference and information services, engage your Special Collections colleagues in your instruction activities. Consider cross-training on the reference desks, offer to cover a reference shift in Special Collections. Special Collections and Archives folks, rotate into service on the main reference desk.
• Information technology, imagine the opportunities! There are databases, finding aids and home grown systems to integrate, improve and streamline. Let Special Collections offer you a challenge that will make managing server space and device inventories look easy.
• Digital initiatives, if you want content, we’ve got content. Allow Special Collections to be your playground for implementing new, cool tools. We’ve got digital objects coming out of our ears. Can you get them onto desktops, mobile devices and course management systems?
• Special collections and archivist colleagues, share your most interesting challenges, be willing to let others muck around in your stuff, be articulate and practical about your needs and think creatively about what you have to offer your colleagues in return.

Thanks to Josh Ranger and Bill Landis for their ideas, feedback and careful reading of a draft of this piece and to Hilary Davis and Kim Leeder from ItLwtLP for their encouragement, questions and suggestions for each version. Thanks to Hilary and Brett Bonfield for last minute technical assistance.  Special thanks to Ben Carter who stayed home to provide technical support and thwart bad behavior plugins.

[2] For an interesting discussion on the knowledge building conversation and the library’s role in participatory networks, read the Information Institute of Syracuse’s technology brief Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation for ALA.  Not only do they envelop special collections as key aspects of the conversation but they also address the importance of innovating technology “at the core of the library.”

[3] For more on reenvisioning archival identity, see Mark Green’s inaugural presidential address for SAA “Strengthening Our Identity, Fighting Our Foibles.”

[4] Quoted from Ricky Erway’s “Supply and Demand:  Special Collections and Digitisation” for Liber Quarterly, 2008.  Many variations of this sentence have been appearing in various commentaries since the publication of ARL’s anniversary publication Celebrating Research with Nicholas Barker’s persuasive introduction.

[5] These collections (and more) were highlighted by their institutions as distinctive signifiers of their collections for ARL’s Celebrating Research:  Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries in celebration of the Association’s 75^th anniversary.

[6] Quoted from Ellie Collier’s “In Praise of the Internet: Shifting Focus and Engaging Critical Thinking Skills” In the Library with the Lead Pipe, January 7, 2009.

[7] Found in Recommendations 2.1.1-2.1.5 on pages 22 and 23 of the Library of Congress’s On the Record.

[8] The self identification of archivists as “gatekeepers of history” is interrogated by Barbara L. Craig, in “Canadian Archivists:  What Types of People Are They,”, Ann Pederson, “Understanding Ourselves & Others:  Australian Archivists & Temperament,” and Charles R. Schultz, “Archivists:  What Types of People Are They?”  Provenance 14: (1996).

[9] For more on the Polar Bear Expedition Project, please refer to the article by Magia Ghetu Krause and Elizabeth Yakel, “Interaction in Virtual Archives: The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections Next Generation Finding Aid” American Archivist 70:2, Fall – Winter 2007, pages 282-314.

[10] Quoted from Ricky Erway and Jennifer Schaffner’s Shifting Gears:  Gearing up to Get Into the Flow from OCLC Programs and Research, 2007.

[11] Which Joshua Ranger told us at the 2006 MAC Fall Symposium.

[12] Reported at the SAA Meeting in 2008 and in a handout to OCLC’s Member’s Council in February 2008. While the work at the The Smithsonian Archives of American Art is groundbreaking in scope and methodology, Ranger’s work explores how any library can make an effort towards quick and dirty digitization and the ramifications.

[13] For more on the collaboration continuum see Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums by Diane Zorich, Gunter Waibel and Ricky Erway for OCLC Programs and Research, 2008.