Student Learning Objective 8
The student effectively collaborates for the achievement of individual, organizational, professional, and societal goals.
Libraries are tasked with becoming more than warehouses of printed materials. They are becoming a third place, a nucleus of community, and a place where people come together to create information, share viewpoints, address problems, grow culturally, and learn new skills and information. To make all this happen, it takes more than each librarian working away solo in their little silo. Library work is more about collaboration with other individuals and organizations than it has ever been because the scope of library work in a digital age is broadening to include multiple kinds of literacy and a concern for social justice that I am pretty sure the public librarians I knew in my youth lacked. I’ll never forget Dr. Special saying in LIS 663 Library Services for Young People that the people who most need the library aren’t there, so we need to take the library to them. It is pretty much impossible to take the library out of the library building’s four walls without collaborating with someone else, a school, a park, a community center, a Boy’s and Girl’s Club. In addition, to get the best programming in the library, it is necessary to collaborate with specialists in many fields.
So, it follows that coursework in Library and Information Science involves quite a few collaborative projects for practice. My expectation was that these would be easy because the library in which I work has a wonderful team. We all pitch in on whatever needs doing, and, if we find a mistake, we fix it without worrying too much about who made the mistake, unless it turns up repeatedly. Then an all-staff email usually fixes the problem without having to single anyone out. On class projects for this program, it rapidly became apparent that collaboration is not as easy as I expected it to be. One of the first difficulties I noticed was that people don’t work at the same pace or with the same sense of urgency. There are always a few group members who are more relaxed about working right up until the deadline and some who are dedicated to getting the project in as early as possible. The latter group tends to stay on top of communication better and to run ahead of less connected group members and finish the project, forfeiting the others’ contribution and resenting their perceived laziness. Depending on who I am working with, I have been in each group. I found that the best way forward was for someone to serve/lead the group by making a signup sheet for various pieces of the project and then trusting that people would finish the items for which they signed up. It was also helpful to communicate when the group expected something to be done, ahead of the project deadline, so that it could be proofread or redelegated. Communication about who would do what and when fostered better communication when group members had difficulties with the task or in life that prevented their progress. All the groups I collaborated with were willing to work with someone who was having difficulty if they knew what was going on.
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Because I took LIS 617, Materials for Children, in the summer, our reading logs were collaborative. We each contributed four slides to each category. I have collected all my slides to link in this website.
In LIS 618, Materials for Adolescents, we collaborated on an author study for an Edwards award winner by each person’s reading one title by the author and then collaboratively making a presentation about the author and their work.
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In LIS 663 Library Services for Young People, we collaborated on program plans for various age groups. I am linking the program for preteens about the moon landing here, because I had the most input on that one.
By far the most ambitious collaboration we did in the classroom setting was in LIS 610 Collection Management. In this class we collaborated on choosing a collection for a hypothetical library. First, we outlined the library’s community and characteristics. Then we each contributed an annotated list of resources in a particular category that we would propose purchasing for that library. Then we put them all together on the library’s website, each person making the pages for their part of the collection.
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The final piece was a presentation justifying funding certain aspects of the collection.
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Then we evaluated ourselves and the others as group members. We also got to see everyone’s evaluation of us as a group member. This was a tough semester-long project, the most involved that I did in library school, and there was quite a bit of tension in the group from time to time. But we were all so proud of the end product and the presentation that we did about it that we seriously considered sending it to the library on which we based our hypothetical library to see if they could benefit from any of the ideas. The project was far stronger than anything that any of us as individuals could have done even given unlimited time. It was a true demonstration of the difficulties and the surpassing value of collaboration.
I have the opportunity in LIS 688, Community Informatics, to do some real-world collaboration. One of our assignments is to volunteer as a “cybernavigator”, a person who informally helps someone else learn about technology. My volunteer opportunity involved contacting Raleigh Parks and Recreation and volunteering for their Digital Inclusion Program. I attend classes and help students catch up on their own devices if they get behind the presenter. The Parks and Rec staff have extra help in the classroom, and I get valuable experience. We also have a “cyberorganizing” assignment which involves helping the community with a digital problem or divide. For mine, I am hoping to organize some of the teens at church to help congregation members put the church app on their phones and learn to use it. The teens will get an hour of community service, church members will get help with the app and I will get my project done! I am collaborating with our church’s Director of Communication and the Youth pastor as well as the teens to do this. Finally, our professor has given us the opportunity to take part in a research project, a Tech Help Survey, that involves citizen science across several nations. We are each doing one interview to add to the data set. The small efforts of many, many collaborators may add up to a valuable data set when all is said and done.
Throughout my master’s program, I have learned that the public library’s mission is broader than it has ever been; that far from dying out in the digital age, public libraries are considered nuclei around which community can form and be nourished. In some ways, public libraries are more vital than they have ever been because they are collaborating with other community organizations and individuals to build the common good. The collaborations I have done as part of my coursework have shown me both how vital and how difficult collaboration can be. I have learned valuable lessons to take with me into the collaborations I will take part in as a professional librarian. I look forward to the possibilities that will open up to my library as a result of collaborating with others.
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References:
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Stem Space Lander Challenge image. https://www.vivifystem.com/
