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| Photo by UNDP photo stream. Retrieved from https://flic.kr/p/8z1MfS |
I’d like to start today’s post with a short clip:
“The New York Public Library Has a Human Google”
In summary, It’s a video talking about a team of librarians at NYPL that will help users answer any researchable question they might have. They even discuss some of the more outlandish requests they have gotten and kept a record of them.
While it’s a meant to be a fun video, I think this is sometimes of the Teacher-librarian can be viewed by both staff and students - ask a question, get an answer - but there is definitely a lot more to the role. For students, building capacity and the knowledge of how to find an answer is equally, if not more important than assisting with an answer directly! For teachers, this could mean more in-depth collaboration discussions and longer “working relationships” in regards to a co-planned unit or assignment.
Collaboration has been an ongoing exploration for me in my library. While I have been doing some work in exploring our digital reference resources (as discussed in the Theme One post), currently, there are lots of requests for collaboration using some of the new technology we received as part of a district initiative (including robotics and other ADST materials).
These have been run multitude of different ways, but Callison’s definition of collaboration from Shayne Russell’s ERIC digest article has me rethinking how some of these learning opportunities should perhaps be formatted: collaboration is defined as “Each partner fulfills a carefully defined role; comprehensive planning is required; leadership, resources, risk, and control are shared; and the working relationship extends over a relatively long period of time” (Callison, 1999). I think perhaps because I am often the one initiating the collaboration, often it has fallen to me to construct what the core of the lesson looks like. While there are teacher to teacher discussions, it is often a short meeting; as discussed in the article - TLs with less overall flexible schedules tend to plan collaboratively for less time (Callison, 1999) - which I have been seeing in my own practice for better or for worse. However, I believe many teachers would absolutely be interested in going even further in-depth into a project or unit in the future. This is definitely something to think about! A carefully, collaboratively planned longer-term unit is perhaps a future goal for my library program.
Works Cited
Callison, D. (1999, January). Keywords in instruction: Collaboration. "School Library Media Activities Monthly," 15(5), 38-40.
Great Big Story (2016, October 17). The New York Public Library Has a Human Google. Retrieved February 19, 2018, from https://youtu.be/PfqgDG1qrKg
Russell, S. (n.d.). Teachers and Librarians: Collaborative Relationships. ERIC Digest. Retrieved February 19, 2018, from https://www.ericdigests.org/2001-2/librarians.html
