Collaborating with Nonlibrary Faculty for Assessment and Improved Instruction

Abstract

Collaboration with other entities and individuals has long been a standard practice of libraries. Typically, these collaborations seek to reduce redundancies, save money, and support educational and research efforts. However, a new model of collaboration exists that both assists discipline-specific research practices and informs library procedures. This article reviews two collaborations between an assessment librarian and a sociology class. The collaborations are unique because the library is the focus of the collaboration, with sociology students being able to apply classroom learning in a real-world setting. Several suggestions are provided for best practices when endeavoring to use this type of collaboration to inform library practice and engage students in hands-on learning.

Collaboration on LibGuides in public universities in South Africa

“…Collaboration between librarians and faculty on IL is perhaps the most written about area of collaboration by practicing librarians. Studies include IL collaborations to support LIS students (Sacchanand, 2012); collaboration to support disadvantaged students (Hsieh et al , 2013); collaborations to assist students to find information, write, reference and complete an assignment through embedded one-on-one consultations with the librarians (Gross et al ., 2016); three-way collaboration between librarians, students and faculty to write an assignment but at the same time assist the library with the interpretation of LibQual results (Zaugg and Child, 2016); and faculty–library collaboration to integrate technologies in IL classes (Kleinveldt and Zulu, 2016). Another form of collaboration between faculty and librarians is to write articles (Chang, 2016) though Maluleka and Onyancha (2016) argued that this rarely occurs in South Africa.…”