Dane Ward

1
Librarian-Faculty Collaboration An Imperative
for Higher Education

• Dane Ward
• Associate Dean for Public Services,
• Illinois State University

2

• What is collaboration? What does it look like?
• Why is collaboration an imperative for academic
  libraries and higher education?
• If it is so important, how do we get there?

3
The Quest for Collaboration

• Networking
• Coordination
• Collaboration

4
Collaboration and Related Concepts

• Networking involves exchanging information for
  mutual benefit an informal process with few
  clear goals.
• Coordination occurs when individuals have
  identified a common goal, but work towards it
  independently, each completing their parts they
  have no overlapping responsibilities.

5
What is Collaboration?

• A mutually beneficial and well-designed
  relationship entered into by two or more
  individuals to achieve common goals.
• --Mattesich and Monsey, Collaboration What
  Makes it Work, 1992.

6
Looking at Collaboration
7
Martin Bubers I and Thou

8
Martin Bubers I and Thou

• All real living is meeting.
• Only when things become our It, can they be
  coordinated. The Thou knows no system of
  coordination.

Library of Congress, Prints Photographs
Division,
9
Moments of discovery

• The moments of discovery, the collaborative
  moments, take place when a pair of friends are
  so open and trusting with one another that they
  can share their wildest, most tentatively held
  ideas. In these moments, new ideas seem to emerge
  from the dialogue without belonging to either
  of the pair, and afterward they may not be able
  to say who had the ideas first. (Farrell, M.
  Collaborative Circles, 2001)

10
Three Phases of Collaboration

• Collegialthe two partners stay in their own
  domains and work from the conventions of their
  own disciplines.

• Interpersonalthe partners begin to explore
  personal and interdisciplinary areas of interest.
  They take an interest in aspects of the other
  field, and attempt to incorporate new ideas into
  their own.

11
Three Phases of Collaboration

• Syncreticthe boundaries separating disciplines
  begin to blur, and the partners are in the space
  of collaboration, or of listening together in a
  special way. The partners find a common language
  and way of working.

12

• http//youtube.com/watch?vdGCJ46vyR9o

• Why is robust collaboration like this important
  for the future of libraries and higher education?

13
Collaboration Driving Forces

• What weve known
• Deep relationships yield strong student learning
• Personal and professional meaning,
• Faculty and librarian retention

14
Collaboration Driving Forces

• calls for accountability and for quantitative
  measures of library contributions to research,
  teaching, and service missions
• --Mullins, J.L., Allen, F. R., and Hufford, J. R.
  Top ten assumptions for the future of academic
  libraries and librarians, http//www.ala.org/ala/a
  crl/acrlpubs/crlnews /backissues2007
  /april07/tenassumptions.cfm)

15
Collaboration Driving Forces

• Employers want graduates who can
• problem solve
• work in groups
• communicate effectively

16
Collaboration Driving Forces

• A pedagogical revolution focused on relational
  learning
• Collaborative learning communities
• Active, experience-based learning
• Technologically enhanced learning
• (Gene Rice, Senior Scholar, American Association
  of Colleges Universities, April 26, 2008)

17
Collaboration Driving Forces

• Generational changes in academic work, evolving
  from more individualistic to more collaborative
  work.
• (Gene Rice, AACU, 2008)

American Environmental Photographs Collection,
AEP Image Number, e.g., AEP-MIN73, Department
of Special Collections, University of Chicago
Library.
18
Collaboration Driving Forces

• Emerging participative, boundary-spanning working
  and learning styles is gradually breaking down
  the departmentalization of an industrial-era
  institution.

Centers
Grants
Non-Tenure Faculty
19
Barriers to Collaboration

• Lack of time
• Individualistic personalities
• Resilience of organizational culture
• Evaluation processes
• Inadequate institutional planning

20
Pathways to Collaboration

• There are no recipes or formulae, no checklists
  or advice that describe reality. There is only
  what we create through our engagement with others
  and with events.
• --Margaret Wheatley

21
The 5 Ps of Collaboration

• PassionDiscovering your enthusiasm as a
  librarian and collaborator
• ProjectDeveloping a clearly defined project with
  collaborative implications
• PlayFinding the ability to play with another in
  pursuit of the project

22
The 5 Ps of Collaboration

• Promote itTalking about the project and
  searching for possible collaborators
• Persist against opposition learning how to
  sustain your project when confronted by obstacles

23
Developing the Collaborative Culture

• Transforming the culturechanging the way we do
  things around hereis the main point. This
  re-culturing (process is) one that activates and
  deepens moral purpose through collaborative work
  cultures that respect differences and constantly
  build and test knowledge against measurable
  resultsa culture within which one realizes that
  sometimes being off balance is a learning
  moment.
• --Michael Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change,
  2001

24
Fullan on Culture and Collaboration

• Must question what we do around here
• Moral purpose
• Collaborative work cultures that respect
  differences
• Tests knowledge against results

25
How to create a collaborative organization

• Clarity about what we want to accomplish and the
  ability to see gaps between our ideal or vision
  and the present

26
How to create a collaborative organization

• A Learning Library with Soul
• Everybody learns it benefits our patrons and
  ourselves
• Greater intentionality through dialogue
• Structured to facilitate relationships and
  achieving our goals

27
Peter Senges Fifth Discipline

• Personal Mastery
• Mental Models
• Shared Vision
• Team Learning
• Systems Thinking

28
Life is about Collaboration

• We discover who we are face to face and side
  by side with others in work, love, and learning.
  All of our activity goes on in relationships,
  groups, associations, and communities ordered by
  institutional structures and interpreted by
  cultural patterns of meaning.
• Robert Bellah et al, Habits of the Heart, 1985