I am in my second year here, and my second year as a professional librarian. I find this to be my biggest challenge. I work at a private school, which means that we do not have a formal curriculum planning process. I have been able to get the 9th grade English teachers to bring their students in for orientation, but that is about as far as it goes.

Does anyone have some concrete advice for me about how to collaborate with faculty? Examples of what you have done would be SO helpful. Thanks in advance.

Sarah Ludwig
Library Director
Wilbraham & Monson Academy

A: Sarah, start small. You don't really need to collaborate with teachers (plural). You need to find one teacher to work with on one collaborative unit just one time. Think of some teacher struggling with a class, maybe someone owes you a favor, or just one of the most creative and innovative teachers you know, one that wouldn't mind a little risk-taking.

I suggest making a list of the teachers in three columns.

• Put in one column the stick-in-the-muds who would not collaborate with anyone, no way no how.
• In the middle column put the go-alongs, those who will go-along with whatever seems to be the thing to do. They need encouragement, but you can work with them.
• Then put in the last column the first ones in the pool, those who like it on the edge, have good ideas and work and play well with others.

Put an X through the first column. We don't have time or energy to "cast our pearls before swine". Put the second column away for now, and take up the third one.

Start circling names of likely targets. Pick one (just one), and estimate what he or she is teaching now. Come up with some vague likely ideas, and march off to meet with him or her. Don't email or call. It's harder to turn you down if you are standing there. If you get a no, choose another name. If you get a maybe, take it as a yes and set up some planning meetings.

When you get one going, talk about it all over the place. Life (and collaboration) is not linear, it ripples like a stone dropped in a puddle. You will find that others latch on to the idea once they see it in action. Sometimes even the stick-in-the-muds decide that change is acceptable.

But it always happens one teacher at a time.

.....for which I did not have a good answer.

"How would you encourage students who are only interested in computers, ipods, etc. to read books?"

A: This is a very good question and it speaks to the either/or mentality that some people apply to print versus electronic; book versus computer.

Students who prefer the feel of a keyboard in their hands may not be against reading. They may be reading all the time, perhaps from a screen instead of a print page. We can lead students to a variety of reading experiences through technology by first acknowledging that they are reading/decoding information messages constantly through electronic means, then by providing them with a variety of experiences through which they can be provided with rich reading experiences, i.e. by increasing the collection of e-books, by podcasting booktalks and poetry slams, encouraging the downloading of audio books, and hosting blogs, wikis, and other means of providing a multi-format information rich environment.

True multi-format and multi-purposeful reading includes reading of print books for pleasure, but the road that leads to the reading habit can be filled with detours and roadblocks if paved with the good intentions of those who insist that students have to turn their backs on their current reading outlets in order to use the only one that we see as valid.