Revisiting Collaboration Within and Beyond the School Library: New Ways of Measuring Effectiveness

Abstract

Collaboration in school libraries can be viewed as a supportive and respectful working relationship between participants involved in developing, planning and creating learning opportunities and experiences, as well as to ensure optimal use of the school library resource. While strong collaboration between school library staff and teachers and leadership beyond the school library is a key goal of school libraries, actual levels of collaboration may be lower than desired. There is a paucity of recent research that captures factors relevant to effective collaboration from current and diverse contexts, and limited consideration of how these factors can contribute to measures of effectiveness for school libraries. This article proposes possible measures of effectiveness and a pragmatic research plan that can build the evidence-base for the practice of collaboration both within and beyond the library.