Does your institution have students hired to work in collaborative partnerships, like in a learning commons or at a shared service point with non-library partners? Are they cross-trained? Do you split the cost of their salary between the partners? Do you hold interviews for these openings utilizing representatives from all partners? Are you creating annual goals for these collaborations and assessing them? If your library is doing one or more of these points, then I’d love to hear from you.
I am seeking case studies of libraries that employee students in their partnerships to be included in the upcoming book, Sharing Spaces and Students: Employing Students in Collaborative Partnerships, recently accepted by ACRL for publication.
Overview of the book:
As learning commons and campus partnerships continue to grow and become more widespread across college and university campuses, it is important to look at how libraries hire and train students to work in these collaborative areas. Will each group hire and train their own sets of students for their respective areas? Or is it feasible to work together to hire and train students who work solely in these partnerships?
This book focuses on the process of hiring and training students in collaborative partnerships, as well as the impact of the history of library partnerships and importance of developing annual goals and assessments. Using real world examples, this book will help you prepare to hire and train your own students, from creating contracts to developing interview questions to coming up with the training topics that can best help students succeed in this position and in their future careers.
In particular, I am looking for case studies and/or examples to include in the following chapters:
- Hiring Students
(Description: This chapter focuses on the various parts required to hire students for a collaborative partnership – how to create a job description, how to decide who pays the student employee’s salary, how to draft a student employee contract, and how to craft the interview process, including set-up, questions, and evaluation. Examples will be provided and each sub-section will provide a prompt for readers to use as they develop their hiring process) - Annual Goals
(Description: This chapter emphasizes the importance of goal setting in a partnership, as well as important topics to reflect on while goal setting. Examples will be provided, as well as prompts for readers to use in their own goal setting process)
- Developing Training
(Description: This chapter delves into how to develop a training program and incudes advice and recommendations for utilizing existing training and materials, as well as how to align training with your goals and practice a more hands-on, engaged approach rather than a lecture. Along with sample program ideas, prompts will be provided for readers to reflect on their own needs)
- Assessing Success
(Description: This chapter will focus on different ways to evaluate the success of both the partnership and student employees’ performance. Sample practices, evaluations, and surveys will be provided, as well as prompts for readers to reflect on in order to craft their own assessment tools)
Please complete the following form to submit your proposal by Friday, July 20, 2018.Notifications will be sent by Monday, July 30, 2018 for acceptance. Case studies and examples will be due by Monday September 17, 2018. (Note: you will not have to write an entire chapter – just your case study or a copy of your examples.)
All the best,
Holly Jackson