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A writing course faculty-librarian collaboration.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Writing courses are a logical place to integrate research skills into the curriculum. Traditional methods include scavenger hunts, pre-determined research agendas, and tours of the library, but these methods rarely result in meaningful learning. One English teacher found that using librarians as consultants on her assignment design and allowing her students an open-ended research project resulted in an in-depth library experience in which all students succeeded.

Introduction

Collaboration between teaching faculty and librarians is becoming increasingly important in the current education environment. Numerous examples of such efforts exist in the literature, and they have been shown to improve the outcome of student projects. (Stein and Lamb 37) Other writers address the metaphysical and metaphoric aspects of faculty-librarian collaboration. Dick Raspa and Dane Ward write, "In the library, collaboration is the power of wonder ..., wondering with faculty and students how to explore a problem in the universe of information" (3).

The literature of research instruction also uses this same kind of language to describe the students' learning. Sandra Marcus and Sheila Beck call the hands-on library experience they advocate an "adventure," while Robert Davis and Mark Shadle describe the research process as "a more exploratory inquiry that honors mystery" (417) and Ken Macrorie has completely redefined research as "I-search." Bruce Ballenger sees researchers as those who "enter a world of discovery in which they are active participants" (xxv) while Karen Tracy admonishes teachers to instill in their students "the spirit of inquiry that drives mature researchers" (3) and Erika Lindemann asks us to consider research as play. The literature is as inspiring as it is sometimes abstract. This paper describes the way teaching and library faculty at the University of Louisville collaborated in the most concrete manner possible to infuse the qualities of discovery and exploration into the teaching of research writing by using the vast resources of the university's various libraries.

In collaboration with the art librarian, I chose Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell's You Have Seen Their Faces as a starting point for a themed course based on the 1930s. Students eventually branched out to write three papers on their findings on the 1930s in the libraries and a fourth paper proposing a solution to a problem they found while doing their research. Specifically, the students first responded either to three photographs from the Farm Securities Administration found in photographic archives or to an album of music from the 1930s found in the Music Library. The second paper asked the students to place either the 1934 academy award winning It Happened One Night or a short story from Richard Wright's Eight Men into the context of the 1930s. Students next chose an area of the 1930s to explore more...

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