Principals can help make collaboration happen

This article, available from EricDigests, talks about what you need, or should hope for, from your school principal in order to make collaboration happen. It includes useful references to earlier research that supports the value of collaboration to a school media program.

Information Power

In case you're not familiar with it, here's the book to read about collaboration. It's Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning, and it's available from the ALA website.

Lesson plans

Here's a good site to look at for lesson plan ideas when planning a collaborative unit.

Another book about collaboration

Here's a book that looks helpful. It specifically addresses the issue of collaboration for school librarians. The book is Collaboration and the School Library Media Specialist by Carol A. Doll, and it's available at Amazon.

Useful form to encourage collaboration

Here's a helpful form put together by a working LMS, Kevin Finkle of Seneca Elementary. He developed this form to get input from teachers regarding classroom teacher's instructional plans for literature, science, social studies, etc.

Baltimore County Public Schools site

This site contains a ton of useful information for Library Media Specialists, with extra emphasis given on collaboration. It's definitely worth a visit! Check out The Library Office.

An interesting book about collaboration

Here's a book that was listed on the ALA Web site at:

http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/resourceguides/collaboration.htm

Bush, Gail. The School Buddy System: The Practice of Collaboration. Chicago: American Library Association, 2002. ISBN 0-8389-0839-X

Librarian, award-winning collaborator, and researcher Gail Bush brings the concept of collaboration to life by outlining tangible steps you can take to inspire collaboration among librarians, teachers, administrators, and all team players involved in K-12 education. Packed with proven tools, including a ready-to-use framework for setting up a collaborative relationship; 40 discussion prompts to help initiate discussion and debate; common characteristics for establishing a collaborative mindset; background research to define the current climate; and thought-provoking quotes from education scholars and practitioners to help you step into the shoes of the other team players. Available from the ALA Online Store at http://www.alastore.ala.org or call 866-SHOP ALA (866-746-7252).

Collaborating with teachers

There is helpful information concerning collaboration available at the School Library division of the ALA Web site, http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aasleducation/schoollibrarymed/schoollibrary.htm

Take a look at:
ALA/AASL Standards For Initial Programs for School Library Media Specialist Preparation

A good place to start

Another helpful place to go for New York LMS

Here's another place to find helpful info for New York school librarians.

Useful info for LMS on the ALA site

The ALA has a special area dedicated to School Librarians.