Communicate and collaborate with colleagues and communities.

 

7.1 Oral Communication: Effectively engage in oral communication in professional contexts.

 

7.2 Written Communication: Effectively write a professional email-salutations, no text speak, write in a grammatically correct way, clearly articulate an idea.

 

7.3 Collaboration within a Library of Information Organization: Works with others within the organization to achieve meaningful outcomes.

 

7.4 Collaboration with external constituencies: Works with others outside the organization to achieve meaningful outcomes.

 

Evidence

 

• LIS 635 PSA Video

  • 7.1, 7.3, 7.4

• LIS 600 Research Project Proposal

  • 7.2

• LIS 693 Lesson Plan Parts 1, 2, and 3

  • 7.3

 

Librarians must be able to communicate effectively in a wide variety of ways. From informal conversations with individual learners and stakeholders, to carefully structured lessons for groups of students across many different levels, to presentations and reports intended for school faculty and administrators, to reports for statewide accountability purposes, and to funding agencies to support research proposals and other library programs. In this PLO I am including a broad range of such materials. One is a short form video introducing external constituencies to a freely available online library tool. Another is a structured lesson plan that I implemented in partnership with another instructor at my school. The last is a proposal for a research project that includes the standard required content such as description and implementation plan.

 

LibraryThing is an excellent free online tool for building a collection of high quality texts focused on a particular subject or genre. It allows you to create online lists of books and tag them for relevant content (“own voices,” non-fiction subjects, genres). Once you have tagged the books you like, LibraryThing will help you to find other books with the same tag by other users, crowdsourcing the work of collection development. This tool is not well known. The “PSA” style video that I did speaks directly to a general audience who might find this tool useful. I show how to add books, tag books, and find similar content. The pace of the video is deliberately slow so that users could use it to follow step by step instructions.

 

I developed and implemented the LIS 693 Lesson Plan in collaboration with the AIG teacher at the school in which I am the new media coordinator. She has been at the school for several years and has developed a deep understanding of the student population and their needs. Her insights into how to reach a 1st grade audience were critical in the development of this lesson. The lesson engages emerging readers in a research project to learn more about owls. Because this is a common, familiar animal, students are immediately able to share what they already know to scaffold the discussion opening the door for a teachable moment. We then introduce the use of online resources, guided by a brief worksheet that students could fill out as they learn more and answer their research questions. Given this age group, the Internet resources were carefully curated to be age appropriate and engaging. The AIG teacher and I were able to implement this lesson together in the classroom. Having an additional instructional resource greatly supported an interactive differential instruction engagement with students. The worksheet served as an assessment of their learning outcomes.

 

The LIS 600 Research Project Proposal is a written proposal that describes an approach to a complex subject: the censorship of books and book bans. The proposal describes a survey that could be administered to middle and high school students anonymously on paper or online. The survey asks them about their knowledge and opinions regarding censorship of books. Given the seriousness of this topic, a more formal proposal for this project is helpful as students, their parents, other teachers, and the administration may want to know more about what is planned and what might be implemented. The proposal is written in a style of a formal research proposal including the target audience, the survey questions, and the implementation and analysis. It is hoped that by documenting in advance the scope of this research, students, their parents, and other stakeholders will be able to support this effort.

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References

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Bernstein, D. (2025). Lessons from TikTok: Using popular social media platforms to engage Gen Z. Urban Library Journal, 30(1). https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1281&context=ulj

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Michie, J. S., & Chaney, B. W. (2009). Second evaluation of the improving literacy through school libraries program. https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/rschstat/eval/other/libraries/libraries09.pdf

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Montiel-Overall, P. (2005). Toward a theory of collaboration for teachers and librarians. School Library Media Research, 8. https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/aasl/content/aaslpubsandjournals/slr/vol8/SLMR_TheoryofCollaboration_V8.pdf

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