Collaborating with Administrators and Educational Support Staff

VOYA - Chris Carlson

Although many school library media specialists are well aware of the benefits of collaborating in order to advance student learning and enhance student success, most texts available on collaboration deal with the librarian/classroom teacher relationship. Farmer's book helps school library media specialists to reach out to other members of the school community, such as counselors and psychologists, health personnel, athletic coaches, special education and reading specialists, and administrators, who interact with students on an interim basis. By breaking down the school hierarchy and explaining the role that each member plays, this book becomes valuable not only to the library media specialist but also to anyone—new teachers, school board members, etc.—wanting to understand how school personnel work together in the educational setting. Farmer provides suggestions and real-life methods for how the library media specialist can help each of these stakeholders, while informing readers about how support personnel can assist the library media specialist as well. Farmer goes beyond providing the basics of collaboration. She provides a rubric example for assessment. She talks about national standards and discusses reading strategies and how to aid in the literacy process. She describes how to build a collaborative power base. This first book in the Best Practices for School Library Media Professionals series will not only show how "collaborative leading is empowering others," it also will provide ammunition for those who need to demonstrate the important role that school library media specialists fill.

School Library Journal

While most school library media specialists recognize that collaboration with administrators and service personnel is essential for a successful library program, many are not sure how to accomplish it. Farmer begins by exploring how schools work, the role of the library media specialist, and the background on collaboration. She then discusses, in some depth, how to work with different levels of administrators and key service personnel, such as technology directors, reading specialists, special-education educators, pupil services personnel, and physical health and co-curricular personnel. Farmer concludes with ways of measuring the impact of collaboration and improving literacy, and provides suggestions for becoming a collaborative leader. This book is a must for school districts and a school library media specialistsa€™ personal collections, and would also work well as a textbook for library science instructors.-Janet Hilbun, Texas Womana€™s University, Denton