Reading my RSS feeds sometimes a theme emerges from the chaos – this time it was ways in which academic libraries have collaborated with students to enhance both library services and student learning.

Research
Students Studying Students: An Assessment of using Undergraduate Student Researchers in an Ethnographic Study of Library Use “reports on the use of undergraduate students enrolled in an Applied Anthropology course as researchers for a library use study at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library”.

Similarly, Brian Mathews writes about Exploring graduate student use patterns of the UCSB Library.

Experimentation in an Academic Library: A Study in Security and Individual Student Engagement
“The Special Collections and Rare Book Department at Western Michigan University collaborated with a student worker to develop a system to improve security and employee performance. The student was taking a course in psychology that required him to develop a workplace behavioral intervention with a client and modify an important behavior for employee performance.”

Library instruction
Building a Participatory Culture: Collaborating with Student Organizations for 21st Century Library Instruction – literature review and summary of some events where the library hooked into student association events, or initiated their own in collaboration with the student association, to teach library skills.

Displays
Brian Mathews again: Reframing the Concept of Plagiarism, Or What I Learned From Banksy – on art projects in the library.

Communication
A Friendfeed discussion on Our library posts a newsletter called “Stall Times” in our bathrooms. A student using the pseudonyms “Mike Koch” and “Hugh Jass” recently made a parody called “Small Times.” Our creative manager contacted him and invited him to collaborate. The conversation doesn’t go further in depth but does include links to archived bathroom newsletters from this and other libraries.

Back to Brigham Young University – they’re also famous for their parody of the Old Spice commercial, made by the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Production Crew, consisting of two full time employees and ten student employees – see their behind the scenes.

There’s lots of scope for collaboration with journalism, media, music and film students. Language students could translate subtitles. History/literature/etc students could work with digitisation projects. Computer science students could work on components for open source library software. The sky’s the limit…

Deborah