Partnering with teaching faculty on research projects

Abstract

Collaborating with faculty in other departments on campus can be one of the most rewarding and challenging types of research partnerships for the practitioner-researcher librarian. The challenges to such a partnership can take the form of different departmental and professional needs and goals and may include accounting for different academic schedules and finding areas of mutual interest. However, when those challenges are addressed, you can develop a strong, rewarding research partnership. The most obvious benefit to cross-disciplinary research is the ability to learn about and engage with disciplines beyond your own. A partnership, such as ours at the Colorado School of Mines between and instruction librarian and a teaching faculty member, gets the librarian out of the library and more actively involved in the needs and curriculum of the departments they serve on campus. Throughout the course of the partnership, you learn more about your partner's home discipline and develop a shared vocabulary of terms and concepts. Aspects of the process for developing such a partnership can be daunting to novice practitioner-researchers. In this chapter, we provide advice on finding, growing, and maintaining a research partnership. We also provide techniques and suggestions for navigating the challenges of cross-disciplinary research that we have found useful.