Healthy Living at the Library by Noah Lenstra

Author:Noah Lenstra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Teaming Up with Academic Institutions

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are 4,360 colleges and universities in the United States. More likely than not, there is a college or university close to you—and partnering with it would be a great way to bring high-quality healthy living programming to your library. Conversely, if you are an academic librarian, there is surely a public library close to you. Let’s collaborate!

One of the biggest hurdles associated with partnering with colleges and universities is figuring out where to start. You can’t (usually) just call up the provost and ask if the school would want to work with you.

Thankfully, some institutions are trying to make the process simpler. At the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University has a “collaboratory,” a publicly searchable, online database that shares information about what faculty are doing, so off-campus entities can identify appropriate partners. The collaboratory is also available at five campuses of Indiana University as well as Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, and hopefully will be more broadly available in the coming years. Learn more at https://cecollaboratory.com.

Your local college or university may not have a collaboratory, but it may have an office of public or community engagement. You could also reach out to your local academic librarian for help. Academic librarians typically have a deep understanding of the institution’s structure and should be able to direct you to units and individuals on campus who might make excellent partners.

Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to have a health sciences academic librarian nearby, that librarian may be interested in working directly with you, which is exactly how the St. Louis Public Library and librarians from Washington University’s School of Medicine started working together on health programming offered throughout the public library system.

In any case, common partners within academic institutions include:

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