Collaborative Connection and Collection Development

Loertscher, D. & Koechlin, C. (2016). Collection Development and Collaborative Connection Development: Or, Curation. Teacher Librarian, 43(4), 52-53.

This article by our professor and his colleague resembles our course goals at this time in Spring of 2016.  Collaborative connection development using Open Educational Resources (OER) is presented as the next best practice for collection development. 

The premise of “It’s my job as a teacher librarian to develop the collection” is changed to “It’s OUR job as teacher librarians, classroom teachers, and students to curate the best education resources for the topic at hand.”  Using free resources such as Google Apps, teacher librarians, classroom teachers and students can use and add resources, and completed projects to a topic being studied.  Thus, a Virtual Learning Commons (VLC) is created with collaborative connection input from everyone.

Different levels of participation are presented for implementation:  Within a school, district, region or state, national, and on every level.  This level of participation can compete directly with Google and Wikipedia.  And, regardless of funding restrictions, as all resources are free, everyone can participate to build and use these resources.

G Thormann
Spring 2016