Collaboration between School and Public Librarians

The purpose of this descriptive study was to analyze and describe the collaborative relationships of teacher librarians and public librarians in one Iowa county. The research focused on how collaborative relationships are established between public and school libraries, what type of collaborations exist, what resources are shared, and what barriers to successful collaboration exist. This was a qualitative study using semistructured interviews with three public youth services librarians in two public libraries and two teacher librarians in two different districts in the same county. The findings included an overall desire to collaborate with other libraries in the area, but difficulty in establishing these relationships due to real or perceived barriers. Informal collaboration occurred in sporadic fashion between public libraries and schools, but not necessarily with the school librarian and mostly consisted of sharing of information about the summer reading program