Library Concurrence: Academic Librarians and School Librarians Working Together with Dual Enrollment Students and Faculty

Abstract

Dual enrollment opportunities, in which high school students take courses for college credit, are popular nationwide and many states, like Indiana, have made it a requirement for public high schools. In the partnership of the college and high schools, one question is, “How can we (academic librarians) meet the needs of dual enrollment students and also the research and information needs of the high school teachers who are now the adjunct college instructors?” Reaching out to librarians in high schools with dual enrollment students, we learned that many of the librarians, students, and instructors alike didn’t realize they had access to all the services and resources their university library offered.  This article will explore how we have worked with school librarians to meet the information needs of their students and instructors.  Our strategy begins by building upon resources with which school librarians are already familiar. Blending these with university tools for dual credit learners creates a common instructional ground for school and university librarians to jointly address the needs of this growing population of students and instructors. The school librarians have become active partners in sharing with their students and instructors not just the resources of their high school library but the resources of the university library as well. The high school students and their instructors are the beneficiaries of a new world of resources which they may have never accessed otherwise.