Rescoping research through student-librarian collaboration: Lessons from the Fondren Fellows program

Abstract

Academic library professionals increasingly see student workers as full coparticipants in the design and delivery of library resources and services. For some librarians, this perspective grows out of a commitment to critical and feminist pedagogy,1 while for others, greater reliance on student workers in the face of flat or contracting budgets has led to the pragmatic realization that the “skills of student workers could be leveraged to advance the library in unexpected and invaluable ways.”2 This article examines how collaboration with students can take librarian-initiated research in new directions, drawing on the experiences of the coauthors (a library staff member and a graduate student) as part of the Fondren Fellows program at Rice University’s Fondren Library.