A Model of Collaboration Building Between Teaching Faculty and Librarians at Earlham College: Viewed from Educational Development and Relationship Marketing

Abstract

Regarding collaboration building between teaching faculty and librarians in university education, there were a large number of practical reports on information literacy instruction projects in collaboration with teaching faculty. However, most studies did not focus on analyses of teaching faculty-librarian relationships in themselves, and few explained those relationships in terms of conceptual or theoretical frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to explain collaboration building between teaching faculty and librarians from the viewpoints of conceptual and theoretical frameworks. A grounded theory regarding collaboration building, which was constructed based on a case study of Earlham College in the United States, was interpreted in terms of educational development. As a result, librarians’ strategic approaches were located not only in instructional development which was concerned with enhancing course design, but also in relationship marketing which focused on building long-term relationships with customers in order to facilitate mutual value creation.