Books & Resources
Inspired Collaboration
ALA Editions
For many decades American families have supported each other. The practice of neighbors helping neighbors is the genesis of our healthy and thriving communities today. The fire department, the post office, and the public library are a few examples of early voluntary associations that strengthened society. These alliances among friends, colleagues, and neighbors put the maxim “Love your neighbor as well as yourself” into action. Neighborly cooperation built communities and fostered individual talents and contributions.
When a barn burned down in eighteenth or nineteenth century, rural America neighbors showed up the next day with hammers, saws, and wood to rebuild it. “Barn raising,” as it was known, provided required labor. This method of building or rebuilding a barn offered an added opportunity for community socializing. The 1954 movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers celebrates the collaborative spirit and depicts this combined work event with eating, courting, dancing, …and rough and tumble fighting between romantic rivals. Helping a neighbor build a barn was approached with the unwritten understanding that this or a similar favor would be returned to any family in need. Or as Tara Kuipers, an educator and facilitator in Wyoming, says in her TEDx talk, “The rule of reciprocity is a fundamental principle in a barn-raising. Community collaboration is like barn-raising. A volunteer fire department is an example of a modern barn-raising. If you are part of an effort to make sure a hungry child has a backpack full of food to take home for the weekend, you are part of a barn-raising.”
The spirit of collaboration is a natural force in humanity. This book celebrates that spirit and is designed to help you better understand the value of collaboration.
Tara Kuipers, “Community Collaboration is the Barn-Raising of our Modern Times,” TEDxCody, June 18, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH3ZgYmPvAk.
Excerpt adaptation from page xv of Inspired Collaboration: Ideas for Discovering and Applying Your Potential by Dorothy Stoltz with Susan M. Mitchell, Cen Campbell, Rolf Grafwallner, Kathleen Reif, and Stephanie Mareck Shauck. (Chicago: ALA Editions. An Imprint of the American Library Association © Copyright 2016 by Dorothy Stoltz, Susan M. Mitchell, Cen Campbell, Rolf Grafwallner, Kathleen Reif, and Stephanie Mareck Shauck. All Rights Reserved.)
