About me: Joseph Sanchez Red Rocks Community College Director, Library and Learning Services 13300 W Sixth Ave, Lakewood CO, 80228, joseph.sanchez@rrcc.edu, 303.914.6743 (6741 fax) Not a PNLA member About your program: Program title: The Birth of Cool: Grassroots Collaboration and Leadership Can Reinvent Your Library and Reconnect Your Students and Faculty. Program description: Can an academic library reshape its image without compromising its academic goals? How are piranha, skateboarding, and gaming involved? At Red Rocks Community College we applied a peer to peer, Library 2.0 philosophy to empower students and faculty, which created a vested interest in both groups. At the heart of our rebirth are two principles: 1. Collaboration that originates from patrons creates a deeper, more personal connection and a sense of ownership for those patrons. 2. Grassroots marketing/leadership is self-perpetuating and self-sustaining. As a result, our library has become a central organ of campus life and student learning. 3 Program goals or objectives 1. Identify strategies to connect collaboration to long term academic goals. 2. Differentiate between nonacademic outreach that produces academic results and nonacademic outreach that does not produce academic results (i.e. gaming). 3. Comprehend and respond to specific 21st century challenges. Appropriate track(s): Academic Libraries Program Format: Single Speaker lecture style Program Logistics: Power source, data projector. Microphone if the room is large Equipment needs: No preferred date of presentation No other requirements