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Editor’s Note: Our guest blogger today is Susan Hildreth. Susan serves as the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a position to which President Obama appointed her in January 2011.

Museums and libraries are an essential component of any vision of the future of learning. Helping these institutions to create engaging and empowering learning experiences is one of the primary goals of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The classic field trip to a museum is still a valuable tool for elementary school teachers. But the relationship museums and libraries now have with schools is much more collaborative than that of host and guest for an occasional visit.

For example, in 2009 IMLS awarded a National Leadership Grant to Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History. The grant funded the Peabody Event-Based Teachers Collaborative, a unique professional development model with two primary audiences: K-12 school teachers and their students; and other informal education organizations. It is providing 50 teachers with professional development and resources based on curricula required by public school districts, and will model a new approach to customizing those curricula using Event-Based Science, an inquiry-based method based on real-life events. All project activities and goals are evaluated using quantitative methods, and the program results will add significantly to the understanding of the role museums play in schools. Last fall this grant was profiled on the IMLS website.

Other IMLS-funded partnerships between schools and either museums or libraries include the following:

• Project CATALYST, which was developed by Carroll County (KY) Public Schools, the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative, six other school districts, and six county public libraries, will train 35 librarians to collaborate more effectively in addressing the needs of students with limited proficiency in reading and information literacy.
• The McWane Science Center is partnering with the W. J. Christian public school in Birmingham to provide teacher training workshops, classroom outreach programs, science laboratories and programs, and a school-based science resource center.
• Over a three-year period, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in Monterey, California, will partner with the Pajaro Valley Unified School District and Watsonville Wetlands Watch to provide 450 teachers with new tools, skills, and support through fifteen year-long, grade-appropriate teacher institutes.
• The Erie Art Museum, in Erie, Pennsylvania, is using an IMLS grant to continue its largest educational program, “Kids as Curators,” working with teachers and students from three middle school populations—one rural, one suburban, and one inner-city—to create an exhibit that draws from the students’ collections.
• Project I'M READY is an innovative program designed by Northeastern State University and Maryetta Public School to educate twenty school librarians to serve in high poverty rural areas of Oklahoma, The project will also  develop culturally sensitive curriculum resources for schools serving Native American populations and make information literacy instruction modules and accompanying resources available on the Web.
• The Muhammad Ali Museum and Education Center, partnering with the Jefferson County Public Schools and the University of Louisville’s Muhammad Ali Institute, will pilot the Creating Our Future curriculum in three high schools and conduct an evaluation process to measure its effectiveness.

Please read more about IMLS’s work to bring schools together with museums and libraries at the links provided above. And if you’re an educator, contact libraries and museums in your area to discuss the potential for an IMLS grant project.