This article highlights a successful collaborative project between the Toledo-Lucas County Library System, a university professor, and a local production company in order to expand the library's African American oral history collection. The project, made possible from a state technology grant, also resulted in the production of 20 television-quality DVDs and lesson guides. In addition to describing how we expanded the library's local African American history collection, we discuss how the project required a new collaborative culture. We also describe the unintended discovery of the evolving role and required skill sets of the librarian in the new collaboration relationship. The knowledge we gained helps us to fill a gap in our understanding about how to establish specialty collections as well as the required emergent role of the librarian. (Contains 9 notes.)