My thoughts...

When I first started teaching, we had a media specialist, but I honestly had no idea what her job was. I knew she checked books out to kids, helped them do research projects, but I never thought about asking her for help on my own lessons. Through out the years, I left that school and went to another school. However, the second school I went to, was inner-city and there just wasn't the resources for me, much less in the media center for the students. So, I just kinda dealt with it. Now that I'm in a different district, where the media specialists are more hands-on, I see what they do, aside from just dealing with books.
At the high school level, our media specialist is very involved in the IB program and the research that needs to go into it. I always see her helping other teachers and I see "collaboration" happening. I put it in quotes, because maybe there's more to it, than what I see or know at this moment.
I am a bit nervous, to be honest working with a classmate on this project. Luckily, she's been in the media specialist position. It's me that I'm worried about. I hope use the "media specialist" to the best of my ability and am able to collaborate and actually the lesson that we create in my classroom.
The plan right now, is the use my Japanese 4 class as the focus of the lesson. They do research on Japanese Eras and it's a project that I've always felt unsure about. I never thought what I did was enough. But, with my partner, I'm hoping to tweek it and work it out so that it a great project and beneficial to the students and that they learn from it.