Students must reconsider the nature of composing and their identities as writers when working on a jointly authored piece of writing, such as a two-page report on a particular area in a university library. Looking at the ways workshop groups interact to produce a piece of collaborative writing and a joint oral presentation offers insight into the implications of writing as a social act, enabling cognitive growth and, ultimately, empowerment. The peer group must of necessity reach some consensus through a struggle to organize material into a two-page report and a 15-minute presentation. However, students must also face their differences and distinctions as they struggle to invent a pluralistic writing subject on their area of the university library in addition to making what they learn accessible to others. By demystifying the library for themselves and by negotiating the processes of joint authorship in which individual performance gives way to language as a social practice (i.e.group performance), students move into later assignments which require them to use resources outside the self, enabled by familiarity with library resources and some confidence about their abilities to find out what they need to know. Finally, they get a sense of what it is like to participate in the academic community through academic discourse. (A note to teachers on the library report is attached.) (MM)