New Directions for Academic Liaison Librarians

By Alice Crawford

Aimed at practitioners and students of librarianship, this book is about interesting and unusual practical projects currently being run by academic liaison librarians. It shows how liaison librarians can extend their roles beyond the established one of information literacy teaching and showcases areas in which they can engage in collaborative ventures with academic and administrative staff. Designed to excite and inspire, New Directions for Academic Liaison Librarians demonstrates the potential of the liaison role and emphasises the need for flexibility, imagination and initiative in those who hold these posts.

• Unique in concentrating on the role of the new community of academic liaison librarians
• Recognises the wider possibilities for development open to this different new breed of information specialist
• Written by a practitioner in the field

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Apr 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781780633046

Alice Crawford

Dr Alice Crawford is Senior Academic Liaison Librarian at the University of St Andrews Library. She has been librarian of a further education college, a subject librarian at Glasgow University Library, and worked in areas as diverse as Special Collections, Divinity, Engineering and Official Publications. She has also enjoyed earlier careers in university administration and teaching. A Chartered Librarian, she has published a research monograph on the novelist Rose Macaulay as well as articles on librarianship.

Book preview

Sheffield.

Introduction

Abstract

It is difficult to define what ‘academic liaison’ really means. The job has its roots in traditional subject librarianship, but more is now required. Liaison librarians need to be ‘subject librarians plus’. The book will explore this ‘plus’ element and encourage liaison librarians to consider new possibilities. It will not attend to the well-worked area of information literacy teaching, but will offer case studies of other ventures. Case studies will show librarians setting up a medical library in Malawi, supporting the UK Research Assessment Exercise, teaching in virtual worlds, initiating digitisation and publishing projects, collaborating with academic colleagues to set up open access journals, managing outreach marketing activities, and project coordinating the design and delivery of a new library building. All will show liaison librarians maximising the potential of their new roles.

Key words

academic liaison, faculty liaison, librarianship, librarians, marketing, roles, subject librarians, subject librarianship, subject specialist

What does academic liaison mean?

When I became an academic liaison librarian at the University of St Andrews Library in 2007, I remember grappling in dismay with the wide and disparate demands of my job description. As liaison librarian for all the University’s Arts and Divinity subjects, I was required to liaise with 19 academic departments; to develop information resources and services; to work with colleagues in the Collection Management team to ensure Library resources were exploited to maximum effect; to deliver information literacy and research skills programmes; to provide specialised information assistance and interventions; to develop liaison, communication and user training strategies through participation in university committees; to support the general enquiry service; to provide specialised subject support for all my subject areas; to engage in a full range of staff development activities, including presenting at conferences, writing articles and engaging in scholarly activities; to develop strategy and provide services relevant to the research and teaching needs of the university; to find new ways of communicating with customers and promoting Library resources; to assume cross-library responsibility for Official Publications and Reference Services . . . and to take on ‘any other duties appropriate to the role’.

It was perhaps the rather desperate vagueness of that final ‘any other duties’ clause which confirmed for me the uncertainty and lack of clarity with which the writers of the job specification had approached the task. What does ‘academic liaison’ mean? What is an academic liaison librarian supposed to do? My four years in post have involved me in an ongoing effort to answer that question, and have in many ways simply confirmed the difficulties. With its requirements of ‘specialised information assistance’ and ‘specialised subject support’, the job has its roots in good old- fashioned subject librarianship. Yet the specification does muddle its way towards recognising that more is required of the new breed of subject/liaison librarian. Information literacy teaching is a clear and prominent requirement, but less clearly defined are the injunctions to ‘find new ways of communicating with customers’ and to ‘develop strategy and provide services relevant to research and teaching needs’. What could these new ways of communicating be? What services are relevant to a university’s research and teaching needs? There is an awareness in this job description that the new liaison librarian needs to be the old subject librarian PLUS’sbut what this PLUS element should constitute is frustratingly, if understandably, undefined.

It is with the possibilities of this PLUS element that New Directions for Academic Liaison Librarians is concerned. The book will aim to encourage liaison librarians to think beyond the traditional realms of academic librarianship to explore new possibilities for their role. It will for the most part bypass the field of information literacy teaching to showcase the many other areas in which academic liaison librarians can engage in collaborative projects with academic staff. It will show the full potential of the liaison role and emphasise the need for flexibility, imagination and initiative in those who hold these posts. It will give concrete and interesting examples of academic liaison in practice, countering – I hope – the idea that ‘liaison’ is simply a question of constant and patient attendance at academic drinks parties to soak up information, or even just gossip, which will help librarians discover what their readers need. Liaison can mean going out to Malawi to help university administrators and academics set up a medical library for a community with the poorest patient-doctor ratio in the world. It can mean working with academics and poets to create a national poetry database, or establishing a viable publishing business from a library’s manuscript holdings. It can mean using traditional ‘librarianly’ skills in a new way to ensure the bibliographic quality of a university’s submission to the REF or RAE, or helping to re-establish a library’s reputation for scholarship by launching an ambitious programme of public lectures. This book aims not only to reassure liaison librarians of the value of their role, but also to inspire them with ideas for its potential. Liaison librarianship is, as a colleague recently remarked, an area of our profession which is rather confused about its future. This book hopes to help by showing that there is a useful way forward for those working in this area, but that it will involve the hard work of breaking new