Embedded Librarianship is a Winning Proposition

Abstract

A reference/instruction librarian used targeted outreach to furnish library services to faculty and students while assigned to work in the College of Education during a library renovation project. Due to the success of this temporary assignment, the author has subsequently maintained regular office hours in the College to provide research consultations for faculty and students, collaborate on collection development, and continue outreach efforts resulting in increased requests for research assistance and course-integrated information literacy instruction. The benefits and challenges of embedded librarianship in an academic department are also discussed.

A systematic literature review informing library and information professionals’ emerging roles

“…Promoting information literacy programs is another reason for the emergence of the embedded librarian (Bowler and Street, 2008;Edwards and Black, 2012;Hall, 2008;Pritchard, 2010;Tumbleson and Burke, 2010a). A few papers (four papers) argued that embedded librarian was the result of a transformation of either the reference librarian (Bezet, 2013;Jacobs, 2010;Wright et al, 2011) or the subject librarian (Rudasill, 2010).…”

“…The development and offering of embedded librarian's programs affected positively students, instructors, faculty and librarians. Students were able to use more information resources to complete their assignments (Foutch et al, 2007;Hall, 2008), had immediate access to library assistance, advice, suggestions and resources (Becker, 2010;Jacobs, 2010;Tumbleson and Burke, 2010a;Wright et al, 2011) and could engage with librarians (Foutch et al, 2007;Hall, 2008;Jacobs, 2010). Furthermore, librarians developed an important role in supporting academics in the transition to offering online courses (Barnes, 2013).…”

“…Embedded programs enabled librarians to offer more instructional courses (Jacobs, 2010), to enhance the integration of information literacy in academic curriculum (Herring et al, 2009;Tumbleson and Burke, 2010a), to increase the consultation hours (Jacobs, 2010), to provide more guidance to students (Tumbleson and Burke, 2010a) and to notify students regarding technological developments and new resources (Tumbleson and Burke, 2010a). These efforts enabled librarians to gain and establish credibility among students and teachers (Foutch et al, 2007;Hall, 2008), to promote library's role (Kinnie, 2006), to collaborate with other libraries and librarians (Tumbleson and Burke, 2010a) and to remove all obstacles that refrained students from contacting librarians (e.g.…”

Strengthening information literacy in a writing-designated course in the mathematics major

“…Today, its meaning has been expanded to include a variety of methods that librarians can use to serve their users either "online or on the ground" whenever a need appears. This approach gives librarians an edge in reaching out to their users and communities, creating innovative services to engage their users in learning and finding opportunities to collaborate and expand the library service horizon (Brower, 2011, 3-16;Jacobs, 2010). In fact, the term embedded librarian was coined by Barbara Dewey in 2004 when journalists embedded themselves among combat troops during the Iraqi War to collect firsthand news and report back to their host organizations (Kvenlid & Calkins 2011, vii).…”

Shifting expectations: Revisiting core concepts of academic librarianship in undergraduate classes with a digital humanities focus

“…On the other hand, the rise of embedded librarianship has been considered an offshoot of both reference and subject librarianship as a way to promote and "go beyond" (45) traditional library services. Either way, embeddedness affords opportunities for librarians to engage in collaborative partnerships with both faculty and students in ways that directly support research-based curricula (Jacobs 2010;Kvenild and Clakins 2011;Rosenblum, Devlin, Albin, and Garrison 2015, 160;Varner 2016, 215). By integrating subject and research expertise and information and digital literacies with the humanistic values of the DH scholar community, liaison librarians are well-positioned to provide the human capital needed for classroom initiatives that involve the tools and methodologies of an applied DH pedagogy.…”