Rooting skills and expertise in liaison work: Strategies for embedded librarianship

Abstract

As needs for teaching and research faculty evolve, librarians must possess certain knowledge and skills in delivering quick service and expertise. Among those are having a professional subject background, faculty status, commitment and flexibility to provide innovative services, understanding of the research needs of scholars, and technical proficiency in managing electronic records. Building strong librarian-faculty relationships is also a key factor in offering assistance when and where it is needed. The author reviews the current literature on embedded librarianship, identifies best practices and models in faculty-librarian collaboration, and examines successful strategies implemented at the University of Maryland, College Park. Participants will be introduced to effective technologies for providing instructional support, reference assistance, and collaboration with faculty on research projects. In addition, the author shares insight from the application of three approaches: (1) Embedding information literacy sessions into online and face-to-face courses along with offering Librarian’s Office Hours outside of the library; 2) Providing subject specific resources from the library collections for the observance of the Social Justice Day, a campus wide project led by the former dean of the School of Public Health, and 3) Executing literature searches, managing citations and co-writing for a research project consisting of scholars from the United States, Canada and Europe.