From Information Specialist to Library Liaison Manager:

a year of change

Sonya Lipczynska

Library Liaison Manager

King’s College London

David CrossinggumLibrary Liaison ManagerKing’s College London

2

Outline

About us

Issues affecting Higher Education libraries

What is liaison?

How do we liaise

Challenges faced & lessons learned

3

About usKing’s College London since

2001

Library Manager (Denmark Hill Campus)

King’s College London since 2001

Information Specialist (health schools)

Library Liaison Manager (Summer 2014)

Managing liaison - different approaches

A liaison librarian for each school or faculty

Liaison without subject specialism

A faculty leader and then subject specialists for each subject.

Subject specialists with liaison duties

Current issues affecting HE libraries

Increased expectation of students Doing more with less… Importance placed on NSS and other surveys Survey/feedback fatigue Workloads of academics – less time to engage with

initiatives What is the purpose of the library?

6

What is Liaison?

In groups, discuss for 5 minutes

Feedback from each group

What is Liaison

Developing strong formal and informal liaison networks and relationships with academic and professional services departments

Achieving effective flow of information between the faculties and Library Services, in order to develop the best: Collections Training programmes Physical and digital services

8

Faculty meetings

Channel feedback

Answer and refer emails

Work on new

initiatives

Reading list outreach

Email updates for

faculties

A week in the life of a Library Liaison Manager

9

Liaison opportunities School Committees & administrators Emailed updates – news digests via faculty marketing/communications

departments – direct emails to cohorts of students Student Union contacts – faculty student reps – course reps Corridor conversations… Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Enquiries Infiltrating Research departments! Attending general Medical School events Training: embedded, one to one sessions, bookable training programmes Professional network opportunities

10

Challenges we’ve faced Explaining our role to academic staff Where to channel large amounts of

feedback and data/engaging others with this data

KPI and other metrics – how do we measure our work

Where are the boundaries of our role?

11

Lessons we have learned Responding to academic staff

Timely and concise

Advocate on their behalf and return to them with a solution

Proactive liaison with departments Introductory email with role explanation

Appreciate their schedule and workload (don’t become a nuisance caller)

See things from their perspective

Don’t be phone shy! Be honest about what can or can’t be done

Follow up loose ends