Indispensable Partner: Bing an Embedded Librarian in a Research Methodology

Class for Graduate Students

Jianye He (UC Berkeley)

April 23, 2014

LAUC 2014 Spring Assembly

Outline

• “Embedded librarian” — “familiar stranger”?

• To be or not to be? —Why it matters to outreach to faculty as teaching partner?

• Opportunities and challenges for “embedded librarian”—views from personal experience

“Embedded librarianship/librarian

• The Iraq war brought us the concept of “embedded journalists.” Now we have the concept of “embedded librarians.” An embedded journalist is supposed to have better access to a story; an embedded librarian provides better access to the librarian and to the library’s resources. (Rebecca Hedreen, 4/29/2005 http://frequanq.blogspot.com/2005/04/embedded-librarians.html)

• “Embedding librarians brings the learning process in closer proximity to the scholarship on which the disciplines are based and to those that service it—librarians.” (Dewey, 2004)

“Embedded librarianship/librarian

• “(Embedded librarianship) emphasizes the importance of forming a strong working relationship between the librarian and a group or team of people who need the librarian’s information expertise.”(David Shumaker, 2012)

• “It is used to describe the work of an academic librarian who participates in an academic course on an ongoing basis, teaching information literacy skills.”(Models of Embedded Librarianship Final Report, SLA, 2007)

Characteristics of the “embedded librarian” (David, 2012):

• Ongoing working relationships

• Knowledge of, and commitment to, information user-group goals and objectives

• Highly customized and value-added contributions to the group

Outreach to faculty as teaching partner: finding the right match

Bonding by ongoing teaching — no “blind dates”! • Consistent excellent reference service • Being a researcher yourself• Don’t mind starting from teaching individuals or small sessions• Don’t be shy to let faculty know your specialty /expertise and your willingness to teach

Why does the faculty-librarian teaching model work better for a graduate student research methodology class? (1) Research methodology is critical to graduate students’ overall academic success; (2) New graduate students’ information literacy level or skills could be different; (3) Faculty are overwhelmed by their own research and in-depth subject-focused teaching; (4) Subject librarians have the right knowledge background and stay up-to-date on the fast expanding new research resources.

Genre and Method in

Traditional Chinese TextsEA242A/HS280F (Fall 2009) Wednesday 12:30-2:00 341 Starr Library

Genre and Method in Traditional Chinese TextsEA242/HS280 (Spring 2014) Thursday, 2-5341 Starr Library

Embedding in the classroom

Where is the librarian needed?

Course Description:

This course offers graduate students focusing on the literature and history of traditional China a systematic, hands-on introduction to the print and electronic resources necessary for conducting advanced research in these fields. In addition to being introduced to the history of Chinese bibliography and “sinology,” students will learn to use the vast array of ever expanding resources, and to consider what research questions these resources facilitate, and what sorts of questions remain relatively unexplored.

Weekly lists posted on bSpace website (12 lists):

Sample list:

Where is the embedded librarian?

“…four hours later in the library…little progress had been made to be able to accurately look up the required texts. Thus, I decided to ask Librarian He Jianye, who gave an excellent overview of possible text resources for looking up genres. Under her tutelage, I learned how to scan the preface of books for the important genre classification words, then scan the book for the correct heading.”--Alex

“Qiu Zhao’ao’s Dushi xiangzhu, which was introduced to me by Jianye, was very helpful to understand how the intertextuality is made in this poem.” –Tayhun

“Jianye suggested me to go to the gazetteer of Hangzhou. I was reluctant as it hurt my pride in my hometown, but I compromised with Hangzhou as it was indeed close enough to Jinhua. Hangzhou fu zhi turns out to be excessively rich and illuminating. Festivals are what I know, but details are more than what I can think of.”—Liu Yue

Opportunities and challenges to be embedded librarian

New role for subject/reference librarians for the changing time

• Responsive — Anticipatory• Individual customer — Team of collaborators• Standardized — Customized• Single transactions — Ongoing projects• Service —- Partnership(Differences between “traditional librarian” and “embedded

librarian”, David, 2012)

Promoting the library, librarians,

collections and services

Increasing usage of the library and

providing better access to collections

Developing high quality research

collection in a dynamic way

However…

● Workload and pressure on embedded librarian could be overwhelming

● Teaming with multiple collaborators could be challenging, especially when there are disagreements.

● Keeping abreast of expanding resources could be daunting.

● It is still the librarian’s voluntary choice, where is library’s rewarding policy?

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