Models for Liaison ServicesASERL Summertime Summit

August 6, 2013Atlanta, GA

Kathryn CroweUniversity of North Carolina at

Greensboro

UNCG Liaison Reorganization

• Changing roles and priorities of liaisons

• Task Force charged to examine responsibilities and provide recommendations for new organizational structure

• Benchmarked other academic libraries

Benchmarking key findings

• Many libraries have decentralized model• Most have a collections department• A few have teams• Some have formally prioritized liaison

responsibilities and made engagement the top priority

Utah StateDecentralized subject teams with functional coordinators

Shifting from focus on collection development

Subject librarians meet monthly

Subject teams a few times a year

Utah StateSubject Librarian Advisory Committee replaced former Collection Development Advisory Council

Discusses major policies

Still some uncertainty since subject librarians report to many different departments

VillanovaCreated “Academic Integration” Department with 7 liaison teams, a department head, functional coordinators and support staff.

Most teams have 3 or 4 members with a coordinator

Most departments still have a liaison

Functional coordinators work with department coordinator to set goals, plan meetings & workshops and assist each subject team.

Johns HopkinsAcademic Liaisons Department (AL) that includes collections, reference, research consultations and instruction

Not all liaisons in this department; many in Scholarly Resources and Special Collections (SRSC)

AL Monthly meetings on instruction and research support. SRSC also attends these

Have functional teams but not subject teams

Department Head

UNCG liaison department

Instruction Coordinator

AD for Collections & Scholarly

Communications

The leadershipteam, along with the

3 subject team coordinators

Humanities Team

Social Science Team

Natural Science Team

Staff & student worker support

AD for Public

Services

Reference Desk Coordinator

Instruction Team

Functional teams:Composed of liaisons from each subject team plus other librarians & staff

Social Science Team

Humanities Team

Natural Science Team

Reference Desk Team

Collections Team

Scholarly Communications

Team

Open Access and Scholarly Communications at UNCG

• Faculty Senate Scholarly Communications Committee since 2007

• NCDOCKS Institutional Repository since 2008• Open Journal Systems support• Fund for author fees• Libraries’ faculty adopted OA policy• Member of SPARC and CNI

And moving forward…

• New AD for Collections and Scholarly Communication

• Scholarly Communications functional team• Training and support for liaisons to work with

faculty• Continued programming

Data Management at UNCG

• Focus on staff training and education• Faculty survey• ODUM/NCDOCKS• New position for support

Discussion questions

• What’s your library doing for DM & OA staffing? (Is there anything new under the sun?)

• What’s exciting about DM/OA for staff?

• What’s worrisome?• Have you created new positions or realigned

positions for DM/OA?

More discussion questions

• What do you think about the idea that we shouldn’t worry about offering DM/OA consultations (after all, not everyone at a university uses reference desk services)?

• What future programming is needed?

Kathryn CroweAssociate Dean for Public Services

kmcrowe@uncg.edu