The Embedded Librarian

We hear it at conferences and read it in the literature: students prefer the web to the library. So, it must be true. There is no denying that libraries have been changing. Computers and connections have replaced those gorgeous wooden cabinets. Reading rooms have been displaced by computer labs and laptop areas. Access has become a rival to ownership. Research is conducted remotely, electronically. Still, libraries and librarians must reinvent themselves before they go the way of the dinosaur.

For years, the focus has been to draw people into libraries. Libraries’ holdings have been moved to offsite locations, and student services have been brought into our buildings as information commons become more popular and ensure bodies passing through the gate counters. Longer visits have been encouraged with cafés. Still, this isn’t enough. A different tack is needed. Instead of pulling people in, librarians need to reach outward to become an integral part of the routine interactions of faculty and students.

At the University of Rhode Island (URI) Libraries, we are trying several experiments in outreach. Some of our ideas are very new to the URI Library, and we are testing the approach, the audience, and the success. Others are still in the planning stages. We hope to report in the near future that the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

A librarian in the classroom

Serving distance students is not quite an experiment for much of the academic library world, but the library is growing its distance-learning program along with the university. Like many colleges and universities, URI has been offering more and more online courses taught asynchronously on the course management system WebCT. These offerings have more than doubled over the last two years. A university librarian serves on both the newly formed On-Line Learning Committee and the standing Teaching Effectiveness Committee, and now a librarian might just be in class, too.

In theory, students would never have to visit the library for their research. After all, there is the web! But as most librarians know and general faculty are finding out, distance learning students need library resources just as much as traditional students, if not more. Using Google for research has made it easier for students to avoid the library altogether—but how it has impacted their skills, papers, and grades remains to be evaluated. Instructors may require scholarly sources or demand that students not use the Internet to find material, but students may still resist going “all the way” to the library, even if it is just across campus. Though our online resources have also increased greatly in number (with approximately 70 databases and 23,650 online journals), discerning authorized sites and information and use of these resources is not innate.

This is where the embedded librarian comes in. At URI Libraries, we have begun to reach out to distance learning faculty by offering library assistance to their students. Not knowing what the response from online faculty might be, our outreach began cautiously in spring 2005. The administrator of the online faculty mailing list posted our offer to faculty to embed a librarian in their courses. Initially, only one faculty member accepted our proposal. In fall 2005, a librarian directly contacted several faculty members whose courses included research papers, and four instructors agreed to enroll the librarian as a teaching assistant in their courses. This spring (2006), a more general offer to online faculty is planned.

We treat online students much the same as face-to-face students by offering instruction and providing direct reference help upon request. In WebCT, instruction takes the form of email messages to the class or discussion board postings that outline research strategies and appropriate sources timed to coincide with projects. When students are choosing topics for their research papers, a timely note on finding subject encyclopedias and using the catalog helps them locate material to develop their thesis statements. When students need to find more current and focused information, the librarian posts a lesson on accessing journal articles. Reference questions are no different from those we get at the reference desk except they are asked and answered by email. It is not unusual for one student’s reference question to turn into a lesson that can be posted for the entire class.

This effort is complemented by the LIB120 Introduction to Information Literacy that has been offered asynchronously during the summer session for the last five years. It has become another delivery option outlined in the libraries’ Plan for Information Literacy. An elective in the general education program at the university, LIB120 has become very popular, and sections of the face-to-face classes always fill up. In summer 2005, we increased the offerings to two online sections and expect to maintain that level; as with the face-to-face classes, the number of sections is limited by the number of instructors available to teach.

Where they are with reference

Reinventing reference is another avenue we’re following. URI is a member of the Higher Education Library Information Network (HELIN) Consortium, consisting of ten academic and 13 hospital libraries, which tried virtual reference using sophisticated software that allowed “pushing” web sites and real time cosearching. HELIN gave up on the experiment; perhaps the software was too sophisticated, or students were not able to use it during the times it was offered. Also, the virtual reference “desk” was shared by all members of the consortium, so the types of questions may not have been a good fit with the resources available to the library assigned to answer them at a particular time. For instance, an engineering or architectural question might be asked when someone at an institution without access to those programs or resources was at the “desk.”

In fall 2005, URI Library tried a different approach to bringing reference services to the academic community remotely. We see students using technology constantly as they walk across campus with their cell phones, text message in class, and travel with their laptops. It is hard to deny that instant messaging clients (AIM, Yahoo, MSN) have become ubiquitous among students. Like cell phones, they are one of the major ways students communicate. It was, therefore, a logical step to offer IM reference directly through the library web site. Beginning in September 2005, a logo for imURILibrarian appeared on the libraries’ homepage. The librarians at the reference desk monitor this service. After one semester, we know it is popular—we’ve watched use multiply over the first three months. Logs of the interactions (without screen names) have been kept, and they, along with statistics, are reviewed and discussed monthly at public services meetings. We’ll keep this experiment alive for the remainder of the academic year and then evaluate it for possible continuation.

Entering the blogosphere

Another innovation we’re working on to appeal to the student body is a library blog. The blogosphere is hot in academic libraries (for a current list from the Association of College and Research Libraries, go to directory.edufeeds.com/index.php?c=4), though the literature has little to say about the success of using them to promote core institutional values.

We want to alert academic users to what is new in library resources and in academic/instructional technology generally. We hope to motivate users to take advantage of library resources more frequently and more effectively—especially those electronic databases that are costly to lease and maintain. In addition, we hope that instructional professionals will be inspired and aided in fully integrating library resources into classroom activities and research, ultimately helping students achieve intended learning outcomes. Marketing will be important; there is little guidance in getting users to read a library blog. We’ll get the word out through fliers at the library service desks, announcements in teaching settings, and perhaps via the school newspaper.

Change is usually met with resistance. We believe our experiments will be welcomed by the community, and the direction we are taking in all cases is outward. If you come into URI’s main library in Kingston, you will find a lively main floor, with our Daily Grind Café to the right, a bank of PCs along the wall, kiosks for express access to the left, and the reference desk straight ahead. But if you do not travel to see us, please visit us at www.uri.edu/library, look around, and stay for a chat.