The Embedded Librarian

One of the points that comes up in conversation about embedded librarianship is that it’s a lot easier if your organization already has an orientation towards flexibility, dynamic teams, matrix management, functional integration or some similar approach to getting diverse people working together to accomplish tasks.

If you’re working in a traditional organization and have an org chart defined by a lot of little functional boxes that don’t collaborate very well, your efforts to promote embedded librarianship are definitely going to be counter-cultural. If your arms get tired, it’s because you’re paddling upstream all day.

In my corporate experience, I was fortunate to work in an organization that really “got it” about cognitive diversity and cross-functional teaming. In addition to embracing embedded librarianship, they also established Human Resource Business Partners. As a manager, I had a designated HR person to work with on any staffing issues that came up. It made my life easier!

In the past few years, I get the feeling that the notion of an HR Business Partner has become pretty widespread. As a matter of fact, I recently read something in which the author referred to an “HRBP” without even spelling it out. It took me a minute, but I realized the acronym stood for “Human Resources Business Partner.” If you go to acronymfinder.com, you’ll have no trouble locating it.

The same idea seems to be taking hold in information technology units as well. In a recent interview (
http://bit.ly/lakCJY
), the president of American Railcar Industries, Lee Anderson, says, “Rather than training everybody in development skills, we are embedding key skill sets into business units.”

Substitute “information management” for “development” and you’ve got embedded librarians. So maybe if you’re having trouble explaining embedded librarianship in your organization, these models from Human Resources and Information Technology can help.

I’ll be conducting a workshop on developing your strategy for embedded librarianship as a preconference program for WebSearch University in Washington DC. This will be a half-day workshop on Wednesday, September 12, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Whether you’ve read The Embedded Librarian or not, this will be a great opportunity to develop your own strategy, fitting your special organizational circumstances while comparing notes with others.

Details on WebSearch University are available at:
http://www.websearchu.com/2012/
.

Early bird pricing ends this Friday, so sign up now for the best rate. I hope to see you there!

I’ve been remiss in failing to mention the emlibs list. Emlibs was started this past spring, is hosted at Miami University of Ohio, and is intended for “embedded librarians in the Learning Management System.” See 
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/emlibs.html
 . If you”re doing information literacy instruction and haven’t joined yet, you might want to consider it.

Anyway, I recently read an interesting article, “Academic Libraries and the Credit-Bearing Class”, by Margaret Burke of Hofstra University. It’s available at 
http://bit.ly/MekNLq
 . At Hofstra, librarians teach standalone, one-credit courses in information literacy, and Burke advocates this approach as preferable to the course-embedded model. I posted a question on the emlibs list about comparing the two approaches, and a helpful, if inconclusive exchange followed, with Ms. Burke taking part.

In the article and the emlibs discussion, one point surfaced that does bother me about some of the embedded instruction initiatives I’ve read about: there’s little or no evaluation of information literacy outcomes, and if there is, the librarian isn’t involved in the evaluation. At a program earlier this year, I heard librarians doing course-embedded IL instruction say they didn’t want any part of evaluating student work. While I can understand the time and logistical obstacles, I think that to adopt that attitude is a shame. After all, if information literacy is important, shouldn’t there be defined learning objectives? And if there are, then shouldn’t they be evaluated? And if the librarian is doing the instruction, as a recognized expert in IL, then wouldn’t the librarian be the logical person to do the evaluation? In my research, I did find examples of librarians evaluating learning outcomes, and in the interviews I conducted, a clear trend among academic librarians to improve their ability to evaluate.

So this discussion has given me a lot to mull over. We need to know a lot more about how information literacy is being evaluated, and ultimately we need to be able to compare the standalone credit-bearing course to embedded instruction as a framework for information literacy education. It seems to me there are strong reasons why the embedded model ought to produce better results, but I haven’t seen any research to back that up.

So — over to you. I’m hoping readers of this blog will have additional insights, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about the instructional role of librarians — so much that I plan to do two posts on the topic. Here’s part 1.

Belated kudos to Buffy Hamilton, the Unquiet Librarian, for her June 12 posting , “Dear FCC and ALA: Do You Really Not Get It?” (See 
http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/dear-fcc-and-ala-do-you-really-not-get-it/
 )

In response to a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission to establish a “Digital Literacy Corps”, Buffy (and several commenters) point out that such a corps already exists: in the form of school and public librarians who, embedded in the classrooms and communities, teach digital and information literacy skills. Indeed, why does such a corps need to be invented, when it already exists?

I agree wholeheartedly with Buffy and the commenters that this is exactly what public and school librarians need to be doing. However, she and several of those who commented mention what, in my opinion, is the key problem: not enough school and public librarians really are engaging with the community and teaching these essential skills. Too many are content to perpetuate an outdated model of librarianship that enables them to sit tight in their libraries … for now.

The research I did for my book, The Embedded Librarian, confirms this view. Despite the efforts of innovative professionals, and the codification of new ideas in the publication Information Power and other sources, a study done for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in 2008 reported that most school librarians did not have well-developed collaborative relationships with classroom teachers. (R. Todd, School Library Monthly, v. 24 no. 7, p. 54-58.)

So we are in a Catch-22 situation right now. There are effective school and public librarians who are reaching out, forming partnerships, and addressing acute community problems like the creation of essential 21st-century knowledge. I consider them embedded librarians: they focus on relationships, understand the domain and context of their work, share responsibility for achieving common goals, and bring outstanding librarianship skills to bear. However, their efforts are undermined by traditional librarians and their enablers who see the librarian as a custodian of books. As long as they give credence to the old stereotypes of the librarian, people like those in the FCC will think they have to create new corps of professionals to do what some librarians are already, and all should be, doing.

What to do? Among other things, redouble our efforts to move the center of gravity in the profession to a new, connected, active, embedded model. For starters, maybe the FCC could give the money for that Digital Literacy Corps to the IMLS for a program to really create a corps of embedded public and school librarians!

… Well, it’s a thought …

I got home early this morning (delayed flight that landed after midnight) from another invigorating and thought-provoking SLA Annual Conference.

During the conference, I contributed 3 postings to the new “ITI Books Blog” on the website of my publisher, Information Today. Rather than recap them here, I’ll just give you the link:
http://booksblog.infotoday.com/
.

Well, I will add 2 comments to what I said in those posts. First, I was disappointed at the lack of formal programs on embedded librarianship. On the other hand, I was thrilled at the number of poster presentations I saw and informal conversations I had on the topic, suggesting that the folks in the profession are taking up embedded librarianship in a big way. Second, I was excited that embedded librarianship did come up several times in the closing session as one of the most important trends in the profession.

It was another great SLA conference. Next year I hope we’ll have even more emphasis on embedded librarianship!

In the coming weeks, I’ll be participating in the Special Libraries Association and American Association of Law Libraries conferences.

At SLA, I’ll be signing copies of my new book, The Embedded Librarian, at the SLA Marketplace on Monday, July 16 from 2:00 to 2:45 p.m., and I’ll also be presenting a contributed paper on Tuesday the 17th at 4:00 p.m. The contributed paper will review the results of my four year SLA-funded research project, and offer some directions for future research.

At AALL, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on Tuesday, July 24 at 10:15 a.m. It’s entitled “Embedding Librarians to Add Value to Your Institution “, and will feature speakers from law firm, judicial, and academic law libraries as well.

If you’re attending either conference, I hope you’ll attend these programs. I look forward to meeting you!

I just checked back a couple years and found that not once have I posted anything specifically about embedded librarians in higher education. I’m way overdue!

On June 5, I was on a panel at the OCLC Research Forum “Libraries Rebound” meeting (
http://www.oclc.org/research/events/2012-06-05.htm
). My theme was that in higher education, embedded librarianship is often equated with embedded information literacy instruction, far overshadowing embedded collaboration in research. This view is based on an analysis of the Models of Embedded Librarianship survey research, which will be published in my contributed paper for the SLA 2012 Annual Conference, and on my assessment of the professional literature. In my talk, I advocated that academic librarians should explore opportunities to strengthen their engagement in research.

You can see a copy of my presentation on the meeting site or on Slideshare at:

Earlier today, I was reading a new white paper commissioned by Sage Publishing and written by Claire Creaser and Valérie Spezi of Loughborough University, which pretty much says the same thing. The authors advocate more emphasis on what I would call embedded librarianship, and especially development of librarians’ engagement in research projects with subject faculty.

Quoting from the executive summary, “Embedded information literacy instruction is highly valued by teaching staff. Increasingly, this is developing into integrated teaching and curriculum development activities. Support for research appeared less well embedded, but there is evidence of successful partnerships between librarians and research staff in the areas of literature reviewing and data curation, in particular. “

The Sage report is available at  
http://libraryvalue.wordpress.com/report
 .

It all started when a member of an email list I’m on posted a link to a Forbes magazine blog item that billed the Master’s in Library Science as the “worst” Master’s degree to get in today’s U.S. economy. (You can see the post at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/06/08/the-best-and-worst-masters-degrees-for-jobs-2/
)
Several people responded to this, I among them. In my response, I made the following points:

1. The article isn’t exactly a rigorous study.
2. The sources used probably don’t take into account new, nontraditional roles for librarians, which is where some of us think most of the growth in the profession will come from.
3. Traditional jobs aren’t going away; they are changing and have their own set of challenges and opportunities. They can be richly rewarding in many ways.
4. Don’t choose a career based solely on growth and salary. Love what you do; do what you are called to.

After I posted my response, an MLS grad from a few years ago sent me an off-list reply about her job search. After obtaining her MLS, she has gotten into the specialty of writing proposals and managing the proposal process. Her note included the following (quoted with permission):

“I have just accepted a position as a proposal manager/writer for another … company and they wanted me because (1) I have lots of experience in proposal writing/management AND (2) because of my MLS – they want me to set up an answer repository and organize their information. The MLS made the difference between me and the other candidate.”

Meanwhile, in another dialog, a different but related question came up: what about embedded librarians, when there is no central library in an organization? Just a bunch of dispersed librarians, all employed by different units that need their skills? What skills do they need, how can they best operate in the organization? My immediate answer is that they would probably be performing some mix of the information- and knowledge-related roles that other embedded librarians perform. Further, they are likely to have many common interests and challenges, so it would really be to their benefit to network with each other like crazy. They would be like any other community of interest in this regard.
As I reflect on these two discussions, it seems to me that the embedded librarian employed by a (more or less) traditional library unit, the embedded librarian employed directly by an information user group, and the person like the graduate I quoted, with a Library Science background whose librarianship duties are only part of her job, all represent points on a continuum of career possibilities for librarians. As librarians become more integrated with the organization, and more focused on using information management skills to help achieve enterprise goals, it seems likely that we’ll see more growth at the “part time librarian, part time something else” end of the spectrum.

Further, I think  that individuals across this spectrum will probably continue to draw on core competencies and values of librarianship, to perform some mix of similar tasks (at least for the part of their time that they are wearing their “librarian” hats), and will need to network with one another. They’ll continue to want to share problems and solutions, to collaborate on obtaining tools and resources, and building solutions to common problems. In many cases, a central library organization will be the best focal point for them. In other cases, informal networks and communities of interest will need to play this role.
What are your thoughts?