I’ve returned to this question in the past month in connection with the SLA-sponsored research project I’m working on with Mary Talley. We have been reviewing and re-defining the variables that are associated with “embeddedness”.
Here are the ones that seem relevant:
1. location: where’s your office? With other librarians, or with your customers?
2. Funding: who pays your salary, and other costs? Do they come out of a general purpose library budget, or from a budget that pays for other expenses of your customer group?
3. Management and supervision: who writes your performance review? If you left the organization, who would interview and hire your replacement?
4. Participation: do you go to meetings of your customer group? Meetings of library staff?
There are more details, but in a nutshell those are the factors that I associate with “embedded librarianship”. What would you add or change?
The Embedded Librarians Café