The Embedded Librarians Café

(This is a couple weeks old but I’m just getting around to blogging it. If you already know about it, apologies for duplication.)

If you attended Internet Librarian last month in Monterey, CA, I envy you. I’ve always wanted to go and have never been able to.

Ok, but why am I mentioning it here? Well, it’s because you might be interested in the Tuesday morning keynote by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life project. You can view his talk at  http://pewinternet.org/Presentations/2011/Oct/Internet-Librarian.aspx. It’s a very interesting and entertaining survey of current trends and their impact on librarianship.

One of the five questions he sets himself to answer is, what is the future of reference expertise? His answer highlights two strategies for librarians, one of them being — embedded librarianship! He suggests several roles for embedded librarians, including Scout, Synthesizer, Organizer, On-call information provider, and Steward of social capital. The other strategy is what he calls the “knowledge concierge” or “knowledge valet”. He says that it has similarities to embedded librarianship, but a different sensibility.

It’s an hour-long presentation and I think you’ll find it well worth your time. But in case you can’t spend an hour, the embedded librarianship reference starts at about minute 36.

As for me, I’m going to go find out more about information valets.

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