Developing close partnerships between academic librarians and faculty can enhance student learning. The document discusses how librarian Elaine Robbins strengthened her role as the English liaison at The Citadel by collaborating closely with the English faculty. This included tailoring library instruction to English courses, improving the library's collection based on faculty needs, and integrating library instruction into the curriculum. As a result, student research improved and the library's value to the university was demonstrated.

1. Academic
Library
Liaison:
How Developing Close
Partnerships with Faculty can
Enhance the Academic
Learning Experience.

2. Some Context: Change & The
Academic Library
 Change is a reoccurring theme in the most
recent literature of academic libraries.
 A great range of paradigm shifts
 Products of an array of advances, both
technological and otherwise, that are occurring
within the broader cultural framework of the 21st
century.
 Information is evolving, growing, & becoming
more convoluted.

3. Higher Education in the Midst of a
Major Transformation
 The university’s constituents are being characterized as having “dramatically
different needs” “on dramatically diverse levels of learning and knowledge” which
are “often hard to identify and change rapidly” (Todaro, p. 5).
 “Profilers of learners and teachers are changing” (J. Todaro, p. 6).
 “Academic emphasis is shifting from course-completion to competency” with
“outcomes-based” or “employer-based” competency, which has been accepted
has “a critical need for course completers or graduates” (Todaro, p. 7)
 “Many education structures are changing to focus on design and implementation
of programs and processes of ‘academic accountability, competency
outcomes, outsourcing, content standardizing, and adaptation to learner-
consumer demands” (Todaro, p. 6)

4. Higher Education in the Midst of
a Major Transformation
 “The internet and info tech devices are becoming more
widespread in teaching and learning.
Furthermore, “faculty and staff roles are shifting” “as
instructional activities are given to a variety of
professionals in the academy” (Todaro, p. 8).
 Trends in learning theory have come to favor a view of
the learner as an individual.
 Instructional design takes into account a multitude of
learning styles and platforms, and no longer subscribes
to a “one size fits all” approach.

5. The information needs of the
scholarly community
 are vastly multifaceted.
 “as content grows there is a move to standardize
content in reusable learning objects to be organized
and stored in databases for use in the creation of
“customized learning experiences for specific
needs”(Todaro, p.6 ).
 “students cannot learn everything they need to know in
their field of study in a few years of college. Information
literacy equips them with the critical skills necessary to
become independent lifelong learners” (ACRL).

6. Academic Library Value
 The academic library’s role in higher education is being
 Reexamined
 questioned,
 and in some cases, challenged.
• The academic library’s perceived worth may be in jeopardy.
• To ensure its place in higher education now & in the future, its
role must be
 Demonstrated &
 Reinstated.

7. Be Friends with Faculty (B.F.F.)
 Collaboration with educators can provide very
rewarding opportunities & outcomes and
enhance learning, instruction, and
demonstrate value for academic libraries.

8. The Academic Library’s Role
 Effectivenessdepends
heavily upon the
academic community
it serves.
 Faculty
 Students

9. Academic Library Patrons:
Students
 Are being characterized as having various user
needs that must be met in numerous ways.
 In some ways, these needs will be related to the
student’s coursework. In this sense, a student can
be characterized to some degree within the
confines of their specific academic discipline.
 Degree-seeking students
 will generally identify with their institution through their
intended programs of study, typically in organizational terms
of academic majors and minors.

10. Students & Faculty
 Departmental identities will
 dictate much of their scholarly activity,
 These activities will
 define their personal academic missions
 be representative of the institution’s mission.

11. The Academic Library
 Aims to provide its institution’s students and
faculty the opportunity to realize their intellectual
and personal potential, by making a
comprehensive collection of scholarly materials
and library services available to them.

12. The Academic Library & The
University’s Instructional
Mission
 “…it is readily apparent that instruction—
teaching and learning—is certainly the most
far-reaching segment of institutional mission.”
 “libraries at most institutions must exist to a
great extent to facilitate teaching and
learning” (Budd).

13. Academic Library Instruction:
Past
 Library instruction in the university “can only be
traced as far back as Germany in the 17th
Century”
 but it is imagined to date back much further.
 “Academic librarians in the United States began
teaching in classrooms and writing about it in the late
19th Century”.
 In the 1960s, “academic librarians taking on
classroom roles became standard” (Lorenzen).

14. Academic Library Instruction:
Present
 More recently, “Academic librarians have had
to deal with the emergence of new information
technologies in teaching library
skills”(Lorenzen)
 which has resulted in the inclination towards
Information Literacy education.
 Information Literacy is defined as “the set of
skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use
information” (ALA).

15. A discipline-based approach to
information literacy
 the teaching of information literacy skills can be
more identifiable by the learner within an
academic framework.
 taking a “generic” approach to “the general
process of retrieving and evaluating information”
will be less successful than teaching students
“the skills required for acquiring knowledge or
doing research in a specific subject
area”(Grafstein).
 Not doing so risks “isolating process from content”

16. Information Literacy & Faculty
 Faculty“has complementary roles in the delivery of IL
instruction”(Grafstein)
 Therefore,it will be necessary for the academic library to
strengthen its relationships with the university faculty.
 Therefore, FACULTY LIAISON

17. What is “faculty liaison”?
 “a systematic way to communicate with, learn
from, and serve important library patrons, to
advance and publicize the library’s
agenda, and to ground the ideals and
bureaucracy of the library in the real needs of
the community”(Pankake)

18. How?
 Exploring the development of “Specialized
reference services to specific disciplines,
departments, or groups of faculty” “as another
avenue for liaison” (Pankake).
 “One way to forge a partnership is through well-
developed library instruction programs” (Budd)
 “assigning one specific librarian to a particular
group of scholars might help build interpersonal
ties that will foster continued use of service”
(Pankake).

19. Subject-Specialist Librarians &
Library Instruction
 More recently, have taken on instructional
roles that supplement the learning and
curriculum related to a specific academic
discipline.
 Such roles are presenting new opportunities
for libraries to bridge educational gaps as well
as demonstrate their institutional value.

20. A Real-Life Example:
 Elaine Robbins
 English Liaison
 Reference & Instruction
Librarian
 At Daniel Library
 At The Citadel
 SC’s Military College.

21. As English Liaison, Elaine has:
 Revamped the Liaison Program by
 Working closely with English Faculty.
 Provideslibrary instruction that is tailored to the
requirements of English courses at all levels.
 Freshmen/Composition Courses
 Undergraduate English Courses
 Graduate English Courses

22. Successful Collaboration:
 Knowing the ins and outs of a department is
key.
 Faculty
 Students
 Curriculum
 Instructional Needs
 Being able to “speak their language”

23. Get Acquainted:
 Themore acquainted the librarian is with the
faculty members,
 The more acquainted they can become with the
courses they are teaching.
 Can plan instructional experiences that
specifically supplement the coursework:
 Assignments
 Projects
 Research

24. Potential Outcomes: Collection
Development
• Successful partnerships can lead to
 Improvement of the Collection.
 Elaine has strengthened the Citadel’s English
Literature collection
 According to faculty & student needs
 Coursework & Assignments

25. Potential Outcomes: Curricular
 For Elaine, some English Faculty have
entirely integrated library instruction into the
syllabus/curriculum
 Weekly assignments that tie library instruction
topics in with course topics
 *Discipline-based approaches to Information
Literacy education*

26. Successful Collaboration:
 Can lead to professional products.
 Elaine has greatly improved The Citadel’s Library
webpage
 Subject guides
 Scholarly publications
 Elaine is working on an article in conjunction with an
English faculty member
 Beneficial for English faculty to have articles in “non-
English” publications
 Beneficial for librarians to collaborate with faculty
 Demonstrates academic library value

27. Collaborative Assessment
 Elainehas started giving freshman English
Literature students Library Quizzes via
LibGuides.
 She grades the quizzes and sends them to the
faculty & students
 Opportunity for immediate assessment &
evaluation
 Helps improve library instruction

28. Not Communicating with Faculty:
 Missing communication = Miscommunication
 The less we know about faculty the less we
know about students.
 The less we know about students, their
needs, & assignments, the less we can
ensure that our collection & services support
their needs.

29. Librarians & Faculty as
Colleagues
 PositiveResults
 Productivity
 Professional Development
 Academic success
 Improvement
 Better programs
 Better education & instruction
 Better libraries!

30. Works Cited
 Budd, John M. (2005). The changing academic library:
operations, culture, environments. American Library Association.
 Grafstein, Ann. (2002 July). A discipline-based approach to information
literacy. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28(4), 197-204.
 Literatures in English Section. (June 2007). Research Competency Guidelines
for Literatures in English. The Association of College and Research Libraries.
Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/researchcompetenciesles
 Lorenzen, Michael. (2001). A brief history of library instruction in the united
states of America. Illinois Libraries. Retrieved from
http://www.libraryinstruction.com/lihistory.html.
 Pankake, Marcia. (2000). Faculty liaison: librarians and faculty as colleagues.
Literature in English:a guide for librarians in the digital age. American Library
Association.
 Todaro, Julie. ( 2008). 21st century academic libraries. The Association of
College and Research Libraries, (1-28).
 What is information literacy? American Library Association. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/acrl/issues/infolit/overview/intro
• http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/les/leshomepage