United States
£ GBP
As liaison librarianship has evolved from a collections-centric to an engagement-centric model, liaisons have had to grapple with new and evolving competencies and skills that are focused on how to engage with diverse constituencies and stakeholders. But what does that mean practically?
Liaison Engagement Success: A Practical Guide for Librarians will answer that question for academic liaison librarians, whether they are new to the profession or new to the liaison role. It offer specific proven strategies for engaging with user communities. Every community is different, and a liaison who takes up the tasks of engagement will need to be committed to building relationships, being flexible, and listening well, in order to understand the community's needs and meet them.
This book offers specific strategies for :
- Getting to know a user community
- Finding effective strategies for proactive outreach
- Collaborating with others for effective engagement
- Evaluating and assessing the engagement that is happening
The book features practical tips and case studies for engagement with different disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, STEM, arts, professional disciplines, and with non-academic units.
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
1. History and Evolution of Liaison Librarianship
2. Getting to Know Your User Community
3. Mindsets for Liaison Work
4. Strategies for Outreach
5. Engagement with the Humanities
6. Engagement with the Social Sciences
7. Engagement with the STEM Fields
8. Engagement with the Arts
9. Engagement with the Professional Disciplines
10. Engagement with Non-Academic Units
11. Collaboration and Partnership Inside and Outside the Library
12. Leadership of Engaged Liaisons
13. Assessment and Evaluation of Engaged Librarians
Bibliography
About the Authors
Ellen Hampton Filgo is the director of the liaison program in the research and engagement division of Baylor University Libraries. She received her MSLS from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is also a 2017 cohort member of the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. As the director of the liaison program, she manages a team of liaisons who reach out to and engage with their assigned schools, departments, and major programs on campus to provide high-quality and effective research, information literacy, collections and scholarly communication services. She is also the liaison to four social science and humanities departments.
Sha Towers is the associate dean for research and engagement in the Baylor University Libraries, leading a team of directors who oversee the liaison program, public services, instruction and information literacy, special collections, data and digital scholarship. He holds the Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Texas and the Master of Music History and Literature degree from Baylor University. He is a 2011 cohort member of the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians, and in 2018, he was promoted to the highest rank of faculty librarians at Baylor University. Towers served as the head of the fine arts library at Baylor for nine years, during which time he developed a new model of librarian engagement with the faculty and students in the arts fields. As a result of this work, he was invited to lead the reference department in a major reorganization with the goal of transitioning the reference librarians to a more proactive liaison model. Towers led the liaison program at the Baylor Libraries from 2012 until 2019.
Towers and Filgo have authored and presented on engaged liaison work in numerous venues, both separately and as co-authors and co-presenters.
"Whether you are new to librarianship or taking on a new liaison assignment, this resource provides a great introduction, giving context and practical strategies to make big impacts on your campus across a variety of disciplines. The liaison success stories will give readers ample inspiration for creative ways to engage their own faculty and the chapters on leadership and assessment will also be helpful to those with more liaison experience."
– Tara M. Radniecki, head of the DeLaMare science and engineering library at the University of Nevada, Reno
"Liaison Engagement Success joins texts such as Buchanan and McDonough's The OneShot Library Instruction Survival Guide and Moniz, Henry, and Eshleman's Fundamentals for the Academic Liaison as complementary reading for new liaison librarians or liaisons looking to refresh their outreach or strategies in the classroom. This text will best serve an academic institution with a liaison program in addition to institutions with Library & Information Studies/Science departments."
– Technical Services Quarterly
"Liaison Engagement Success: A Practical Guide for Librarians (and the Practical Guides for Librarians series) is highly recommended by the reviewer for the purpose of guiding the work of today's liaison librarians. It presents helpful insights, tips, and unique case studies that will influence the current work of academic librarians. This book also is helpful to the librarian supervisor or administrator in assessing and evaluating the work of liaison librarians and how to influence and impact student success across different departments on campus."
– Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship
