Debra,
Perhaps it's indeed better not to think principally in terms of structure
at all, certainly not _a priori_ and/or in a deterministic fashion. After
all, what counts is the ultimate effectiveness and the satisfaction among
( ideally ) all parties concerned. Once you have established, and made
clear to all, your objectives, and have, given the personnel and other
resources which are at your disposal, assigned the best available persons
to the corresponding disciplines or groups of disciplines, then you can at
least try allowing sufficient room for things to grow organically toward the
above-mentioned effectiveness and satisfaction per liaison area.
Adjustment and fine tuning can always come later on.
I was responsible for supporting several disciplinary fields/departments.
For a couple of them, the approach indicated by Sarah ( departmental
representative, funneling of requests [ and feedback ] ) worked very well,
while for others it didn't work at all. And I gathered from colleagues that
their experiences were comparable. [ I seem to recall a dramatic difference
in this respect between the English department and the general linguistics
department, both assigned to a particular colleague of mine ; there was also
a huge difference between the archaeologists ( where such an arrangement
worked extremely well ) and the classicists ( where it didn't really work at
all ). ] It all has to do with disciplinary mindset and culture and tradition,
with personalities, with pragmatic academic circumstances, and yet other
factors -- things a librarian often doesn't have a handle on.
In general, where I worked, we kind of went with the flow -- something
like what Sarah means with "organic", I guess. In our case, this situation
developed more or less naturally over an extended period of time as the
library services at our institution were gradually professionalized, centralized
and consolidated. Formerly, the emphasis was on individual subject domain
expertise, but now the liaison aspect has come much more to the fore. It
would seem to be the case that the less subject domain expertise present
within the corps of liaison librarians, the greater will be the need for, and
the utility of, ( a clear _a priori_ ) structure.
An obvious problem with the above is that in cases where the department
concerned has little or no interest in ( or indeed is averse to : not so rare
as one might think, or might *like* to think ) a structural relationship with
the respective librarian, it is all the more important that the librarian
concerned really has a genuine scholarly and "discursive" grounding -- and
preferably research/teaching experience -- in the discipline being served,
and that he or she continues working to maintain a personal disciplinary
competence ( alongside one's LIS competence ). We were pretty lucky that
we once had a sufficiently generous personnel budget that we were in a
position largely to satisfy such a desideratum. *Once*, I emphasize, because
the situation has in that regard been steadily worsening for the last decade
or so and doesn't show any signs of ever improving. Fortunately, concurrent
developments in technical infrastructure and modes of scholarly work and
communication have made this less of a problem than it otherwise would
have become. In an ideal world, it will cease altogether to be a factor. But
then again, in that kind of ( unachievable ? ) world, there won't be any
academic libraries either, at least as we have known them.
- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland
( one-time subjects specialist at the library of
the Universiteit van Amsterdam, now retired )
From: "acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org" <acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org>
To: acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2012 10:22 PM
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] Structure for Subject Liaison Librarians
Hi, Debra
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "structured." At the Mary & John Gray Library we assign library liaison duties according to the respective academic backgrounds of our librarians -- as much as possible, that is. The only problem is that we don't have have any librarians with science or engineering backgrounds, so I get to cover those.
At the same time, each academic department assigns a faculty member -- often a junior one -- to serve as departmental book representative. Ideally, the departmental book representative funnels requests to the corresponding library liaison, but we are not overly strict about that. This structure mostly is intended to provide a somewhat formal chain of communication where a more organic connection may be missing.
I cannot really say why we initially decided on this structure. It was devised before I came here. I can say, however, that we stay with it because it does help reinforce communication between the library and the academic departments.
I hope this helps.
--
Sarah Tusa, Associate Professor
Coordinator of Collection Development
& Acquisitions
Mary & John Gray Library
Lamar University
(409) 880-8125
sarah.tusa_at_lamar.edu
I am on a task force here at The UT Arlington Library working on a new structure for Liaison Librarians. Collection Development/Acquisitions will be one element of that role. We would like to pose two questions:
1. How are your Liaison (subject) Librarians structured?
2. How did you decide on this structure?
Thank you,
Debra Lou Carter
Monographs Manager
carter_at_uta.edu
Universtiy of Texas at Arlington Library
Information Resources
702 Planetarium Place
Arlington, TX 76019-0497
Ph: 817-272-1507
Fax: 817-272-5804
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Received on Fri Oct 05 2012 - 12:32:25 EDT