(original posting followed by response)
From: "Astle, Deana L" <ASTLED_at_MAIL.ECU.EDU>
I would like some input from those of you out there whose faculty liasons
work in teams rather than individually.
We are looking at ways to make our liason activities more effective, with a
greater emphasis on outreach to the faculty in terms of offering
instruction, selection, awareness,etc.
Our liasons have varying strenghts in terms of knowledge of the subject,
teaching skills, size of departments served, and responsibilities within
the Library. Almost all of our 30+ librarians have some collection
development responsibilities whether they be catalogers, systems
personnel, reference librarians, or special collections people.
We had thought that if we could have the liasons work in teams, they could
share some of the responsibilities--those with good teaching skills could
do the bulk of the BI work for the "Social Sciences" team, for example,
while another could serve as the point person for learning databases,
and all would develop the larger view needed for the subject. These
are just some thoughts.
Have any of you out there tried anything like this? If so, how did you
create the teams? How do they share responsibilites? Do they work? What
would you do differently? Etc.
We want to create something that will help us do our jobs better and
maximize our services to faculty and students.
Any insights you can provide will be appreciated.
Thank you
Deana Astle
Associate Director for Collections
East Carolina University
====#1
CC: tbicknel_at_unlnotes.unl.edu
A colleague forwarded your message to me about liaison work in teams. We
have 3 librarians who function as the Business Reference Team. The team
has been in existence for 3 or 4 years and is working fairly well. The
team meets once each month to stay organized. Originally, we started the
team to share responsibilities for a very heavy reference and instruction
load.
Each of the librarians has a specialty area:
Economics liaison
Marketing & Management liaison
Accounting, Finance and Actuarial Science liaison.
Each purchases books in their areas, but the three work collectively on
major collection development projects such as weeding, identifying titles
for storage, and serials reviews. The three work together with the
reference desk services librarian to maintain the business portion of the
reference collection as well. We alternate responsibility for reviewing
the weekly shipment of new books in all of our areas as well. i.e. this is
my month to review new books, so I will review all of them in all of the
subject areas the 3 of us cover.
The most successful application of the team has been with instruction for
the College of Business Administration. The current model we're working
with requires instruction with multiple recitation sections or labs for
classes. Some of the classes, such as Marketing 341 (a required class with
200-300 students each semester), have 15-20 recitation sections each
semester. In this case, the instructors like us to visit class 1-3 times
per semester depending on the project and the success we're having in
reaching our instruction goals. The 3 business librarians split the
instruction load as evenly as possible for the large classes. We still
have specialized classes that require accounting expertise or economics
expertise, but for the most part, we split the instruction load evenly. We
work as a team to diagnose instruction problems, decide what to teach,
develop handouts, etc. We each have slightly different teaching styles,
but it works out well.
We also share responsibility for walk-in reference questions. Ideally,
when someone comes in for reference help and asks questions that cannot be
handled at the desk, they can ask their question of any of the three
business librarians. It is easier for us to find another librarian to get
help with a question than it is for a user to find us, and we use questions
we can't answer to expand our knowledge in an area. I'm not sure this load
balancing with reference questions works in practice quite as well as it
might in theory. Our patrons tend to want to talk directly to the subject
specialist, and our heaviest load is in Marketing and Management, so that
librarian probably still gets the lions share of the reference questions.
We've been evaluating options for sharing office hours over at the college
of business. The college has space for us to use in a very well used area
of the building, and we're set with network connections and laptop, but our
workload has been such that we haven't been able to commit to hours at the
college in addition to our usual reference desk hours.
We also complete other projects together. For example, we've been working
towards an electronic business reference FAQ of sorts based on an old paper
in-house manual we've been using for about 10 years.
At the same time we started the business team, we started an
education/social science team. This team has not developed very well. In
part, the team was created then the librarians involved changed due to
turnover. This team was established to deal with intermittent heavy
instruction loads - education during the summer, social sciences during the
fall. However, that instruction cycle has changed somewhat and the
instruction load is now more varied, so the need for a team hasn't been as
great. I believe the librarians involved in these areas still back each
other up with instruction, but I don't think they really function as a team
beyond that.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have additional questions.
Tracy Bicknell-Holmes
Chair, Central Reference Services
UniversityLibraries
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
http://iris.unl.edu
tbicknell-holmes1_at_unl.edu
(402) 472-2512
Greenville, NC
252-328-2870
Received on Fri Mar 01 2002 - 08:20:28 EST