CDL: Workload of faculty liaisons to the library? (response 2-3)

[Original posting followed by response. JA]


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-COLLDV-L_at_usc.edu [mailto:owner-COLLDV-L_at_usc.edu] On Behalf
Of abbottjp_at_appstate.edu
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 6:50 AM
To: colldv-l_at_usc.edu
Subject: CDL: Workload of faculty liaisons to the library? (response 1)

[Original post, then the response.  JA]

From:  Darren Hall <DHall_at_marymountpv.edu>
Hello all, I recently told our faculty senate that we are interested in developing
a program of faculty liaisons to the library, primarily to assist with CD.  A faculty
member asked me about the expected time commitment that such an appointment involved,
and I did not have an answer for him.  Has anyone on the list ever provided faculty with a
formal or informal estimate of the workload involved in serving as a liaison to the
library?  Are there any institutions that provide release time for their library liaisons? 
  If you have such a program at your institution, I would also be interested in hearing 
about how it is determined who becomes a liaison (e.g. appointed by dept. chair, elected
by dept., asked by library to serve).  Thanks in advance for your help.

Darren Hall
Collection Services & Reference Librarian
Marymount College Library
dhall_at_marymountpv.edu
310.303.7304


==#2==

Workload of faculty liaisons to the library?
From: "Alleman, Stephen" <allemans_at_umkc.edu>

I don't know that you can estimate the time commitment.  It will be
different for different departments.  What you might want to do is
describe exactly what you want the faculty liaisons to do.  Here's a
'job description' for faculty liaisons that I wrote at my previous
institution.

http://library.uno.edu/aboutus/policies/coll_dev/liaison.cfm

It's part of their collection development policy

http://library.uno.edu/aboutus/policies/coll_dev/colldev_policies.cfm

which also includes a 'job description' for the librarian subject
specialists.

Defining what it is you want the various people to do will go a long way
towards helping them understand what their commitment will be.

And my experience is that the departments always select who becomes the
liaison, and the library has little control over it.  Unfortunately it's
not uncommon for a department to give the assignment to the newest and
most junior member of their faculty.  At the opposite end of the
spectrum is the faculty liaison who has been in that position forever,
won't give it up, and uses it to order primarily books in his or her
specialty.  This is not as much of a problem as it used to be, since
most libraries have online forms for requesting book purchases nowadays.

In rare instances, if a liaison is totally ignoring the job, you can
appeal to the department chair to appoint someone else, but it won't
necessarily be someone you want.  And I've never heard of faculty
getting release time for this.

Steve


Steve Alleman
Head of Collections
University Libraries
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Miller Nichols Library 307
5100 Rockhill Road
Kansas City MO 64110
voice: 816.235.1580
fax: 816.333.5584
mailto:allemans_at_umkc.edu

==#3==

From:  John Abbott abbottjp_at_appstate.edu

Steve covers the landscape well in his message above.  I'll add that an annual meeting of 
the faculty dept library reps with the dept chairs can be useful.  Lunch time, get the 
reputation of feeding them well, and use the forum to educate them on trends in 
information resources, particularly those related to how the budget is strategically spent 
and how the library is very different now from their grad school experiences.  Use the 
time for the big picture issues, not going over a spreadsheet of departmental allocations. 
  Faculty think in terms of 50 min. classes, so hold your presentation with questions to 
no more than that.

Inviting the dept chairs educates them and will help them decide who in their faculty will 
make a good library rep.  Long-serving chairs sometimes see the rep job as clerical and 
have assigned their executive assistant to serve.  Specify in any communication that this 
is a faculty assignment and why.  Having the chair there also gives the rep a sense that 
the chair knows what is entailed in the rep's service to the department, etc.

We have stopped having the rep serve as the monograph-ordering gatekeeper; only a few 
depts with long-sitting reps continue doing that.  Serial cancellations are less of an 
issue because most of our journals are embedded in e-package deals, therefore the era of 
reps receiving long spreadsheets is about over.  The work is less onerous than it once 
was.  If I had to estimate a time amount in an average year, 1 to 2 hours per month max. 
Many reps will come to enjoy the work, become interested in the new delivery modalities, 
and want to talk with you about it when you see them around, so it is little hardship for 
them.

John Abbott
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC