the embedded librarian

This presentation was given at a colloquium of the School of Library and Information Science, Catholic University of America, on September 24, 2012. It discusses the status of embedded librarianship and the forces contributing to its growth as a model for librarians and information professionals.

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An image of Johannes Gutenberg. Gutenberg’s invention of the movable-type printing press in the 15th century led to an information revolution that (among many other effects) made modern libraries and librarianship both possible and necessary.

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Marc Andreessen (left) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (right). Their creation of html (Berners-Lee) and the graphical web browser (Andreessen) helped ignite the greatest information revolution since Gutenberg. Libraries are still working through the disruption to traditional library operations caused by this new information revolution. A key element of this revolution is that “the means of digital production are symmetrical”, as the author Clay Shirky has put it. We are all able to be publishers as well as consumers of information.

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Michael Stephens, “Stuck in the Past.” LJ Apr 15, 2011, p. 54. Libraries used to be “the only game in town”, but now we have competition – lots and lots of it.

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There’s lots of evidence of the disruption to traditional libraries. I won’t go into it in depth, but will provide just one example. As shown in the chart, the decline in total reference transactions reported by member institutions of the Association of Research Libraries declined by about 45% in the first decade of the 21st century.

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Jezmynne Dene, in Embedded Librarians: Moving beyond One-Shot Instruction. ACRL, 2011. Dene’s definition is a good start, but we need more detail.

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This definition comprises three factors: a strong working relationship between the librarian and members of a team or community; goals that are shared among the librarian and other members of the community, whether the librarian adopts the team’s goals or shared goals are negotiated; and the librarian’s ability to deliver customized, highly valued contributions to the achievement of those goals.

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A restatement of the factors in the form of a process. Note the added presence of understanding the team’s work. As the librarian forges relationships, the librarian must also develop a good understanding of the work in order to share the team’s work. By following these steps, we arrive back at Jezmynne Dene’s definition: the librarian operates as an integral member of the whole community or team.

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These 5 characteristics distinguish embedded librarianship from traditional librarianship.

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Jessamyn West, quoted by David Lankes, The Atlas of New Librarianship, p. 83. Now that we have defined embedded librarianship, we can address the question, why is embedded librarianship a successful response to the current information revolution and the disruption of traditional library services? Embedded librarianship reaffirms our core competencies while making us rethink and realign the way we present our role and mission. It enables us to unlock our value and deliver it more effectively.

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Society still has an information problem! It’s been reframed, though: the problem is not getting enough information; it’s figuring out what to pay attention to. Our attention is the scarce resource. In embedded librarianship, librarians realign their relationships so that they are positioned to help communities and teams focus their attention on what’s important.

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Society is not only becoming more diverse, it needs diversity. See the book “The Difference”, by Scott Page. Page makes the case that teams that incorporate relevant cognitive diversity perform more effectively than individual experts or homogeneous teams. Embedded librarians are a source of cognitive diversity – we see and understand the information and knowledge dimensions of a task or problem. We can also help bring other relevant cognitive diversity into the team.

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Daniel Pink (in “A Whole New Mind”) and others have written about the need for both rational and creative thinking – left-brain and right-brain respectively – in problem solving. Librarians combine these skills – an effective reference librarian employs both of them in carrying out a research project. Embedded librarians have opportunities to employ their skills to help teams achieve their goals.

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ALM Daily Report, “Law Librarianship in the New Economic Climate.”, Sept. 17, 2012. Actually, embedded librarianship is growing in all sectors. Here are just a few examples, of many.

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1. The U.S. National Institutes of Health employs embedded “informationists” who specialize in working with the different research institutes that make up the organization.

2. Vanderbilt University not only has sophisticated informationists in its medical school; it also has embedded librarians who collaborate with subject instructors to infuse information literacy instruction into its first-year courses.

3. The MITRE Corporation has a long standing embedded librarianship program. Its recent innovation has been to form “clusters” of librarians who share knowledge and back one another up.

4. Buffy Hamilton is a school media specialist in the Cherokee County School District, and she blogs as The Unquiet Librarian. She is an advocate for school media specialists forming partnerships with classroom teachers.

5. The District of Columbia Public Library has two programs that I’d like to mention. One is its teen services program. Coordinator Rebecca Renard presented a paper at IFLA this past summer about her partnership with Radio Rootz to form youth202.org. The Adaptive Services Division partners extensively with organizations serving hearing-impaired and vision-impaired people to hold programs, educational sessions, and make other services available to these communities.

6. The Lubuto Library Project builds and operates libraries to serve street children in Zambia. In the July 15, 2012 Library Journal, Anthony Bernier wrote this about Lubuto’s approach, “The project’s vision does not seek first to provide library service to impoverished African street youth. It seeks first to build community with and among them. Everything else comes second.” This captures the essence

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of the embedded, relational approach.

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Barbara Dewey, “The Embedded Librarian: Strategic Campus Collaborations.” Resource Sharing & Information Networks 17:1/2, 2004, p. 17. While we have more work to do in assessing the value of embedded librarianship. However, the following quotations illustrate the value that some have found in working with embedded librarians.

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(from the Models of Embedded Librarianship research)

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(from the Models of Embedded Librarianship research)

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(from the Models of Embedded Librarianship research)

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(Citation: Kho, N. Information Today, March 2011, p. 1.)

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Kim Dority is author of the book, “Rethinking Information Work.” I’d amend her statement to include librarians in all sectors.

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A review of the key points of this presentation.

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