1. Models for Liaison Services
ASERL Summertime Summit
August 6, 2013
Atlanta, GA
Kathryn Crowe
University of North Carolina at
Greensboro
2. UNCG Liaison Reorganization
• Changing roles and
priorities of liaisons
• Task Force charged to
examine responsibilities
and provide
recommendations for
new organizational
structure
• Benchmarked other
academic libraries
3. Benchmarking key findings
• Many libraries have decentralized model
• Most have a collections department
• A few have teams
• Some have formally prioritized liaison
responsibilities and made engagement the top
priority
4. Utah State
Decentralized subject
teams with functional
coordinators
Shifting from focus on
collection development
Subject librarians meet
monthly
Subject teams a few
times a year
5. UtahState
Subject Librarian Advisory
Committee replaced
former Collection
Development Advisory
Council
Discusses major policies
Still some uncertainty
since subject librarians
report to many different
departments
6. Villanova
Created “Academic
Integration” Department with
7 liaison teams, a department
head, functional coordinators
and support staff.
Most teams have 3 or 4
members with a coordinator
Most departments still have a
liaison
Functional coordinators work
with department coordinator
to set goals, plan meetings &
workshops and assist each
subject team.
7. Johns Hopkins
Academic Liaisons Department
(AL) that includes collections,
reference, research
consultations and instruction
Not all liaisons in this
department; many in Scholarly
Resources and Special
Collections (SRSC)
AL Monthly meetings on
instruction and research
support. SRSC also attends
these
Have functional teams but not
subject teams
8. Department
Head
UNCG liaison department
Instruction
Coordinator
AD for Collections
& Scholarly
Communications
The leadership
team, along with the
3 subject team
coordinators
Humanities
Team
Social
Science
Team
Natural
Science
Team
Staff &
student
worker
support
AD for
Public
Services
Reference Desk
Coordinator
9. Instruction
Team
Functional teams:
Composed of liaisons from each subject team
plus other librarians & staff
Social
Science
Team
Humanities
Team
Natural
Science
Team
Reference
Desk Team
Collections
Team
Scholarly
Communications
Team
10. Open Access and Scholarly
Communications at UNCG
• Faculty Senate Scholarly Communications
Committee since 2007
• NCDOCKS Institutional Repository since 2008
• Open Journal Systems support
• Fund for author fees
• Libraries’ faculty adopted OA policy
• Member of SPARC and CNI
11. And moving forward…
• New AD for Collections and Scholarly
Communication
• Scholarly Communications functional team
• Training and support for liaisons to work with
faculty
• Continued programming
12. Data Management at UNCG
• Focus on staff training and education
• Faculty survey
• ODUM/NCDOCKS
• New position for support
13. Discussion questions
• What’s your library doing for DM & OA
staffing? (Is there anything new under the
sun?)
• What’s exciting about DM/OA for staff?
• What’s worrisome?
• Have you created new positions or realigned
positions for DM/OA?
14. More discussion questions
• What do you think about the idea that we
shouldn’t worry about offering DM/OA
consultations (after all, not everyone at a
university uses reference desk services)?
• What future programming is needed?
Had a traditional reference dept. Most liaisons in Reference. Liaisons wanted to do less collection management and desk work to focus on information literacy and consultations. Administration wanted liaisons to work with scholarly communication. Issues with no clear line of authority for many liaison responsibiliti
Presented 3 models from other schools, 4 functional coordinators. Liaisons in Ref and other depts,
Working well. Positive feedback from faculty. Support staff helps w/ stats, collection development projects, assisting w/ events, archiving documentation
TF recommended several models; This is what we decided on. “UNCG liaisons department” -- we haven’t picked our new department name yet; Each subject team has a coordinator.
“Instruction” includes instructional technology. We decided it’s not useful to separate instruction from instructional tech.We will probably create the Scholarly Communications Team in the near future.
Senate Committee has provided programming; OA Fund w/ Office of Research and Economic Development; have dispersed 6 awards from OA fund. LibGuide for SCAD will chair SC committeeFunctional team will include reps from each subject team
