ALA TechSource Workshop: How to Build a Sustainable Embedded Librarianship Program

1. HOW TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE
EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP PROGRAM
MEREDITH FARKAS
PORTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE
FOR ALA TECHSOURCE
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/wa/WAVASbike_kevf.jpg

2. HI! I’M
MEREDITH
CURRENTLY: FACULTY
LIBRARIAN AT PORTLAND
COMMUNITY COLLEGE
2011-2014: HEAD OF
INSTRUCTION AT
PORTLAND STATE
UNIVERSITY
2008-2011: HEAD OF
INSTRUCTION AT
NORWICH UNIVERSITY
2005-2008: DISTANCE
LEARNING LIBRARIAN AT
NORWICH UNIVERSITY

3. I ALSO DEVELOPED AND TEACH
LIBR 220 EMBEDDING THE LIBRARY INTO
THE FABRIC OF HIGHER EDUCATION
FOR SAN JOSE STATE’S INFORMATION
SCHOOL

4. COMMON COMPLAINTS ABOUT
LIBRARY INSTRUCTION PROGRAMS
• There is no way we can reach the number of
students we need to given our staffing
• We feel like what we are currently doing is not
having enough impact on students’ information
literacy
• We feel like there’s no intentionality to our instruction
program

5. ALL OF THESE CAN BE ADDRESSED BY
EMBEDDED LIBRARY INSTRUCTION
https://www.flickr.com/photos/liamngls/413522957/

6. PROBLEMS WITH
THE ONE-SHOT
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pathphotos/5225170834

7. https://www.flickr.com/photos/imgeorge/4810034948/
Not our
students

8. https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/6009398222/

9. https://www.flickr.com/photos/becosky/3304801086/

10. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/5398114900/

11. https://www.flickr.com/photos/huntergather/7219699620/

12. https://www.flickr.com/photos/auntie/164028451/

13. IS A COLLECTION OF ONE-SHOTS
REALLY AN INSTRUCTION PROGRAM
AT ALL?

14. MATTHEW, VICTORIA, AND ANN
SCHROEDER. "THE EMBEDDED LIBRARIAN
PROGRAM." EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY 29.4
(2006): 61.
• Librarians embedded in the LMS
• Discussion board in the classroom
• Contributing instructional content
• Being available to our students in the classroom, at
their points of need

15. MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH
EMBEDDEDNESS
• Created a librarian discussion boards in first classes in the Masters
of Military History and Masters of Diplomacy programs
• Offered timely instruction/tips
• Provided research assistance
• Expanded program after a semester
• Limitations of the technology made monitoring a nightmare
• Shunted majority of reference traffic to me
• Only a few classes had really active discussion boards

16. BEING THERE ISN’T ENOUGH…

17. BEING THERE…
AT THE RIGHT TIMES
AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE
CURRICULUM

18. DEWEY, BARBARA I. "THE EMBEDDED
LIBRARIAN: STRATEGIC CAMPUS
COLLABORATIONS." RESOURCE SHARING &
INFORMATION NETWORKS 17.1-2 (2005): 5-17.
• Embeddedness = deep collaboration
• Partnerships with faculty and staff in other units
across campus
• Librarians getting out of the library and being a more
integral part of campus life

19. CHARACTERISTICS OF
EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP
• Proactive instead of waiting to be asked
• Relationships with faculty; shared goals
• Librarians as partners
• Customized, high-value contributions to the curriculum
• Being where our patrons are
• Deep understanding of patron needs & curriculum

21. BEING EMBEDDED DOESN’T HAVE TO MEAN…
BEING PRESENT IN THE CLASS THROUGHOUT
THE TERM
CO-TEACHING
BEING ALWAYS AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS IN
THEIR CLASSROOM VIA DISCUSSION BOARD
IT IS ABOUT MEANINGFUL, WELL-DESIGNED
LIBRARY PRESENCE AND/OR INSTRUCTION AT
JUST THE RIGHT TIMES IN THE CURRICULUM.

23. WHERE CAN WE BE MOST VALUABLE
IN THE CURRICULUM?
HOW CAN WE SCAFFOLD THE
DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION
LITERACY SKILLS THROUGHOUT THE
CURRICULUM?

24. FIRST STEPS TOWARDS
EMBEDDEDNESS
• Build relationships with faculty
• Get to know the curriculum
• Get to know students and their “pain points”

26. ARE WE PARTNERS?
ARE WE “AT THEIR SERVICE?”

27. HOW I’VE BUILT
RELATIONSHIPS
• Being present
• Being useful to faculty
• In ways not necessarily related to info lit
• Building momentum with low-hanging fruit

28. PERCEPTIONS TAKE TIME TO
CHANGE

29. LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE
CURRICULUM
• Talk to faculty and department chairs
• Collect syllabi and research assignments
• Serve on faculty committees
• Curriculum mapping

30. IT CAN’T JUST BE ABOUT YOU

31. SEEK OUT OPPORTUNITIES TO
COLLABORATE ON
COURSE/ASSIGNMENT/CURRICULUM DESIGN
• Program review
• Curriculum redesign
• Course redesign
• Frustration with student performance in x class
• Grant opportunities where we can pay instructors to
collaborate

32. ADVANCED DESIGN PROCESS
• Led by Center for Online Learning
instructional designers for individual departments
• Focused on backwards design
• Library gets four hours
• 2 hrs. integrating library resources in classes
• 2 hrs. research assignment design

35. AFTER THE ADVANCED DESIGN
WORKSHOPS
• Positive feedback from participants
• Lots of subsequent collaboration with faculty who
participated in the workshops
• Quarterly library workshops on assignment design
for faculty
• Hampered by low attendance

36. GET TO KNOW YOUR STUDENTS
• Assessment of library instruction
• Assessment of student work in key courses
• Reference desk transactions
• Focus groups

37. REDESIGN OF HI 209
HISTORIOGRAPHY @ NORWICH
• Saw lots of students coming in with this Paris Peace Conference
project where they had to represent the interests of a particular
country at the talks
• Started conversations with faculty teaching it.
• They were moving it to the sophomore level and wanted to
redesign the curriculum
• Taught information literacy in partnership with the museum and the
archives over the course of four well-timed sessions with
embedded assignments that allowed them to practice what they
learned

38. IS EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP
ABOUT KILLING THE ONE-
SHOT?
• Yes and no
• Putting instruction into the right
places in the curriculum
• Making sure that instruction is built
upon and reemphasized/repeated

39. IS EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP ABOUT
DOING A LOT MORE TEACHING?
• Maybe
• Many other options too
• Tutorials
• Building course content
• Train the trainer

40. IF THE GOAL IS TO EMBED
INFORMATION LITERACY INTO
THE CURRICULUM, OUR
INVOLVEMENT MAY SOMETIMES
BE INVISIBLE

41. TUTORIALS
• Videos
• Guide on the Side
• Interactive tutorials
• Online worksheets
• Can be used instead of or in addition to face-to-face
instruction

53. BUILDING COURSE CONTENT OR
SUPPORTING ITS DEVELOPMENT
• Lectures (in online classes)
• Lesson plans
• Activities
• Assignments
• Train the trainer

54. AT THE SAME
TIME…

55. HIGH-TOUCH EMBEDMENT
• Co-teaching
• Teaching many sessions to the same class
• Being present in every class session

56. VAN EPPS, AMY AND MEGAN SAPP NELSON. "ONE-
SHOT OR EMBEDDED? ASSESSING DIFFERENT
DELIVERY TIMING FOR INFORMATION RESOURCES
RELEVANT TO ASSIGNMENTS."EVIDENCE-BASED
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PRACTICE 8.1 (2013): 438-
449.
"Frequent, short library instruction sessions produce an
increased use of high-quality content. Similarly, the
sections with multiple library interactions show more
use of periodicals than websites."

57. BOWLER, MEAGAN AND KORI STREET. "INVESTIGATING
THE EFFICACY OF EMBEDMENT: EXPERIMENTS IN
INFORMATION LITERACY INTEGRATION."REFERENCE
SERVICES REVIEW 36.4 (2008): 438-449.
"As the level of librarian embedment increased students'
performance on the research component of the rubric
increased as well."
"Although the improvement in IL among students in WMST
3305 was astounding in some ways, the resource cost is not
sustainable. Unless resourcing approaches are found to
permit that kind of sustained, immersed embedment, we
would recommend that type with caution."

58. REASONS TO DO HIGH-TOUCH
EMBEDMENT
• Key course in the curriculum
• Political reasons
• To sell the idea of embedment, show what is
possible
• To train the faculty member to cover the same
content in the future

59. QUESTIONS?

60. GETTING IN THEIR FLOW

61. IF THIS IS THEIR CAMPUS...

62. IF THIS IS THEIR CAMPUS...
Library

63. MANY LEVELS OF “EMBEDDING”
• Macro-Level Library Courseware Involvement*
• Micro-Level Library Courseware Involvement*
• Molecular-Level Library Courseware Involvement
• Embedment in the curriculum itself
• * From Shank, J. D. and N. H. Dewald. 2003. Establishing
our presence in courseware: Adding library services to the
virtual classroom. Information Technology and Libraries
22(1):38-43.

64. MACRO-LEVEL LIBRARY
INVOLVEMENT
• One library presence for distance learners in the learning
management system
• An external web page
• A presence in the LMS
• A course shell in the LMS in which every student is enrolled
• A module/widget in every classroom
• Could be a link or embedded content.
• Could be in every course or on the LMS home page

67. MACRO-LEVEL LIBRARY COURSEWARE
INVOLVEMENT
• Pros
• Easy to maintain
• No collaboration with faculty needed
• Good for universally-useful information, learning objects
and resources for online students
• Cons
• Generic, not tailored to specific courses or programs

68. MICRO-LEVEL LIBRARY INVOLVEMENT
• Library presence targeted to specific courses or
programs
• Program/subject-specific presence or guide
• Course-specific presence or guide
• Learning objects to support specific programs

69. MICRO-LEVEL LIBRARY
INVOLVEMENT
• How does the content get into the classroom?
• One library presence that links to subject-specific content
embedded automatically into each classroom (through the
LOR)
• Subject/course-specific content embedded automatically into
each classroom
• Faculty member must link to subject/course-specific content
• Librarian is given course-designer access

81. MICRO-LEVEL LIBRARY
INVOLVEMENT
• Pros
• More targeted to student research needs
• Can put more of a human face on the library (subject librarian)
• Cons
• Requires significantly more effort to build and maintain
• Depending on the approach, may require significant programming
and/or significant librarian involvement to embed the content into the
LMS
• Sometimes requires more collaboration with faculty

82. BEST PRACTICES FOR
EMBEDDING IN THE LMS
• Don’t make faculty lift a finger
• Make it visible
• Develop close relationships with the staff who administer the
LMS & who support online teaching
• Depending too much on the LMS can cause issues when the
institution adopts a new one
• Try to put a human face on the library (personal connection)

83. LIBRARIAN DISCUSSION
BOARDS IN THE LMS
• Two models
• Generic “Ask a Librarian” discussion board
• Librarian in the main class discussion board
• Strategies for decreasing time commitment
• Maybe not all term
• Save questions and answers for later use or FAQ
• Monitor via RSS or email alerts
• Faculty members must highlight or integrate the ask a librarian board
• In studies, even students who didn’t use the discussion board found it a
positive addition

84. OTHER PLACES TO PROVIDE
REFERENCE/INSTRUCTION
• Department offices
• Student centers and other places students work on-
campus
• Tutoring centers, writing centers, computing centers,
etc.
• Residence halls

86. ISSUES WITH EMBEDMENT
• Takes a long time to achieve such a collaboration
• Time-consuming
• Doesn’t scale
• Choice of deep vs. broad
• Often leads to increased reference traffic (Bennett &
Simning, 2010)
These are not terrible problems to have, but they’re
still problems

87. HEARN, M. R. 2005. EMBEDDING THE LIBRARIAN IN THE
CLASSROOM: AN INTENSIVE INFORMATION LITERACY
MODEL. REFERENCE SERVICES REVIEW 33 (2): 219-27.
“It is essential for the librarian to be able to set aside
blocks of time so that proper attention can be given to
these course requirements. Reducing the number of hours
assigned to reference desk coverage or other scheduled
duties should be considered prior to starting an embedded
collaboration. While any change in schedule or duties will
have an impact on other members of the library staff, the
benefits of an intensive collaboration to the students, the
library, and the campus will need to be weighed against
these stresses.”

88. BARTNIK, LINDA, ET AL. "WE WILL BE ASSIMILATED:
FIVE EXPERIENCES IN EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP."
PUBLIC SERVICES QUARTERLY 6.2/3 (2010): 150-164.
“Her full-time presence ceased in fall 2007 when she
was promoted to head of the Reference Department…
She believed initially that maintaining an office and
scheduled office hours in both buildings would be
possible. It was not. The loss of consistency, of reliable
office hours and presence, damaged the relationship
developed between librarian and both faculty and
students over the previous three years.”

89. CHESNUT, MARY TODD, THREASA L. WESLEY, AND
ROBERT ZAI. "ADDING AN EXTRA HELPING OF
SERVICE WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE A FULL PLATE:
BUILDING AN EMBEDDED LIBRARIAN PROGRAM."
PUBLIC SERVICES QUARTERLY 6.2/3 (2010): 122-129.
“We modified our traditional ‘just in case’ desk service
by reducing the hours librarians would be available by
20–25 hours a week. Each librarian had his/her service
schedule also reduced by three hours per week to
encourage more production of Bb [Blackboard]
Librarian resources and to increase interaction with
students within Bb.”

90. IF YOU’RE COMMITTED TO
EMBEDMENT
WHAT WILL YOU STOP DOING?

91. BEST PRACTICES FOR
EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP
• Get administrator/supervisor buy-in
• Communicate with colleagues
• Focus on high-impact places in the curriculum
• Try out some services as a pilot first
• Still difficult to stop a pilot service

92. BEST PRACTICES FOR
EMBEDDED LIBRARIANSHIP
• Clearly negotiate the librarian’s role with the
instructor
• Moderate expectations with instructor & students
• Plan ahead for busy times (ebbs and flows)
• Assess, assess, assess

93. Selective Bibliography
Baseema Banoo Krkoska, Camille Andrews, and Jim Morris-Knower. “A tale of three disciplines :
embedding librarians and outcomes-based information literacy competency in business, biology, and
communication.” In Kvenild, Cassandra, and Kaijsa Calkins, Ed. Embedded Librarians: Moving Beyond
One-Shot Instruction. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2011.
Bennett, E., and Jennie Simning. 2010. Embedded librarians and reference traffic: A quantitative
analysis. Journal of Library Administration 50: 443.
Booth, Char. “Project Curve Part 4: Mapping Concept to Curriculum.” Infomational.
http://infomational.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/project-curve-part-four-mapping-concept-to-curriculum/
Bowler, Meagan, and Kori Street. “Investigating the efficacy of embedment: Experiments in information
literacy integration.” Reference services review 36.4 (2008): 438-449.
Brasley, Stephanie Sterling. “Effective librarian and discipline faculty collaboration models for
integrating information literacy into the fabric of an academic institution.” New Directions for Teaching
and Learning 2008 114 (2008): 71-88.
Brower, Matthew. “Chapter 1: A Recent History of Embedded Librarianship: Collaboration and
Partnership Building with Academics in Learning and Research Environments.” in Kvenild, Cassandra,
and Kaijsa Calkins, Eds. Embedded Librarians: Moving Beyond One-Shot Instruction. Chicago:
Association of College and Research Libraries, 2011.
Del Bosque, Darcy, and Kimberly Chapman. “Your place or mine? Face-to-face reference services
across campus.” New Library World 108.5/6 (2007): 247-262.

94. Dempsey, Lorcan. “In the Flow.” Lorcan Dempsey’s Weblog. 2005.
http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000688.html
Dewey, Barbara I. “The embedded librarian: Strategic campus collaborations.” Resource Sharing
& Information Networks 17.1-2 (2005): 5-17.
Farkas, Meredith G. 2008. Embedded library, embedded librarian: Strategies for providing
reference services in online courseware. In The desk and beyond: Next generation reference
services., eds. Sarah K. Steiner, M. Leslie Madden, 53-64. Chicago: Association of College and
Research Libraries.
Fister, Barbara. “Fostering information literacy through faculty development.” Library Issues:
Briefings for Faculty and Administrators 29.4 (2009).
Hoffman, Star and Lilly Ramin. “Best practices for librarians embedded in online courses.” Public
Services Quarterly 6.2-3 (2010): 292-305.
Matava, Tobie, Dan Coffey, and Jeffrey Kushkowski. 2010. Beyond library walls: Embedding
librarians in academic departments. Public Services Quarterly 6: 165.
Moser, Mary, et al. “A More Perfect Union: Campus Collaborations for Curriculum Mapping
Information Literacy Outcomes.” ACRL Conference. 2011.
http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/national/2011/
papers/more_perfect_union.pdf
Shank, J. D., and N. H. Dewald. 2003. Establishing our presence in courseware: Adding library
services to the virtual classroom. ITAL: Information Technology and Libraries 22 (1): 38-43.

95. QUESTIONS?
GET IN TOUCH!
EMAIL:
MEREDITH.FARKAS@PCC.ED
U
WEBSITE:
MEREDITH.WOLFWATER.COM
TWITTER:
LIBRARIANMER