Who Let the Librarians Out: Embedded Librarianship and the Library Manager

Readiness comes in two kinds: library readiness and organizational readiness.

Is your library ready for the transition? Are your staff members interested in trying new things? Do you have staff members who would be good candidates for an embedded role? Do they have good interpersonal skills, apart from good reference interviewing skills—they’re not the same! Do they also have the skills and flexibility to take on the assignments your customer groups are likely to need? These can range from in-depth research and current awareness to embedded instructional services or information and knowledge management. And do they have enough background in relevant subject domains, or the willingness and ability to learn, to be credible and successful?

How about your organization? A proposal to let the librarians out of the library might be a radical departure for your institution. What is your institution’s culture? Is there a willingness to listen to—and support—new ideas, to take a risk that might pay off in terms of improved organizational performance, increased student achievement, and so on? Starting with your own boss, are senior managers both accessible and truly open and supportive for a good new idea? Does your library have credibility within the organization to get a hearing for its initiatives?

Pilot, Review, Revise, and Expand

Not every customer group needs this kind of service, and not every librarian has the skills or the motivation to provide it. Furthermore, your library operation can’t sustain an overnight, wholesale conversion to a new service model either. So start small. In this, as in many other change processes, piloting, reviewing, revising, and gradually expanding are probably the steps on the road to success.

Identify one or two customer groups who always seem to be asking for more than you can provide. List a few faculty or researchers who are always in the library and with whom your reference librarians may already have good working relationships. Identify a couple department heads, deans, or other senior leaders who have taken a benevolent interest in the library. Your neediest customers and your best friends are probably the best candidates to approach with a pilot proposal.

Establish Management-Level Agreements

You’re building a collaborative relationship—a partnership. This is different from a transactional service relationship. In a service relationship, the emphasis is one-way: What can the server do for the customer? In any partnership, it’s not just about what I can do for you; it’s about what we can do for each other. One of the joys of our profession is how service oriented we all are. That’s great, but, if we’re going to succeed in embedded relationships, we have to recognize that we have needs too. Ultimately, we cannot be successful if our needs are not met, and the way to do so is to establish management-level relationships and management agreements.

This means that the chief librarian or public services director can’t leave this work to the individual reference staff. Managers can’t push staff out the door; they have to lead the way. So, start by thinking of the resources and cooperation you might need to make the partnership a success. Apart from money (see “Watch Out for Common Pitfalls” later in this article), here’s a list to get you started:

• Space. Where will the embedded librarian work if collocated with the customer group? Will the office space be full-time, dedicated space, or part-time, shared space?
• Inclusion in group communications and collaboration. How does the group work together? Is there an e-mail list restricted to members? Is there a shared computer workspace that is limited to members? If the librarian is to be a partner within the group, access to these resources is essential!
• Invitations to meetings. When the staff and leadership of the customer group meet, will the librarian be included? If not, she might as well stay in the library. Will the customer manager commit to including the librarian?
• Senior management sponsorship. When staff members are developing new ideas and formulating new projects, will the customer manager encourage getting the librarian’s help? When an assistant professor is developing a new course or writing a grant, will the department head or dean urge involving the librarian—maybe even putting the librarian into the grant?
• Feedback. Will the customer leader both volunteer feedback—positive and negative—and remain accessible to you, the library manager, when you come calling to find out how things are going?

It’s unlikely that these “management agreements” will be signed or enforceable. They don’t guarantee that problems, and slippage of support, won’t occur. But, by discussing them face to face, and following up with an e-mail to document your understanding, you’ll be doing your job as a manager. You’ll establish clear expectations on all sides and create the conditions for your staff to succeed.

Sustain the Embedded Services Initiatve; Follow Through on Commitments to Management Partners and Staff

Like a gardener that waters the garden and pulls the weeds that begin to sprout, the library manager must sustain the embedded services initiative.

Follow through on your commitments to the customer manager. Be sure to hold the meetings you said you would— maybe quarterly or even annually—to review progress at the management level. Respond immediately if problems arise.

Support your embedded reference staff. Some may need help adapting to their new role. Meet with them regularly and watch for signs that they are having trouble. Provide guidance on the issues they are having trouble with. On the other hand, some may adapt too well. They may become so popular with their new customer-colleagues that they are overwhelmed with requests. You do not want them to be like the embedded reference librarian who said she avoided eye contact when she walked through her customer’s office area because she could not take on any more projects. Watch for burnout among these folks (see the comments on workload-leveling in the next section).

Watch Out for Common Pitfalls

Three pitfalls to watch out for are failing to allocate adequate funding and staff resources to both ongoing library services and the new embedded services; inadequate attention to workload leveling among embedded staff and between embedded and nonembedded staff; and overlooking the threats to library staff cohesion.

Like any initiative, starting and developing an embedded library services program costs something. Space, equipment, and management oversight time are all involved, but the biggest resource involved is the time of the librarian providing the service. After all, if that person is a new hire (not recommended), then there must be a budget line for their salary. And if a current staff member is to give up current duties to provide embedded services, what will happen to those activities? Is the library able to do without them, or will someone else pick up the slack? Who filled in when Russell Hall started attending every class of the “Effective Communication” course? What happened to the other tasks that Susan Smith and Lynn Sutton were responsible for when they left on their two-week bus trip with the “Social Stratification” course?

It’s possible that a pilot program can be funded by the library budget, and that the resource effects of Hall’s, Smith’s and Sutton’s initiatives were easily absorbed. But what if these programs expand? The resource effects could be substantial. The wise library manager will plan for success by identifying some activities that can be dropped to save money or preparing her boss for a possible request for more funds—or by asking the customer to pay directly for the new, embedded service. Failure to plan for the effects of success on budgets and staff may drive a promising initiative to early termination.

Another way to drive a promising embedded library services initiative to an early end is not to address workload balancing among staff. The librarian mentioned above who avoided eye contact to keep from getting more requests is a ripe candidate for burnout and is unwittingly sabotaging the program. That librarian needs to know that there is backup for the crunch times, whether that backup is a reference librarian in the central library or another embedded librarian whose workload is currently light. Even librarians who are competent at negotiating requests and due dates with their customers can be met with such an enthusiastic response that they lose control of their priorities. The library manager has to be ready to step in and resolve ongoing overload issues at the management level. This intervention can involve agreeing with the customer management on limits to the embedded librarian’s responsibilities or getting increased funding for more staff to help share the workload.

The third pitfall for embedded library services programs is loss of library staff cohesion. One of the great things about working in the library is that other librarians work there. Our colleagues all speak the same professional language we do, and they’re there to consult on a tough reference question or console us after a difficult interaction with a customer. The embedded librarian who is collocated with a customer unit is separated from this peer support group. Personal relationships, and the professional knowledge sharing that goes along with them, may suffer. The wise library manager will plan for this eventuality and create a mix of formal and informal activities, such as staff meetings or social events, to keep the librarians’ community of interest healthy.

Reference and user services librarians are embarking on an exciting and challenging journey. They’re getting out of the library and heading for classrooms, labs, and even tour busses. They’re embedding themselves with research groups, faculty members, and courses. They’re building new relationships and delivering new, valuable services. Yet, as they do so, they raise new challenges for user services management. So, library directors and public services managers, I ask: Will you let the librarians out? I challenge you to do so!

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Judith M. Nixon, Head, Humanities, Social Sciences & Education Library, 504 W. State St. STEW, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907; e-mail: jnixon@purdue.edu.

David Shumaker is a Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

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