Embedded Librarianship

I will have two basic responsibilities in my position at the college: providing reference service and teaching information literacy classes. Reference is what I did in my previous position as a student for the college.  I sit at the help desk and try to make sure that everyone who comes into the library finds or is put on the track to find the information that they want/need. I love reference. I love helping people find what they need from the so-called mundane questions to the more in depth research inquiries. I even like helping people when they run up the stairs, out of breath, two minutes before closing, to ask for a book that is somewhere on the shelves, they hope, to check out. I still like it.

The second responsibility of instruction will be a new duty. I will be performing mostly database/citation/plagiarism/library overview classes for business communications classes and then a few more specialized classes for the paramedic diploma program. What I am mostly excited about, however, is having the opportunity to be embedded as a librarian into online courses.  Embedded librarianship is the act of joining a a class that is offered online (either in full or in part) not as the instructor, but as a librarian (usually with your own forum) to offer research assistance/tips to help students in their paper/research writing. I'm not excited because it will be fulfilling and the students will lap up my nuggets of wisdom.  I'm excited for the challenge.  You see, embedded librarianship is a very new field of study and most research articles on the topic have been published in the past 3-5 years.  Because it is so new, and because it is still rarely done, there isn't really an established "best practices" rules for performing the task.  As a result, everyone kind of does their own thing (even within institutions) and hopes for the best, usually running into communication breakdowns with the class instructor, a lack of participation from the students, and a feeling of futility that nothing is actually being accomplished.

As it has been slow at work for the past week (although not currently as I'm in the midst of a two-week instruction class to teach all new college instructors - I guess I qualify! - on how to be good teachers), I have decided to take it upon myself to compile as complete of a bibliography as possible on the subject of embedded librarianship.  I currently have just under fifty articles, but have only read through about ten-percent of them at this point.  At an instruction meeting last week, I brought forth my intention of reading through these articles to be a better embedded librarian and asked for questions the other more experienced librarians might have regarding the topic (ie: issues they come up against that they'd want suggestions on how to overcome) so I could short list those articles for others' reading pleasure.  In the end, I hope to write a literature review on the subject to hopefully help others who are struggling on how to make embedded librarianship work they way it has the potential to work. Obviously, there is a part to be that hopes if I hustle hard enough on this that perhaps my contract can be extended as I prove myself eager and useful.  If nothing else, it can be a little extra to put on my resume/cover letter/interviewing tool box for when I have to hit the streets to find a new job. I'll probably be talking about it a bit here and feel free to weigh in on the subject in the comments (or to me personally in some other way) whether you're a librarian or not. 

Oh, and on the personal front: Silas is really settling in nicely at daycare and I think he rather likes it.  He is a bit on the sleepy side, but he is starting to nap for 2-2.5 hours for them (more the the others...I can just picture the poor caretaker who has the sit and stare at him while he keeps sleeping and the others play upstairs, hahah).  He has a constant runny nose that I feel will probably never go away.  It is hard on me when I pick him up, because he just wants me to play with him, but I have to get on dinner right away or he'll never eat, bathe, and bottle by 7pm when I put him to bed.  Some days I feel that he'd go to bed at 6:00 if I'd let him.  On Friday night, he was snoring away in his crib by 6:30.  In many ways I miss my poor boy...but selfishly, I mostly just miss my happy boy M-F because when I get him he's just hungry and tired and increasingly cranky.  I am very thankful for my weekends when I get him all to myself and he can sleep in to his heart's desire.