ULS Universe

Washington DC–The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a report on liaison librarian roles as a special issue of Research Library Issues (/RLI/ #265).

Guest edited by ARL’s Karla Hahn, this special issue of RLI focuses on the evolution of new roles and institutional strategies for liaison work. Five articles identify emerging roles and consider the challenges of developing corresponding liaison capabilities. Authors from Minnesota, Berkeley, MIT, British Columbia, and NYU each reflect on their experiences and offer insights to fellow travelers mapping out their own routes to a new vision of liaison work. The full table of contents with links to the articles follows.

“Introduction: Positioning Liaison Librarians for the 21st Century” [PDF]
Karla Hahn, Assistant Executive Director, Research, Teaching, and Learning, ARL

“A Framework for Articulating New Library Roles” [PDF]
Karen Williams, Associate University Librarian for Academic Programs, University of Minnesota Libraries

“Amplifying the Educational Role of Librarians” [PDF]
Elizabeth A. Dupuis, Associate University Librarian for Educational Initiatives and Director of the Doe/Moffitt Libraries, University of California, Berkeley

“The Last Mile: The Liaison Role in Curating Science and Engineering Research Data” [PDF]
Tracy Gabridge, Co-Head, Engineering and Science Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

“Scholarly Communications: Planning for the Integration of Liaison Librarian Roles” [PDF]
Joy Kirchner, Librarian for Collections, Licensing and Digital Scholarship, University of British Columbia Library

“New Roles of Liaison Librarians: A Liaison’s Perspective” [PDF]
Kara M. Whatley, Life Sciences Librarian and Head of the Coles Science Center, New York University

Research Library Issues: A Bimonthly Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC (RLI) is a freely available, online-only publication released six times per year by the Association of Research Libraries. RLI focuses on the major issues that affect the ability of research libraries to meet the academic and research needs of the diverse communities they serve.

Dr. Richard Price recently finished his Ph.D on the philosophy of perception from Oxford. With a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, he’s just launched a website, www.academia.edu, which does two things:

- It shows academics around the world structured in a ‘tree’ format, displayed
according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.
- It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area – the
latest people, papers and talks.

They’re hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world — Faculty Members, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Independent Researchers. Academics can add their departments, and themselves, to the tree by clicking on the boxes.

Academics are joining the tree rapidly. More than 15,000 academics have added themselves in the last two months. Some professors on the site include:

- Richard Dawkins – http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardDawkins
- Stephen Hawking – http://cambridge.academia.edu/StephenHawking
- Paul Krugman – http://princeton.academia.edu/PaulKrugman
- Noam Chomsky – http://mit.academia.edu/NoamChomsky
- Steven Pinker – http://harvard.academia.edu/StevenPinker

Many thanks,

Dr. Richard Price
http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice

The Voting America project from the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab is interesting because it helps to visualize and analyze historical election data back to 1840.

http://americanpast.richmond.edu/voting/

Thanks to Amy Ciccone for sharing this!

COMMUNICATION & POLITICAL SCIENCE LIAISON/LIBRARIAN
The Georgia State University Library seeks a committed and energetic librarian to provide innovative teaching and research support to the areas of Speech and Journalism within the Department of Communication, and to the Department of Political Science. For these departments of responsibility, the librarian will develop collections in all formats. This position reports to the Head of Liaison & Outreach Services.

View the full position description here.

Colleagues, I fully expect many to disagree with this post! Nevertheless, I wanted to share that in my experience do-it-yourself strategic planning works well in libraries and library organizations.

My first full-fledged strategic planning was done as Vice President/President-Elect of the Illinois Chapter of the Special Libraries Association/SLA, in the late 1990s. Our Board, and some invited others, created the strategic plan out of brainstorming sessions. The process was engaging, and the plan was helpful, we actually did much of it!

Most recently, at USC we completed our strategic plan, The Essential Library, in January 2008, with the official launch and publication in April 2008. The plan is available online here: http://www.usc.edu/libraries/essential/index.php .

Back in 2002-03, when the USC Libraries organization was linked with IT Services, a strategic plan for the dual organization was organized by the Academic Senate, with some librarians and library personnel on some of the groups. But it was very much faculty driven, and, while it gave us some pathways for development, in my opinion it was both technology-heavy and teaching-faculty-leaning.

The Essential Library we did ourselves – our Dean Catherine Quinlan convened a committee of librarians and library staff, by invitation, but only if members really wanted to serve (no arm-twisting involved!). A veteran of strat planning, our Dean guided us in the process, but the content was entirely developed by the committee AND everyone in the libraries – we held a number of public fora (aka forums!) and brainstormed and prioritized our top issues (which all turned out to be foundational changes needed). The engagement and participation of people across the libraries system was excellent! We are now beginning to implement these changes, and will continue to do so over the next 12-18 months. We are doing it! We will also soon be embarking upon planning for the next plan.

I have heard both positive and negative stories about plans developed with the aid of outside facilitators. Having never experienced that, but having been part of two in-house, if you will, strategic planning processes, I definitely favor DIY!

Looking forward to hearing others thoughts!

Sara T., a newly minted Associate Dean, who will be posting here occasionally, thanks to my colleague Felicia’s encouratement!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the ULS blog. Please bear with us while we get this set up the way we like it. Coming soon: News and Announcements Re: ALA Annual!

If you would like to be an author on this blog, please email me directly. fpalsson-at-usc [dot] [edu]

Thanks!