Type of Presentation
Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)
Target Audience
Higher Education
Location
PARB 239
Proposal
The University of South Alabama is in the process of merging its academic library and health sciences library, which have previously functioned as essentially separate entities. This ongoing process requires many changes, from budget and staff considerations, to revisiting the roles the librarians play in their respective academic communities. This last concern led to a collaboration between two librarians--the Assistant Director for Strategic Initiatives at the health sciences library and the Social Sciences and Student Engagement Librarian at the academic library--in response to a faculty request for an embedded librarian to support a fully-online graduate nursing class in scholarly writing.
In this presentation, we will discuss three ways in which this project has underscored the necessity of cross-discipline partnerships in libraries. First, the complementary skill sets of the two librarians resulted in an information literacy course module that reflects more robust content than would have been achieved in a siloed model. Second, the collaboration has identified new avenues for ameliorating short-staffed library services as faculty at both libraries increasingly work together and foster a willingness to cross discipline boundaries that is essential to sustaining an embedded librarianship model. Finally, both the challenges and successes encountered in this partnership can be useful to other libraries undergoing similar mergers or seeking to improve collaboration between librarians with different specializations.
Short Description
The University of South Alabama recently merged its academic library and health sciences library, a process that led to an unprecedented collaboration between two librarians, one from each library, in response to a request by nursing faculty for an embedded librarian to support a fully-online graduate nursing class in scholarly writing. In this presentation, we will discuss the ways in which this project has underscored the necessity of cross-discipline partnerships in libraries.
Keywords
information literacy, collaboration, nursing, online learning, scholarly writing
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Ard, Stephanie Evers, "We’re Both Your Librarian: A Course Collaboration Between an Academic Library and a Health Sciences Library" (2020). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 24.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2020/2020/24
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Information Literacy Commons, Nursing Commons, Technical and Professional Writing Commons
We’re Both Your Librarian: A Course Collaboration Between an Academic Library and a Health Sciences Library
PARB 239
The University of South Alabama is in the process of merging its academic library and health sciences library, which have previously functioned as essentially separate entities. This ongoing process requires many changes, from budget and staff considerations, to revisiting the roles the librarians play in their respective academic communities. This last concern led to a collaboration between two librarians--the Assistant Director for Strategic Initiatives at the health sciences library and the Social Sciences and Student Engagement Librarian at the academic library--in response to a faculty request for an embedded librarian to support a fully-online graduate nursing class in scholarly writing.
In this presentation, we will discuss three ways in which this project has underscored the necessity of cross-discipline partnerships in libraries. First, the complementary skill sets of the two librarians resulted in an information literacy course module that reflects more robust content than would have been achieved in a siloed model. Second, the collaboration has identified new avenues for ameliorating short-staffed library services as faculty at both libraries increasingly work together and foster a willingness to cross discipline boundaries that is essential to sustaining an embedded librarianship model. Finally, both the challenges and successes encountered in this partnership can be useful to other libraries undergoing similar mergers or seeking to improve collaboration between librarians with different specializations.
