January 23, 2013
In any disrupted industry or profession, innovation is an essential response. As members of a disrupted profession, librarians require new strategies to realign what we do with the changed expectations of our employers. For librarians in corporations, government, law firms, medical facilities, higher education, and others, embedded librarianship is just such an innovative strategy. Many librarians are succeeding with embedded librarianship, but there are traps and pitfalls awaiting the unwary.
In this webinar, Dave will briefly survey the core characteristics of embedded librarianship, and discuss why it can be an effective strategy for aligning librarians’ work with the needs of their employers. He’ll then present some of the common traps and pitfalls, offering strategies for getting out of them – or avoiding them altogether.
David Shumaker is Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Catholic University of America (CUA). His research focuses on the development and successful implementation of new roles for librarians in all types of organizations, with a special emphasis on embedded librarianship. Prior to joining CUA, Dave was Manager of Information Services at the MITRE Corporation, leading corporate library, archives, and records management operations.
In 2008, he and his co-investigator, Mary Talley, were awarded the Special Libraries Association Research Grant for their project, “Models of Embedded Librarianship.” Project reports are available on the SLA website, and related articles have been published in Information Outlook, Library Journal, and Reference & User Services Quarterly. Last July, his book, The Embedded Librarian: Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge Where It’s Needed, was published by Information Today. He blogs at http://www.embeddedlibrarian.com