Academic collaborations: Linking the role of the liaison/embedded librarian to teaching and learning

ABSTRACT

Building partnerships with faculty can be a challenging process for embedded librarians. After defining the essential role of an embedded librarian, this article chronicles the systematic process of how an embedded librarian built a partnership with a faculty member from the education department at a four-year institution. The collaborators created a two-year pilot program to integrate information literacy into a required undergraduate course. The article shares lessons learned about what worked and what did not as they moved through the planning, application, and assessment phases. Their collaboration offered the opportunity to make meaningful changes in the course based on what they learned from students about their anxieties regarding the research process.

KEYWORDS:

• Embedded librarian
• faculty–librarian collaboration
• information literacy
• liaison librarian