Faculty/Librarian Collaboration: Catalyst for Student Learning and Librarian Growth

Abstract

The chemistry faculty and the chemistry librarian at The College of New Jersey created the Chemistry Seminar Program for undergraduate chemistry majors while piloting a new role for academic subject librarians at The College of New Jersey. The chemistry program covers a wide range of topics that educates students from the time they enter college to when they embark on a new career on graduation. While developing the program, a model for the future role of the academic subject librarian at The College of New Jersey serendipitously evolved—the integrated librarian. Integrated librarians combine traditional library skills with new technologies while moving beyond their traditional roles and integrating themselves, their skills, and their dedication to service into the fiber of the academic community.

Keywords:

• chemical information literacy
• The College of New Jersey
• faculty-librarian collaboration
• integrated librarian
• team-building
• trust

Acknowledgments

Dr. Lynn Bradley, Dr. Benny Chan, and Dr. Stephanie Sen are the wonderful chemistry faculty who started this chemistry seminar series and invited me to develop the chemical information literacy part of the seminar series. Dr. Richard Thayer is the statistician who statistically analyzed the data and created the graphs that serve so well to illustrate the data. I would also like to acknowledge all the people who shared their previous work in the literature and at ACS meetings.