The Embedded Librarian: Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge Where It's Needed

For the last ten to 15 years, librarians have been seeking to reinvent themselves as the library building is no longer the primary or the starting place to acquire information. Library buildings are being repurposed in response to changing demands of users (no longer are they merely “readers”) and perhaps to bring the same users within the influence of the library staff, their expertise and the physical collections.

As a huge range of the world's literature and recorded information resources is now ubiquitously available on a 24/7 basis from personal hand‐held screen devices, the relevance of the library as a place and of the librarian as a guide to its stock is being lost on users. Librarians despair of students, academics, professionals, business colleagues and the general public who do not understand the complexities of the information environment or have the tools to navigate it to find accurate, timely and useful data.

If the library is important as a place – it is seen as primarily as a location for collaboration in an environment conductive to research and study – it is certainly not a place for reference or private study during opening hours that are convenient to the library staff.

This book by David Shumaker, a Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Catholic University of America since 2006, is a very useful addition to the literature on the changing role of the professional librarian.

Part 1 or 60 per cent of the text is a very comprehensive and insightful review of the literature relating to embedded librarians – using as wide a definition as possible as the term has emerged relatively recently in the professional literature.

Following a good general overview, the review is divided according to sector. In higher education, the embedded librarian has roles in liaison, teaching with some participating with research teams. The key characteristic for success is that there is good collaboration between teaching staff and library staff away from the desk, the office and the collections. The priority must be in establishing relationships and then participation with academic colleagues in the whole education mission of the institution.

While the literature has many examples of individual successful programmes in the higher education sector, the author notes incidences of personal dependencies for successful programmes where, following a change in personnel, they are abandoned.

The success of embedded librarians in the health sector is more clear cut and long‐standing with the general recognition of “clinical librarians” providing information and documentation to all involved in the health process from consultants to the patients. The adoption of evidence‐based medicine stresses the importance of literature by the medical profession and helps to identify the librarian as a significant figure providing and interpreting appropriate information.

The literature is mores sparse in corporate, non‐profit and government library sectors, but the commercial pressures on librarians to contribute to the success of enterprises does show examples of enterprising librarians integrating and embedding themselves in middle management and providing competitive information to their colleagues.

The final review of embedded librarians in schools and public libraries is interesting. Where school librarians have been retained, they are generally well integrated in the schooling process, often working in activities well outside the usual professional librarian role. In public libraries there are useful examples where, for instance, the public librarians maintain resources to be used by the community in natural emergencies and where librarians are participating directly in the disaster planning process.

The literature review will be of good service to librarians, their directors, and a useful text book in library schools.

The second part of the book is a practical self‐help guide for a practitioner or library manager interested in establishing or expanding a role as an embedded librarian. It is based on workshops held by the author.

There are useful questionnaires and worksheets to stimulate interest, encourage self‐assessment and to provide an indication of how ready the individual librarian or the organisation is to embark on a programme. Where weaknesses are identified, they lead into an analysis of what might be done to move both individuals and organisations along so that a new programme has the best chance of success.

This part of the book, while useful is somewhat less successful in that is it more theoretical than based on real case studies. Four scenarios are described and examined by way of illustrating the use of the questionnaires and worksheets. The scenarios are perhaps a little simplistic so as to highlight the different outcomes possible in the analysis but a table of actions to match the readiness of a programmes is included and a commentary on which actions are appropriate for each scenario. The book concludes with suggestions to sustain a programme and to evaluate its success.

Overall, the author has done a service to the profession, providing a model of an extensive literature review with a good commentary and a section that will certainly stimulate self‐analysis by the reader on where they stand in relation to librarians adapting to the changing information usage by their community.