Who Let the Librarians out? Embedded Librarianship and the Library Manager

One of the newer ideas being discussed and tried in libraries is "embedded librarians." The phrase comes from "embedded journalists," and places a reference librarian right in the midst of where the user is to teach research skills whenever and wherever instruction is needed. In colleges and universities, our users are in the classroom, especially the electronic classroom. In business they are in the research lab or office. In hospitals they are with doctors and nurses. Embedded librarians are like bibliographic instruction librarians that have been totally immersed--this is more than collaborating with classroom faculty members. The embedded librarian is David Shumaker's area of research, and here he gives a good introduction to the topic and some specific guidelines on how to start an embedded librarian program in your library. What next for the column? I am on the lookout for ideas and writers on the broad range of topics that relate to running a reference or public service department. I encourage you to suggest column topics and to become an author and write on any successful reference programs or services.--Editor Interesting things are going on in the world of library user services. At a campus of Penn State University, Librarian Russell Hall--instead of limiting his role to providing two in-library bibliographic instruction lectures--arranged to attend every class meeting of the first-year "Effective Speech" course. As a result, student research skills and the quality of their speeches showed a marked improvement, and Hall planned with the instructor to further increase his role the next time the class is taught. (1) At Wake Forest University, Susan Smith and Lynn Sutton accompanied students and faculty of the course "Social Stratification in the Deep South" on a two-week bus trip. The experience was so successful for all concerned that at the end of the course they immediately began planning to continue the practice. (2) At the headquarters of Fairfax Media, the largest news media organization in Australia, a library space downsizing dispersed librarians into the office areas of the various news bureaus they serve. When a subsequent office move offered them the opportunity to recentralize in new library space, there was no sentiment in favor--the new arrangement had proven too successful. Customers valued the new services and the new relationships that they had established with their librarians. (3) At the Mitre Corporation, a librarian's office was moved from the library to the space occupied by his prime customer, and the change resulted in heightened visibility and new opportunities to provide valued services. (4) And at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, the Nursing Department and Library collaborated on plans to involve the clinical librarian in the important knowledge-sharing conversations that take place as the nursing shifts change--so that she could provide essential clinical literature to advance the delivery of excellent nursing care. (5) These librarians broke out of their libraries, built new relationships, and found new ways to deliver new kinds of services to the people in their communities who need them most. While others may wring their hands with worry over the competition that digital libraries and the Internet pose for traditional reference and public services, these folks have found ways to create new services and new value for their libraries by getting out into the communities they serve! This change is both driven and enabled by the increasingly digital, networked, and mobile society we live in. We've known for a while that libraries' monopoly on factual information is gone. People don't need us to find out who won the National League pennant in 1946, or who was the only president born in Pennsylvania. Anyone with a computer and a network connection can now do their own research anytime, from anywhere. As E. Stewart Saunders said in this space a year ago, "The Internet and Google have changed the information landscape. …