David Shumaker - The Embedded Librarian: Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge Where Its Needed

Imagine a librarian accompanying you throughout the course of your day.

You drive to work, and the librarian is in the car with you, telling you the latest news and helping you avoid traffic jams. You leave your office to get lunch and the librarian walks down the street with you, describing the specials at your favorite restaurants. You go home and sit down to eat, and the librarian is there at the table with you, telling you how the stock market performed that day.

Sound far-fetched or strange? It shouldnt. Librarians historically have been gateways to information, and today we carry pocket-sized and paper-sized librarians around with us wherever we go. We call them different namessmartphones, tablets, netbooks, and so onbut we use them to access information, just as we would a librarian.

With so much information available at the touch of a telephone or computer screen, librarians must identify and embrace new roles to provide value to their organizations and customers. One path that holds promise is to partner with groups of information usersbe they college students working on a class project, scientists conducting drug trials in a laboratory, attorneys researching a difficult court case, or architects designing a new hometo help them gain a competitive advantage. Librarians who follow this path participate in information communities and share responsibility for their success or failure. They develop relationships with team members and identify information sources, programs, and channels that will enhance the teams performance.

This approach, known as embedded librarianship, isnt newit has its roots in the health care field of the 1960s, when librarians began to join doctors and nurses as they visited hospital patients and discussed their status and treatment. What is new is that research has identified the characteristics of successful embedded librarians and illuminated the practices and principles that enable these librarians to exceed their colleagues expectations and add value to their work.

This research has been led by Dave Shumaker, who has spent the past 3-plus years studying embedded librarian programs to determine the criteria that define them, the indicators of their success, and their methods of operation and evaluation. With financial help through a grant from the Special Libraries Association, Dave has traveled to several organizations with embedded programs and conducted interviews and focus groups with librarians and their clients. By analyzing the information he obtained and comparing embedded programs that have thrived over time with those that havent, Dave has developed insights into the nature of embedded librarianship and discerned how it can best serve the interests of organizations and librarians alike.