new, restructured Library Liaisons
The Library Liaisons program has been reorganized in the past year to make faculty connections with the library easier and more effective. Liaisons are library staff members who are assigned to a specific academicdepartment and who are responsible for becoming familiar with the research and teaching needs of the department. In addition to providing assistance regarding library collections, liaisons are also responsible for communicating with department faculty and graduate students about library services and to identify possible courses that would benefit from integration with the Library & Information Literacy Instruction program.
A new library Web page lists all the liaisons or subject librarians by UW department, center or school. This page is accessible from the “Contact Us” link on the library home page and is the primary comprehensive listing of subject librarians. The libraries have discontinued production of a handout of subject librarians due to the new comprehensive approach online. The listing by UW department enables faculty and students to identify a librarian without needing to know with which library or library unit their research might be connected. The liaison librarian listed will be able to answer questions for that department and refer inquiries to another library or librarian as appropriate, regardless of whether the question is related to collections, library instruction or other library services.
College Library Director Carrie Kruse served as chair of the subject contacts working group that worked to restructure the liaison listing. She emphasized the group's efforts toward outreach by quoting Wayne Wiegand, who reminds us to look at “the library in the life of the user rather than the user in the life of the library.” By connecting faculty and students via their own UW affiliation, they are not required to understand the library's internal organization to know which questions should be asked where.
A forum and working group have been developed to help bring those interested in liaison work together and to answer any questions about liaison activites. Since the liaisons will work in collaboration with the LILI program, LILI coordinator Abbie Loomis is facilitating the forum.