Looking through my notes from the conference mentioned below and reading my colleagues' remeniscences reminded me that I did not mention the excellent session on Academic Liaison led by Joanna Ball, Research Liaison Manager, University of Sussex, Libby Tilley of the Cambridge English Faculty Library and others.
The co-ordinators reminded us that academics are just people, and that building good relationships is at the core of any liaison work.
Joanna described her new role in a team of three Research Liaison Librarians who, together with five Learning and Teaching Support Librarians, have superceded the former role of subject librarian in Sussex University.
She defined key skills in academic liaison:
-Know what users want
-Make sure they know what you have to offer
-Act as a go-between between the library and its users
-Build a collection and services focussed on user needs
and Manage expectations
The learning and support staff tend to deal with the undergraduates. As a research librarian she provides a point of contact for postgraduates, develops the journals collection, supports resources and skills and develops trial resources.
She offers library inductions for postgraduates to introduce them to the various libraries and explain how to get different types of hard to get resources such as theses or dissertations. She also advises on open access publishing and digital repositories.
She urged librarians to get to know their users and their needs, take any excuse to communicate with them, to anticipate changes, to advertise services on staff and department intranets rather than expecting users to come to the library website (they often don't apparently!) and to be involved in establishing training programs. "Get out of the library!" is the modern librarian's war-cry apparently (so I shall go home for the evening now!)
The co-ordinators reminded us that academics are just people, and that building good relationships is at the core of any liaison work.
Joanna described her new role in a team of three Research Liaison Librarians who, together with five Learning and Teaching Support Librarians, have superceded the former role of subject librarian in Sussex University.
She defined key skills in academic liaison:
-Know what users want
-Make sure they know what you have to offer
-Act as a go-between between the library and its users
-Build a collection and services focussed on user needs
and Manage expectations
The learning and support staff tend to deal with the undergraduates. As a research librarian she provides a point of contact for postgraduates, develops the journals collection, supports resources and skills and develops trial resources.
She offers library inductions for postgraduates to introduce them to the various libraries and explain how to get different types of hard to get resources such as theses or dissertations. She also advises on open access publishing and digital repositories.
She urged librarians to get to know their users and their needs, take any excuse to communicate with them, to anticipate changes, to advertise services on staff and department intranets rather than expecting users to come to the library website (they often don't apparently!) and to be involved in establishing training programs. "Get out of the library!" is the modern librarian's war-cry apparently (so I shall go home for the evening now!)
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