Making impact by connecting library support with your institution’s mission
By Ian Snowley, Dean of Learning Skills & University Librarian, The University of Lincoln.
What can we (as librarians) do to ensure a healthy future for academic librarianship?
For me, the answer to this question is very simple — focus our services and our support where it will have the greatest impact on our institution’s mission. To some extent this is self-evident, which is why I say the answer is simple. However, that doesn’t mean that all institutions will have the same answer, nor that it will be straightforward to identify this area, or to effectively direct resources towards it.
A little background
Given the above, I feel that I can best answer this question from my own experience at the University of Lincoln, although I do hope some of my points are relevant more widely.
Ian Snowley, Dean of Learning Skills & University Librarian, The University of Lincoln.
For those who don’t know it, Lincoln is a medium-sized (c. 18,000 full-time enrolled) modern university in England, formed in the mid-1970s and taking its current name in 2001. The Library at Lincoln has long had a strong focus on supporting individual students with a relatively large academic subject librarian (ASL) team closely focused on supporting individual students as well as their academics.
Skills, skills, skills
And it’s this idea of supporting students directly that gives my answer to Sage’s question. Over the past 13 years we have worked to develop our model of student support focusing on both the skills to use the library effectively, and also the skills needed to succeed academically and beyond university.
Over the years this has taken a number of forms, and I would argue that its focus has changed many times due to circumstances. But there are some constants – ASLs have been the key method of delivery, although we have also (in common with other higher education institutions) extended the range of our support, adding Academic Writing and Maths & Stats over the years. One other constant has been a desire to engage with students early on — which has resulted in a focus on Transition, and Welcome Week. Although both have brought their own challenges, in terms of creating meaningful and lasting engagement with students at a time when they are really much more interested in forming new relationships and learning to live independently.
Which does take us to an important question — if we accept that skills, both library and academic, are our key focus, then when and how do we deliver these? It’s clear to me, that timing and integration with teaching and the academic program is key here — and that we must work together with academics to achieve the impact we are looking for. I’ve already noted the challenges of imparting meaningful information during Transition/Arrival, so our focus has been on using those stages to put down a marker – returning at a later and (hopefully) more receptive point to really make our impact. So, we do this by focusing on key points in the student journey – first assignment, exams, etc, and tailor and promote our support to address the real concerns (and fears) that students are likely to have when faced by these challenges.
Conclusion
This has been a rather whistlestop tour of what I consider to be Lincoln’s contribution to keeping academic libraries relevant — but as I’ve indicated your answer will, at the very least be a little different in its focus and may even be completely different to ours.
About
Ian Snowley joined the University of Lincoln, as University Librarian in September 2009, before that he was Head of Higher Education at the British Library.
His professional career began in Public Libraries followed by posts in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Health. After this Ian worked at the Royal Society of Medicine as Director of Information Services. In 2006 he joined the University of London Research Library Services as Director, Academic Services.
He was President of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in 2007.
His professional interests are in academic library and information services strategic management, managing change, project management and planning services.
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This blog post is part of a series from librarian thought leaders sharing personal insights into the challenges and opportunities their profession faces. Read more.