Getting to know an academic department (Liaison Year One Redux)

Catching up:

I hope readers saw the announcement that the Entrepreneurship & Libraries Conference is accepting lightning round submissions for its workshop “Inclusive Entrepreneurship: A workshop on how librarians support entrepreneurship as a pathway to economic justice, empowerment, and a counter to systemic racism”.

Friends from BRASS have new articles out in the Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship:  

• Carolyn Klotzbach-Russell on “Librarians in the LaunchPad: Building partnerships for entrepreneurial information literacy”
• Kerry Wu on “Market research for small businesses: A ‘real world’ perspective”

The Charleston Conference will be a hybrid event next month. Everyone attending in person is required to submit proof of vaccination. Many of us are really looking forward to a F2F experience again. There will be two vendor-funded socials for business librarians, one a happy hour and the other a dinner. Both events may take place outside (the weather is usually quite temperate down there in early November). Let Heather Howard or me know if you are interested. Look for a conference recap here next month.

Last week I had three evening classes in row, but this week is mostly open, an opportunity to return to this “Liaison Year One Redux” series.

Today’s topic:

How do you learn about your assigned academic departments? How do you keep up with developments?

Getting to know your departments can be especially tough if you are a lean liaison with (it feels like, anyway) hundreds of faculty.

There are push and pull options to consider.

First (and yes, obviously), examine the list of faculty on the department website. Note if possible what they usually teach, their research agendas, their rank, etc.

If the CVs aren’t posted, look up a professor in Google Scholar or your favorite subscription database. Use Scopus or Web of Science to rank their pubs by “times cited” to learn what their biggest hits have been. And see if the profs have profiles in your institutional repository. I still do this when I meet a professor for the first time or for the first time in a long while.

Pull communication options really help with keeping up with developments.

At the start of each workday, I check my newsreader. My feeds include the blog and news portal for the UNCG business school, as well as the same pair for the whole campus. Stories cover faculty awards and other honors, new publications, new academic programs, interviews with students and alumni, and links to news stories that quoted faculty.

My next stop is LinkedIn. My feed there includes posts from faculty members, academic departments, the business school, the campus, the graduate school, etc. Content is similar to what comes up in my news reader, plus posts from individuals about their thoughts, new pubs, conference presentations, etc. Yes, LinkedIn can be a time suck especially if you have a lot of student and alumni connections.

I don’t do other social media for faculty updates due to the overlap in posts and the reduced ROI on my time.

I receive the business school dean’s newsletter via email, and an email notification when the school’s magazine has a new issue. The magazine provides summaries of faculty accomplishments in case I missed anything from the other communication channels.

Then there’s the ancient value of bulletin boards outside a department’s office. Latest pubs, awards, and conference talks are usually featured. And hanging out in their space, I might bump into a professor and be able to ask, “So what is new with you?”

Finally…so what?

What do you do with this intel? How much of it is actionable?

Most of what I learn hopefully stays somewhere in my head to be pulled out as needed. When I have a conversation or email exchange with Prof. X, hopefully I will remember when Prof. X came up in my newsfeed recently, and mention that thing.

If you are trying to create a relationship with a professor, a short note of congratulations for something you read about might get you started.

Sometimes I will attend a talk or workshop after learning about it through a business school posting. Those events become networking opportunities too.

After learning about program or curricular changes, or simply a new class on an emerging topic, I might review the library’s resources relevant for that topic and contact the teacher or program coordinator with an offer of support.

More abstractly, I learn from business school communication what the school really values, and what strategic messaging it creates for students, alumni, and supports. Is the library, or I as the business librarian, positioned to support those values and that strategy? If I am, and communicate my own value and services using similar language, I am more likely to be seen as a partner (maybe sometimes even a problem solver) by the powers that be in that school.

But again, usually my response to learning something about the academic departments I serve is: “ok” or  “interesting, good to know”. Most of us need to prioritize our outreach and engagement work, since we don’t have time to accomplish everything that would be useful.

Hmm how to prioritize – and why – would make a good blog post on its own someday.