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Introduction

Like many academic librarians, I spend a lot of time reaching out to and trying to build connections with faculty members in my liaison departments. I love this part of my work, but it can be extremely challenging. I bring a somewhat unusual perspective to this challenge as I happen to be married to a faculty member, which gives me the ability to see things from the faculty side as well as from my own perspective. Interestingly, the book Compatibility Breeds Success by Marvin Snider compares collaborative partnerships to marriages, so there’s a double point of relevance here.¹ According to Snider, these partnerships involve a long-term commitment, accountability for one another’s behavior, a commitment to resolving differences, a strong emotional commitment, and “are likely to have a major impact on each other even after the partnership ends.” Instead of love and family, academic participants share a goal of improved teaching, expanded publishing opportunities, or the like.

Recently I’ve broken down my approach to relationship-building with faculty into identifiable steps in order to be more deliberate about my efforts in the future. Those steps are the subject of this post. This program is a proposed set of goals I’ve built for myself, and which I share with the Lead Pipe readership in the hope that you’ll find it useful. For the record, this “program” is still in beta (so to speak), and I welcome your feedback and thoughts in the comments below. I presented a skeleton of this at ACRL’s Ideapower Unconference in Philadelphia last week.

One dictionary² defines collaboration as “Traitorous cooperation with an enemy,” which is a humorous yet apt starting point for the conversation. It seems to me that many librarians have an uneasy relationship with our faculty for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which are the different letters that follow our names. Fortunately, the anxiety that comes from our different backgrounds and job descriptions is based more in misunderstanding than substance, so we can learn to shed those feelings on the way to a new partnership. Instead, let’s redefine collaboration and set our goal as an equal partnership between one or more non-librarian faculty members and ourselves. Personally, I’m interested in the relationships that push the boundaries of the day-to-day working relationships that many of us already have with other faculty on campus.

I recently attended a presentation at the ACRL National Conference in Philadelphia entitled, Engaging Faculty, Creating Allies. I expected the presentation to inform this post and expand my ideas of what collaboration with faculty could look like. While the presentation was good, I was a little disappointed that the “engagement” of faculty described was largely through workshops or colloquia organized by librarians and to which faculty were invited (and, in some cases, paid to attend). While collaboration can happen at such events, I just don’t see that as putting us on the equal footing that is necessary for deep collaboration.  As Jean S. Caspers describes, we can look at librarian-faculty relationships as occurring along a continuum of  three stages: parallel work is the most basic sort of relationship in which we’re working alongside each other for similar goals; cooperative work involves basic coordination of efforts; and collaborative work is the deepest type of partnership (21).³ Sometimes having parallel goals is enough, but collaborative work is more likely to yield the greatest benefits for student learning or research.

That said, it’s time to discuss the five-step program. It begins with a little self-reflection.

Step 1: Be confident

In a 1977 article, H. William Axford commented on the librarian movement for faculty status, and the nervousness of some librarians about the shift. “Part of the problem,” he wrote then, “can be attributed to the nature of library education which simply does not engender in students the attitudes necessary to feel at home within the traditional values of the academy, particularly its canons of scholarship.”⁵ Not to pin the whole problem on library school, but the truth is that librarians are not initiated into our field in the same way that faculty are: by reading scholarship, identifying our own specific area(s) of specialization, presenting at conferences, and building a network of colleagues whose interests overlap our own. This is in part because library school students may go on to work at a whole variety of different organizations. And some of this happens in library school for more motivated students, but the vast majority probably do not have this set of experiences. The result is graduates who have been schooled as professionals but not as scholars. It’s a different way of looking at the world, and a different way of looking at a career. So our challenge is to adopt the scholar’s worldview once we’re actively in the field. It’s ours for the taking.

In fact, a recent study of faculty attitudes found that faculty have a very favorable view of various aspects of collaboration with librarians (rated overall as a 3.98 out of 5).⁶ An earlier study fleshed out some of the differences in how librarians and faculty see each other, pointing to an awareness problem that has led to faculty being ignorant of the scope of librarians’ work.⁷ Considering both of these studies together, it is clear that faculty are not deliberately disregarding librarian expertise, nor are they averse to collaborative opportunities. The door is open.

Step 2: Make the connection

How do we make these connections with faculty? It starts just by reaching out. We can make connections at the reference desk or on a committee, but they’re more likely to happen when we get out of our comfort zones. Getting involved in new faculty candidate interviews. Coffee dates. Going to after-hours socials, plays, exhibits, speakers, and more. Attending campus events and breaking away from the same, comfortable group to meet new people. One librarian at The University of Saskatchewan decided to methodically arrange in-person meetings with a subset of her liaison department and later surveyed them to see whether her personal attention had an effect. It did, with 92% of faculty reporting that their use of the library had increased after the meeting.⁸

As an example, I started my current position and was assigned as a liaison to several departments. For one of those departments I lacked any notable background in the field and wasn’t sure what to expect. Still, with my new librarian enthusiasm, I contacted the department chair and got myself invited to a faculty meeting. They gave me five minutes, and while they were cordial, my reception was less than enthusiastic. I left that meeting feeling that I had failed in making the connection I’d hoped for. Still I regrouped, and decided to focus my energy and time on the department’s faculty liaison to the library (let’s call her Jane). I proposed that Jane and I meet for coffee, and the two of us spent an hour awkwardly sipping hot drinks and trying to find common ground to discuss. It was a challenging conversation, but it was a start.

From the very beginning, building collaborative relationships requires boldness. There’s no hiding behind a mask of introvertedness. The hard part, typically, is making conversation with strangers. Fortunately for us, this is a learnable skill, not an inborn characteristic. Since I was a child, I’ve watched my mother conduct long, effortless conversations with just about anybody who comes near her. Over the years, I’ve discovered that what comes naturally to her—making connections with people—is not just a personality trait, but an attainable skill. The key is: ask them about themselves. Sounds obvious, right? It is, sort of.

And just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you meet someone and then launch into twenty questions and interrogate them. The best conversations are a give-and-take between two people sharing information about themselves or their viewpoints. But of all the great things I’ve learned from my mother over the course of my lifetime, possibly the most valuable and useful on a daily basis is: people love to talk about themselves. Not in an egotistical way, but in a very straightforward and human way. We all have our unique passions, and we all love to share them. If you can steer the conversation to some of a person’s interests, hobbies, family life, or other passions, you can usually have an effortless conversation for hours. This simple strategy is something we can all adopt in our everyday lives to make friends, network with colleagues, and yes, build collaborative relationships with faculty.

Be bold, be friendly, and be inquisitive: that’s all it really takes. Don’t forget to be yourself, too, and share your own responses to questions they ask. Be a whole person, just as they are. Not everyone on campus will embrace spontaneous conversation with a librarian, but most of them will. And even if someone clearly doesn’t want to connect with you, don’t take it personally. It’s their loss.

Step 3: Reinforce the connection

At this point, the most important thing is to connect with them on their level, not yours. Don’t immediately set up a blog or LibGuide or start bundling RSS feeds unless you know they’re tech-savvy enough to appreciate it. One of the biggest downfalls I see when librarians connect with faculty is an expectation that those faculty will be as technophoric as we are. Don’t count on it. Choose a platform that they’ll use and find comfortable, regardless of how much you love Twitter. If you’re just dying to put your love of technology to work, you can harness RSS feeds or email alerts to track the topics the faculty you know have mentioned as interests. Newly released books or articles make great conversation topics, and you can drop a line when you see their work get published.

It’s also important to be multi-dimensional and not sound like a library salesperson trying to make the sale. If you went from friendly and personal in the initial meeting and now bury them in library paraphernalia, you’re going to lose the personal nature of the connection that is so critical to relationship-building. I’m not suggesting sending them photos of your kids unless they’ve asked for them, but in whatever communication you send, mention something you discussed during that first meeting. Even if it’s work-related, it reinforces the sense that you were listening (which you were, right?). Be personal and professional. Remind them that you are, indeed, a whole person.

Step 4: Build the relationship

Jane and I started meeting for lunch every semester, and I made a point of sending an invitation by email every time unless I heard from her first. As we got to know each other better our conversations got easier and we learned about each other’s jobs and families. We spent most of our time talking about the research classes she taught, and the ways that I might help, but we also talked about a whole array of other topics. Our exchanges became friendlier, more comfortable, and much more fun for both of us.

At this stage, you’re getting to know them as a person as well as a professional, too. Continue to ask questions: how are they doing? How are classes? How is their research? How is whatever they might have mentioned from their personal life? Even more importantly, listen to the answers and learn as much as you can. Take notes afterwards, for future reference, especially if you have a less-than-stellar memory. It may sound mercenary, but taking the time to remember details about someone means you care, and that’s a good thing. Hyun-Duck Chung from North Carolina State University is a great example of a librarian who embraced a business librarianship role fully by putting herself in a position to learn about her liaison department from the inside out.¹⁰ Chung notes, “Genuine excitement about a common goal can help ignite the relationship-building process, but cultivating it requires sustained engagement with individuals over time, and being open to learning from each other” (165).

Step 5: Go Collaborate

Once you can see the potential for collaboration, go ahead and talk to the individual. Be sure to describe the project you have in mind as well as the benefits to both of you. Ruth McCorkle concisely describes “four main components of research kinship: a willingness to share ideas and the ability to critique and respond to others’ ideas; the recognition of one another’s talents; the joint sharing of an idea and crafting of a hypothesis; and, the commitment of time and resources in a shared venture” (539).¹¹ Be willing to give and take, consider other directions, or change the project completely in response to their feedback and ideas. A professional collaboration is a negotiation, and you’ll have to be flexible to make it a success.

Jane and I talked about an idea I had to tier instruction for a series of courses she taught that required research papers. The same cohort of students moved through all these classes together, so I thought it would be worthwhile to introduce research skills to them gradually, building each semester on what they had learned last time. She liked the idea, so I reviewed all her syllabi and put together a proposal. She liked the proposal, made a few suggestions that I incorporated, and then we put it into action. I was happy to move from typical one-shots to a deeper way of working with her students, and Jane was delighted to see the improvements in her students’ work at the end of the series.

So the collaboration is on! After that, you just have to maintain your end of the deal: meet your deadlines, do your share of the work, and most crucial of all, keep in touch. Communicate regularly to maintain the relationship. And if something changes in your relationship and you find that you have to work with someone new, don’t be discouraged. Just start the process over again and give yourself time to get back to the same level.

Sound easy?

Further Reading

Notes

Acknowledgements

Ellie Collier

I’m the one who suggested the topic and I probably have the least to contribute on account of it. I’m really very interested in reading all the responses and hope many of you take the time to leave your favorite conferences (and why) in the comments.

I’ve always had a good time at ALA and typically walked away with new friends and new ideas, but I’m looking to try a smaller (and hopefully more cost-effective) conference next year.

I had a really fantastic time a our first annual Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) regional summit. It was free and included lunch. And I’m not even a member of LIRT! (I did offer to head a table talk topic, so I was kinda/sorta a speaker.) One nice thing about the LIRT conference was that it was all local librarians. I either knew, or knew someone who knew nearly everyone there.

I have also been going to the Texas Library Association annual conference regularly for the past four years (as long as I’ve been a professional librarian). I’ve spoken at the last three TLA conferences and I know that has definitely made it a more interesting, engaging, and rewarding experience for me.

Conferences I’ve attended:

• ALA Annual (3)
• ALA Midwinter
• TLA (Texas Library Association) (4)
• Library Instruction Round Table Regional Summit

Conferences I’m considering:

• ACRL
• CIL
• LOEX
• TCCTA (Texas Community College Teachers Association)
• code4lib (but I don’t think I’m quite tech savvy enough)

Hilary Davis

I’ve had the opportunity to attend a decent array of library conferences over the past six years, some as an MLS student, but most as a new-ish librarian. I’ll highlight a few conferences that have had strong influence on my development as a librarian and that I would recommend to other librarians. My first library conference was either the Federal Depository Library Council Meeting or the LITA Forum—I can’t remember which came first. I was still getting my MLS out of the way when both of these came to town (St. Louis, MO) and I wanted to take the opportunity to find out what they were like compared to the botany and evolution conferences that I had attended as a biology grad student (aka, life before librarianship). For the Federal Depository meeting, I was joined by a few fellow MLS students and faculty who tucked us under their wings and gave us the inside scoop on what the big issues were, how to read between the lines and introduced us to their librarian colleagues. Their insights made it much more interesting than it might have been to our untrained eyes. As such, the Federal Depository meeting has been the most contentious conference that I’ve been to in the 5-6 years that I’ve been going to library conferences. Those government docs librarians really know how to get into a debate! So, if you’re looking for some intense discussion, I’d suggest adding a Federal Depository Library Council Meeting to your conference plan in the near future.

The LITA Forum was completely different. I didn’t know anyone at this conference—none of my fellow MLS students attended and if any other faculty in my program attended, I didn’t see them there. While I didn’t get to benefit from the insights of a steadfast LITA member, I did participate in an unusual way. In exchange for helping out with the sessions, I got a reduced registration rate. I was one of those people who collected session evaluations and reported A/V problems to the facility staff. While I couldn’t always devote my full attention and let everything just sink in, the sessions that I got to attend were all new to me and as such, were pretty foundational to my entry into librarianship. I remember attending one of the early sessions by Nancy Fried Foster (the anthropologist who collaborates with Susan Gibbons at the University of Rochester on studying how students work) where I took the opportunity to meet Cliff Lynch, one of my libraryland heroes. This LITA Forum was also where I attended my first dine-around (I don’t think we had dine-arounds at the botany and evolution conferences) and as luck would have it, ended up splitting pitchers of beer with my future colleagues at the NCSU Libraries—Andrew Pace, Steve Meyer and Steve McCann (none of whom are still at the NCSU Libraries). It was a fortuitous conference. I would most certainly attend another LITA conference in the future; it’s just that my particular focus has shifted from an open playing field (in 2004) to collection management and collection assessment and it’s not always easy to justify attending conferences outside my specific area. The LITA Forum I attended was a smaller affair—the venue was easy to navigate (all in one spot) and the number of attendees wasn’t overwhelming. It was easy to rub elbows/beer steins with smart, inventive librarians and library visionaries.

My conference/professional organization of choice has been the Special Libraries Association (SLA). As a student, I joined the local chapter of SLA (St. Louis Metro Area Chapter) and met some super helpful mentors who I’ve continued to keep in touch with through the years. Whereas other organizations wouldn’t give me the time of day as an MLS student (namely, ALA), SLA saw me as a positive asset to their organization and began grooming me immediately. So, naturally, I’ve been a loyal SLA Annual conference attendee since 2005 (Toronto) and am now the lead in planning for the Science-Technology Division (of the SLA) sessions at the upcoming SLA Annual Conference in New Orleans in June. Don’t be mistaken in thinking that SLA Annual conferences only focus on corporate librarianship. SLA is one of the most diverse organizations and includes academic, public, and government, as well as corporate and solo librarians. When they get together to carry off a conference, good things can happen. Yes, I’ve been to some mediocre conference sessions at SLA, but I’ve also been to some astounding sessions. I always bring back a notebook of new ideas and new ways of seeing things. SLA Annual conferences have been my way of filling in the gaps of what my MLS program omitted and of keeping my professional training up to snuff. SLA offers loads of pre-conference training programs (some half-day, some whole-day) and while they do cost an arm and a leg ($300-400 average each), SLA has a healthy set of travel awards and stipends to help offset the cost burden. MLS students and new librarians should, in particular, pay attention to these funding opportunities as there are many to apply for. I can’t say the same great things for the SLA Leadership Summits that I’ve attended. The SLA Leadership Summit events are open to all SLA members, but are mostly meant for SLA leaders (i.e., division/chapter chairs and presidents, secretaries, treasurers, chair-elects, etc.). Some of the programs aren’t very compelling (they usually bring in a motivational speaker who has no idea what librarians do to talk to us about things like loyalty and persuasion—a little too much tipping of the Kool-Aid for my tastes) and make some days seem to last into infinity. The upside is that the networking and individual division/chapter planning opportunities are excellent. Again, another chance to rub elbows/beer steins with creative people, renew friendships, and meet new colleagues. So, my advice is to include some SLA Annual conferences in your future. They’re not nearly as big and overwhelming as ALA Annual and are much easier to navigate and run into people who you want to build professional relationships with (and there are no book cart drill team competitions).

The other conference I want to highlight is the Charleston Conference (next one is November 3-6, 2010). This is an excellent, intimate conference for those who have any deep or fleeting interest in collections, acquisitions, and scholarly communication. Unlike any other conference I’ve been to, the Charleston Conference has a truly unique and distinct personality. It always occurs in Charleston, SC, and is planned by the same (at least some of the same) inventive folks. This is the only conference that I’ve been to that has skits between the consecutive keynote sessions in the mornings. While it’s a little weird at first, it’s kind of refreshing. I love the themes of the Charleston Conference as well—”Anything Goes!” for 2010, “What Tangled Webs We Weave” for 2007, for example. This conference is smaller than SLA Annual and is always in the same venue (the Francis Marion and the Embassy Suites across the courtyard), so if you’re a repeat attendee, it’s easy to plan for lodging and dining (of which there are some amazing options in Charleston). This conference is also one of the rare instances where library product vendors/publishers truly participate in the conversation. Rather than just exhibiting their wares, you can find vendors/publishers presenting on the same topics as librarians, having the same debates and struggling with the same issues—just from their perspective. I’ve found this to be really enlightening and helpful in my career as a librarian. So, by all means, put the Charleston Conference at the front of your wishlist of conferences to attend.

Speaking of wishlists—there are many other conferences within libraryland that I’d like to attend (and haven’t yet had the opportunity to attend). The Library Assessment Conference is one that I’m really looking forward to attending one day. My job is pushing me to learn new ways to assess the use, access, and composition of our collections and my sense is that this conference could help offer some helpful strategies. I’d also love to attend Computers in Libraries one day. I’ve heard so many great things about this conference. There’s an interesting-looking intimate conference taking place in June (abutting the SLA Annual Conference this year) that I’d love to be able to attend: the Science Bootcamp 2010 in Lowell, MA. This year, the topic is on E-Science and preparing librarians to help researchers who work in an E-Science landscape. Outside of libraryland, I’d like to one day attend an Emerging Technologies conference (EmTech) sponsored by MIT as one of those conferences that cut across disciplines to showcase what’s coming in terms of tech trends.

Conferences I’ve Attended:

• ACRL
• ACS (American Chemical Society) National Conference
• ALA Annual
• ALA/ACRL Institute of Scholarly Communication
• ALA Midwinter
• ARl/CNI Fall Forum
• ASIS&T Annual Conference
• Charleston Conference (2)
• DASER (Digital Archives in Science & Engineering Resources) Summit
• Federal Depository Library Council Meeting
• LAUNC-CH (Librarians Association UNC-Chapel Hill) Research Forum
• LITA
• North Carolina Serials Conference
• SLA Annual (5)
• SLA Leadership Summit (2)
• TRLN (Triangle Research Libraries Network) Annual Conference (5)
• Numerous webinars, local workshops/seminars

Conferences I’m Considering

• Library Assessment Conference
• Computers in Libraries
• Science Bootcamp 2010
• Emerging Technologies Conference (EmTech)

Brett Bonfield

I really love ALA Annual. It’s the one time I feel like I get to be a no-modifier librarian. Not a public librarian or a library director or a library techie or whatever: for those few days, I feel like a capital L, Librarian. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I feel like a multi-modifier librarian—whatever I want to learn about is available.

Some examples:

• I’m crazy about Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) programming. No matter the room size, their presentations are always efficiently run, with well prepared and informative speakers. Annual is the one time I get to see ALCTS presenters doing their thing.
• I always try to drop in on small or smallish committees and discussion groups. I just pick out an interesting-sounding group or discussion topic and play fly-on-the-wall while they talk shop.
• Watching ALA Council deliberate is fascinating.

Though, of course, the best thing about Annual is seeing people I only get to see once or twice a year and meeting people for the first time, especially people whose work has influenced my thinking about how I do my job.

My other favorite conference is code4lib, which is sort of the anti-ALA Annual. It’s single-track, which means everyone is in the same room most of the time. It’s small, it’s cheap, it’s specialized, and the presentations are short—just twenty minutes for the more formal-ish presentations, with plenty of time for five-minute lightning talks as well. During presentations, everyone in the room has a laptop in front of them and chats about what the speaker is saying, so just about everyone is participating most of the time, even if there’s disarmingly little eye contact.

For me, the most notable thing about code4lib is that it’s amazingly democratic: code4libbers vote on everything. Prior to the conference they vote on the keynote speaker, presenters and presentations, and where the conference will be. During the conference, they vote on things like which groups should get the larger rooms during break-out sessions. It’s really wonderful to see people treat each other that way. And, despite the fact that many of them are friends who only see each other once or twice a year, they work very, very hard not to be cliquish.

Of course, as with other library conferences, the participants are amazing librarians (even if many of them don’t have library degrees and a good portion don’t work in libraries) and the presentations are interesting and useful. More than any other conference I’ve attended, code4lib made me want to learn well enough to keep up with everyone else—to have something useful to contribute to every project that anyone discussed, because all of them were fascinating. It probably won’t ever happen, but the prospect of knowing enough to present at code4lib is a constant source of inspiration.

Though I no longer belong to SLA or go to the conference—while there are many public librarians who belong to SLA, I think ALA and PLA provide more to me in my current role—I believe strongly that SLA Annual is the one conference every library school student should attend. To quote Hilary, “SLA saw me as a positive asset to their organization and began grooming me immediately.” No matter what area of librarianship you think you want to go into, no matter where in the world you think you’ll work, SLA has something to offer. That is, it’s big enough to be comprehensive but small and efficient enough to feel as though people know who you are and what you’re capable of contributing. In addition, I think it’s smart of SLA to bundle membership in the national association with membership in your local chapter.

Conferences I’ve attended:

• ACRL
• ALA Annual (3)
• ALA Midwinter (3)
• code4lib
• New Jersey Library Association (2)
• PLA
• Pres4Lib
• SLA Annual
• Virtual Academic Library Conference of New Jersey

Conferences I’m considering:

• Access
• American Communication Association
• Charleston Conference
• Computers in Libraries
• Library History Round Table
• LITA Forum
• National Communication Association
• National Diversity in Libraries Conference
• SXSW
• Various TEDx conferences
• Various user conferences (especially if we end up using Evergreen to manage our inventory)

Emily Ford

Even though I’m pretty active with some ALA committee appointments and have attended ALA a few times, the conferences that I’ve found most useful and engaging are not ALA. They are Online Northwest and the Oregon Virtual Reference Summit. Both of these are more local or regional conferences, and presentations and panels are generally creative, doable, and foster future collaborations in one’s locality without the mess of the ALA bureaucracy to get in the way. Plus, they both have the ability to attract some great keynote speakers. (Full disclosure: I’m on the planning team for this year’s Virtual Reference Summit.)

The Oregon Public Health Association Annual Conference is a good conference in one of my library liaison subject areas. The first time I attended (during election season two years ago) the conference had a very deep political bent and wasn’t crouched with speak of “neutrality” (as we often do in our professional library communities). During lunch speakers told us how to vote on local ballot measures. I didn’t agree with all of the choices, but I was glad to hear what the organization officially thought. In fact, it made me even more want to attend the conference in the future.

In the future I’d really like to attend a HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) conference. This group does some innovative deep (and critical) thinking about technology and learning; and HASTAC attracts professionals, academics and students from all disciplines. The problem is always finding and making the time to engage. On the whole, I’m hoping to find more regional conferences that are more participatory and enable me to take action with my new ideas when I get back to work.

Derik Badman

I must really love Computers in Libraries (CIL) as I’ve been there every year since I became a librarian except the first. Though, honestly, I mostly end up going because I present there (the most recent three times I’ve been there) and so they pay the registration. Plus, it’s in DC, so its drivable for me (I’m not much of a traveler). CIL is hit or miss for me from a learning view point. It’s often too simplistic for my techie tastes. But, because it’s fairly small and has a lot of repeat attendees, it’s great for socializing and networking. I always go to it excited to see friends again, and I always come back from it with new friends. The more I go to conferences, the more they are a social event rather than an educational experience. Most conference presentations are not the most efficient (or enjoyable) way to access the information being offered (exception, of course, for excellent and skilled speakers or for sessions that take advantage of the room of participants), so the real draw is just hanging out with other people in the field. And those connections lead places, be it personally or professionally. That was my general impression of the one ALA Annual I attended. The socializing was rewarding, but the presentations and meetings themselves felt much less worthwhile.

Pres4Lib, an unconference about presenting that was held at Princeton Public Library in NJ, was a really positive experience. The very small size (we could all fit in one room) and the focused theme helped increase the social interaction and the informational content, as did the participatory pre-conference scheduling (attendees suggested topics ahead of time on a wiki). I’d like to go to more events like it, where everyone is encouraged to participate and everyone is there because the specific theme is of interest to them. Too many conferences are so broadly planned as to offer only sporadic interest, though, on the other hand, the serendipitous discover is less likely in a focused theme. Library Camp East was also an unconference, but it had no theme and thus, I thought, floundered a bit more in deciding what would be the focus of discussion.

I have the feeling I’ll need to find more local conferences to attend, as the travel costs of doing elsewhere are hard to take. Though, now that I’m not officially a librarian (or working in a library), maybe I won’t be attending conferences at all. Time will tell.

Conferences I’ve Attended:

• ALA Annual
• ALA Midwinter
• ACRL (2)
• Computers in Libraries (5)
• Library Camp East
• Pres4Lib

Conferences I’m Considering:

• I’d really like to get to code4lib, especially now that I’m actually working as a programmer.

Kim Leeder

I have to admit that I’m feeling a little intimidated by those lists above! Although I’ve been attending ALA Midwinter and Annual regularly since about 2005, that’s pretty much all I’ve attended on the national level during my career thus far. I haven’t even — gasp! – been to an ACRL conference. It’s not due to a lack of desire, that’s for sure. It comes down to geography: unlike my fellow Lead Pipers I’ve been living in rather remote areas of the country where traveling is just more time-consuming and more expensive. Try booking a flight to Boise, Idaho, and you’ll see what I mean. In the end I just can’t make a good argument for spending either my library’s or my own money on more than the two ALA conferences in a year, especially in these times. I did have the opportunity to participate in last year’s ACRL virtual conference, which was better than nothing. If that is anything like other virtual conferences, though, I think they have a long way to go before they can compare to the real thing.

I’ve attended the state library associations’ conferences in the places I’ve lived as a library student and librarian: two conferences convened by the Arizona Library Association in the mid-2000′s, and two Idaho Library Association conferences annually since 2007 (Idaho is a big state so each year they hold a state-wide conference and a variety of smaller conferences for regions in the state). I like being part of my state association; it makes me feel more connected locally. I particularly enjoy networking with others in my area and I appreciate the fact that every type of librarian and library staffer is gathered in the same room to share their unique areas of knowledge with each other. I learn a lot about what school and public and special librarians do at the state conferences, which keeps me tuned in to the larger issues that affect us all. I also appreciate the opportunity to give presentations, an opportunity that can be difficult to come by on the national level.

I’m not going to list my “conferences I’ve attended” and those I’m considering, since the first list would be woefully short and the second would be woefully long. I accept the fact that living in the wide open spaces of the interior West means I have fewer opportunities to attend conferences, and as a result I seek out other ways to participate in the field. My committee work fills the void, as does the opportunity to connect virtually through this blog, through Facebook, and through a variety of webinars.

Please join the conversation by sharing your conference experiences (or coping mechanisms) below in the comments.

The impetus for this blog post was an email that has been making the rounds, originating from Dr. Richard Price of Oxford University, that reads as follows:

I recently finished my Ph.D on the philosophy of perception from Oxford. With a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, I’ve just launched a website, www.academia.edu, which does two things:

- It shows academics around the world structured in a ‘tree’ format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.
- It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area – the latest people, papers and talks.

We are hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world — Faculty Members, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Independent Researchers. Academics can add their departments, and themselves, to the tree by clicking on the boxes.

The message concludes with the names of a few notables who have joined (or been added) to the site, and a request to assist Dr. Price and friends in their efforts by further circulating the announcement.

Call me a sucker, but I got that message and immediately joined up, forwarded it to my colleagues, and started envisioning the possibilities. What intrigues me is Academia.edu’s combination of a professional networking site with a digital repository. Could this take the place of our nascent institutional repository or save my fellow librarians from having to put together an institutional bibliography each year?

A screen shot of Academia.edu's homepage.

The networking-repository hybrid model was new to me, though I learned later that Academia.edu is not the first to do this. Nor is it the only virtual platform where researchers can create a profile and search for others with similar research interests. A lot of people in academia already use Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with their colleagues and friends, but Academia.edu and its competitors are different because they were specifically created to serve the needs of academics, in terms of research, professional networking, listing citations, and file sharing. Try some of those activities on Facebook, and you’ll soon agree that it falls far short of an academic’s networking needs.

Here’s an overview of the major academic networking sites and their features (if you know of others I overlooked, please comment below). All allow you to create a profile and search for other academics by research interest, so I’ve omitted those features in the table.

In addition to the characteristics above, these are the qualities that make each site unique.

• Academia.edu: Networking for academics in all fields. Offers unique visual format with organization by institution. Features Facebook Connect.
• BibApp: Must be hosted on your server for campus-specific organization of faculty experts and research. Functions more like a catalog of faculty than a networking site, but could be used either way.
• Epernicus: Networking targeted for scientists. Features “BenchQs,” which is like Yahoo! Answers for science.
• Graduate Junction: Networking for graduate students that professes to be less intimidating than professional sites. Offers a conference diary & job listings.
• Labmeeting: Networking for scientists in the biomedical and related sciences. Offers features to assist in organizing and sharing information in lab settings. Also includes strong privacy protection.
• Pronetos: Networking for academics in all fields. Organization by discipline, and offers discussion forums for each discipline.

I’m going to use the remainder of this post to critically review these academic networking sites, looking at the benefits, limitations, and possible future outlook.

The Good

There are two major benefits offered by participation in most of the sites I’m looked at, especially Academia.edu and Pronetos:

1. The ability to locate other scholars with similar research interests.
2. The power to upload papers, articles, and even books to contribute to a worldwide digital repository.

As far as #1, the networking aspect goes, it would be natural to ask why any of these sites are an improvement over the ubiquitous Facebook. Who needs another social network, for goodness sake? Vivek Murthy, one of the founders of Epernicus, addressed the question in a post on the Epernicus blog: “Mikhail and I started Epernicus because we realized that the social networks to which we belonged weren’t able to serve our needs as scientists. The profiles didn’t capture what was important to scientists. And equally as important, we couldn’t use these networks to help us find expertise in real world scientific networks.” If they had a question or issue unique to their research that no one they knew personally could address, they wanted a way to find others out there who might know more. This is not what Facebook was built for.

In theory, the opportunity to share research interests and connect with other scholars sounds idyllic. Finally, the chance to find out who’s walking the same path and reading the same articles. It’s like eHarmony for the brain instead of the heart. If there is a need and a demand for such a thing, it could really take off.

Personally, I get more excited about #2, the digital repository side of this project. The sites that actually host files, especially Academia.edu and Pronetos, are contributing to the open access movement in ways they may not even realize. Although those of us in libraries already know that faculty usually don’t want to take the additional time to post their papers to our repositories, these two sites could be different because (a) they’re easier to use than any library repository I’ve ever seen, (b) they’re prettier, and (c) they make it clear that the papers uploaded will be shared with others instead of stored in a dusty server room, never to be heard from again.

The Bad

First, any social networking site, whether personal or professional, is only as good as its membership. With that in mind, I would say that all of these sites have a long way to go in soliciting members. Academia.edu appears to be the largest, at about 20,000, but this is still a small percentage of academics worldwide. GraduateJunction may have the greatest potential in this arena due to its specific target audience (graduate students) and the fact that it boasts more “useful” (job and conference) features than the other sites in this review.

Second, although I initially found it entertaining to search for others with similar research interests to mine, once I found a few I realized that I just didn’t know what to do with them. I could add them as contacts and review their publications. What then? If I were extremely motivated perhaps I would email them and say a few words in our unique research interest language (“speaking geek,” I think they call it). But how often would such contact lead to something constructive? The more I searched, the more skeptical I became.

Third, academic networking sites are facing big challenges in finding an effective way to ensure that only legitimate academics participate. The UK Times Higher Education expressed concern about Academia.edu because “anyone can pass themselves off as an academic…and scholars could be misled into putting their details on it because it occupies the generic top-level domain ‘.edu,’ which is normally reserved for universities.” On the other hand, some sites are so careful to screen members that they seem almost impossible to join. Despite repeated attempts, I was unable to join Labmeeting or Pronetos due to their screening standards. Pronetos sent me an activation message that somehow disappeared into cyberspace (and no, it wasn’t in my spam folder), while Labmeeting did not recognize my university email address as being from a legitimate academic domain (my university president would take issue with that!).

The Ugly

All in all, social networks of any variety are a curious tradeoff. How much time are you willing to put into them in order to expand your web of connections? In writing this blog post, I spent 8-10 hours crawling around on the various sites mentioned here, creating profiles, exploring group and research interests, checking to see if I knew anyone (or wanted to know anyone) on any of the sites. I found many of the sites appealing at first, and enjoyed some of my wanderings. But now that I’ve had some exposure to these platforms, returning to Facebook feels kind of like going home. True, I can’t search for other scholars based on my research interests. But considering how many other avenues I have to find them — from publications to blogs to conferences — do I really need a new one?

As Jeffrey R. Young noted in “New Social Network Hopes to Catalog All Researchers and Their Interests,”an article in the September 16 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, “It’s too soon to tell whether any of these sites will catch on, and it seems that the services will only become valuable if a critical mass of researchers join in. The final winner may be Facebook itself.” So, are these new-kid-on-the-block academic networking sites worth your time? Based upon my admittedly limited experience on these sites, probably not. But if you have some free time, go for it. Create your profile and see who else is out there. You might get lucky.

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Many thanks to Brett Bonfield and Ellie Dworak for taking the time to offer feedback on the draft of this post, and to Brett for his coding kindnesses.