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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

As librarians, we invest a great deal of time and effort instructing researchers on how to use our materials. This is especially true for special collections librarians, as we attempt to familiarize researchers with our unique resources and intricate collection arrangements. At the end of that instruction investment, we often wonder if we have been effective and what our students have truly learned. Have we taught them lasting research skills? If so, how do we illustrate the value of this service to cost-cutting administrators? How do we quantify the skills gained from working with our materials? Most importantly—how do we know if our instruction is making a difference for the researcher?

University Archives Photograph Collection, NCSU Special Collections Research Center

Last year, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in the production of SPEC Kit 317: Special Collections Engagement. SPEC Kits, produced annually, survey the 124 ARL member institutions and collect data on current practices and policies of libraries.

We surveyed member institutions about the ways special collections are engaging students, faculty, and researchers through exhibits, events, and curricular involvement, and found that over 95% of respondents are involved in these activities (Berenbak et al., 2010, 16). A core component of many of these outreach efforts was instructional engagement in the use of special collections materials.

As we began the work of analyzing the survey results, a recurrent theme surfaced: the inconsistency of instructional engagement assessment. We began to ask ourselves questions about the concepts of evaluation and assessment of instruction, and how those terms are articulated and understood in the context of special collections. For example, when conducting a one-time instruction session, should evaluation focus on the librarian’s presentation skills, the use of archival collections by participants after a session, or the number of participating students or classes?

Although special collections are attempting to assess their instruction in a variety of ways, these efforts are not consistent, not standardized, and often not driven by a “need for information that fosters targeted change” (Ariew, 2007, 508). Many special collections would like to move assessment beyond use counts and anecdotal feedback, but the majority of ARL special collections have no plan or policy for outreach or engagement, and few have dedicated outreach staff (Berenbak et al, 2010).[1] Under these circumstances, how do special collections conceptualize what success looks like, or what measurements will convey when success has been achieved?

What IS being assessed?

University Archives Photograph Collection, NCSU Special Collections Research Center

Currently, most research libraries contribute annual statistics to government agencies and organizations such as the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).[2] These statistics include the size of each library’s collections, circulation, staff. Additionally, ARL asks libraries to describe instructional engagement efforts, reporting on the number of presentations that are given to groups, the number of participants in those groups, and the number of reference transactions. ARL provides the following definitions for its categories:

Presentations to Groups. Report the total number of sessions during the year of presentations made as part of formal bibliographic instruction programs and through other planned class presentations, orientation sessions, and tours . . . Presentations to groups may be for either bibliographic instruction, cultural, recreational, or educational purposes . . . the purpose of this question is to capture information about the services the library provides for its clientele. (Kyrillidou, & Bland, 2009, 100, emphasis added)

Participants in Group Presentations. Report the total number of participants in the presentations. For multi-session classes with a constant enrollment, count each person only once. Personal, one-to-one instruction in the use of sources should be counted as reference transactions (Kyrillidou, & Bland, 2009, 100).

Reference Transactions. A reference transaction is an information contact that involves the knowledge, use, recommendations, interpretation, or instruction in the use of one or more information sources by a member of the library staff. The term includes information and referral service. Information sources include (a) printed and nonprinted material; (b) machine-readable databases (including computer-assisted instruction); (c) the library’s own catalogs and other holdings records; (d) other libraries and institutions through communication or referral; and (e) persons both inside and outside the library . . . . (Kyrillidou, & Bland, 2009, 100).

Special collections departments are asked to contribute their numbers to their library’s general pool; ARL does not differentiate between general library instruction and the instructional efforts of special collections departments, a practice that makes the compiled statistics less useful for both ARL and the responding institutions.

It is clear from the results of our SPEC Kit findings that few institutions are doing any assessment of instructional engagement beyond what is required by ARL. Most responding institutions do not have formal evaluative measures. [3] Instead, these institutions tend to rely heavily on feedback and conversations with students, faculty, and researchers (Berenbak et al, 2010, 78, 79,91,92). [4] Special collections tend to either quantify the usefulness of their instruction when patrons mention they “learned” or “got something” from the instruction, or when they count how many items were checked out to patrons. And while counting items is arguably important for certain kinds of assessment, without measuring against a desired and stated outcome, what does a number like this really tell a special collections about its practices?

We know that very few special collections departments have any sort of formalized planning or policies guiding their instructional programming (Berenbak et al, 2010, 15). Different circumstances in each special collections contribute to this situation. In some cases, staff are short on the time and energy to devote to this activity (or, more commonly, staff tasked with this activity are a luxury most special collections cannot afford). In others, the responsibility of instruction is delegated at the time of need to the staff person whose background most closely aligns with the subject area of the instruction, limiting the consistency of the instruction. Sometimes the institution simply has not considered or not yet formally developed a plan for instructional engagement that fits into the overall activities of that special collections.

Whatever the circumstances, the results of our survey showed that most (80%) special collections are engaging in instructional sessions on a steady basis, and will likely continue to do so in the future — perhaps at an even greater frequency than their current rates (Berenbak et. al, 2010, 13).[5] If special collections are going to direct more focused efforts at planning their instructional engagement, they will need articulated and useful assessment metrics. After all, we cannot know if our engagement planning is a worthwhile investment if we are not assessing the outcomes of that engagement.

Though we recognize a need for better assessment, we are struggling to respond to this need. Determining which metrics will provide useful information about instruction is a conundrum that is keeping many special collections frustrated or hesitant to try assessment at all. A few institutions provide evidence that assessment is not daunting for everyone — one special collections, for example, looks for citations of materials from their holdings in student papers as an indication of the success of their instruction; some look for any citations of primary source materials; and some have undertaken short surveys and faculty interviews. [6] But by and large, most special collections seem uncertain as to what to collect or how to collect it.

What are we teaching?

University Archives Photograph Collection, NCSU Special Collections Research Center

When we do an instruction session with patrons in special collections, what are our objectives? Aware that specific objectives will vary from one session to another — informed by the needs, topics, or other parameters that may frame a session — there are still general objectives that we, as instructors, are always hoping to meet. Helping patrons find exactly what they need is possibly the most successful outcome we can achieve, but the many steps along the path to discovery are the components of instruction that perhaps most need to be measured in order to gauge the effectiveness of our instruction. Before patrons can find exactly what they are looking for, they first have to learn how to find it. From our perspective as instructors, a successful journey is more indicative of our instructional impact than arrival at the destination.

Why is the journey so important in special collections? Elizabeth Yakel, in her article “Listening to Users,” describes archives as a tabula rasa for researchers (Yakel, 2002, 122). She makes the important point that, unlike libraries where the “paradigm for assistance, access tools, and rules” has been learned by users from childhood at their public and school libraries, archives are considered a great unknown (Yakel, 2002, 122). The intricacies of the different rules, different materials, and different access tools often stump even the most experienced library user or researcher. Some archivists have correctly compared a successful special collections instruction session to an “archaeological dig” (Schmiesing & Hollis, 2002). Since the majority of special collections materials are not reflected on an item-by-item basis in either the library catalog or a finding aid, researchers must “dig” through boxes of materials, digital images, or artifacts. Because of the nature of this type of research, and because materials are not individually pre-selected for consumption, users must constantly reformulate their queries as they discover new materials. This often necessitates close collaboration with the special collections staff throughout the research process.

Unfortunately, this type of instruction is not accurately reflected in our measurements. Certainly limited head counts and use statistics do not paint an accurate picture of this work, nor do brief reactionary evaluations. ^[7] These evaluations are important and necessary, especially when reporting to organizations outside the library, but they fail to assess whether or not learning objectives are being met.

What’s out there now?

Academic libraries recognize that the reactionary evaluation of instruction often falls short, and have developed tools to help libraries make sure students and users are meeting learning objectives. These include guidelines such as ACRL’s “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” “Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators: A Practical Guide,” and skills tests such as Project SAILS. These guidelines give a framework for conducting meaningful evaluation for instruction librarians. And although there is no shortage of literature to be found on the subject of library instruction and assessment, we are only beginning to see similar literature and tools dealing with evaluating instruction in archives and special collections. A good example of this emerging interest can be found in Michelle McCoy’s article, “The Manuscript as Question: Teaching Primary Sources in the Archives – The China Missions Project.” McCoy details methods for the planning, instruction, and innovative assessment of a collaborative effort between the special collections and archives department at DePaul University and Professor Warren Schultz’s undergraduate History 199 Historical Concepts and Methods class.

Arguably the most important current project appearing in the assessment literature for archives and special collections is the Mellon-funded Archival Metrics Project, which includes models for assessing instruction (discussed at length below). In addition to the products themselves, Archival Metrics investigators have produced papers detailing initial studies for the project such as Duff and Cherry’s “Archival orientation for undergraduate students: An exploratory study of impact.“

Although we appear to be making progress, current assessment practices of efforts to instruct patrons on the use of special collections resources — both the materials themselves and the many discovery tools we’ve created (finding aids, databases, and subject guides) — would probably not receive a passing grade. Measuring and quantifying the journey is a daunting task.

While we should not stop collecting the statistics that are needed by ARL, the general library community — and especially special collections — should have a clear understanding of what these numbers actually represent. Any instruction or reference librarian will tell you that a headcount for their curricular sessions or a tally mark for a reference transaction does not adequately measure what they do or the instruction they provide. Especially when tally sheets obscure the difference between a quick question lookup and an hour-long research consultation at the desk.

We face a number of difficulties in achieving the goal of both establishing and collecting useful assessment metrics. In addition to a lack of policies or plans regarding curricular outreach and engagement, special collections often do not have positions designated to conduct instructional outreach. As discussed earlier, these duties often fall to the person in the department with the greatest subject knowledge, or the most available time.[8] It will be difficult to take on additional duties — especially when there are no easy answers and many special collections are short on staff and funding — but we offer some suggestions for ways that special collections might start.

Assessing the Journey

University Archives Photograph Collections, NCSU Special Collections Research Center

First, we must share. Some special collections are reaching students and evaluating their work with them in innovative ways, and the success of these efforts needs to be promoted.

Some of these innovations include:

• Making early contact with graduate student instructors so that they have experience working with special collections before they enter faculty positions;
• Working with subject librarians to incorporate relevant material into their teaching efforts;
• Giving awards to undergraduate research projects that make extensive use of the collections;
• Working with students to create virtual and physical exhibits highlighting materials used in special collections.

Assessment examples include:

• Monitoring use statistics of particular collections after an instruction session;
• Asking classes to donate copies of student papers to review the citations as a tool for better understanding the effectiveness of instruction;
• Using student focus groups to evaluate video tutorials;
• Monitoring books and articles published, performances given, and theses written;
• Tracking number and value of grants received;
• Examining web server statistics;
• Feedback forms and surveys;
• Monitoring number of graduate and practicum students using the collections;
• Soliciting and compiling one-on-one feedback from professors and students. [9]

The assessment practices that generate the most useful results are multipronged in their approach. The China Missions Project, for example, was organized in such a way that the students included a self-assessment of their experience using archival materials and research methods as part of their class research papers (McCoy, 2010, 55). Copies of these papers were deposited with the University Archives, and then staff conducted a qualitative survey of the papers to assess their responses. Recognizing that self-assessment in a graded paper might encourage students to write positive responses regardless of actual understanding, staff further scrutinized the papers’ citations. “Students who used a total of four citations or fewer or relied heavily on Wikipedia or other Web sources whose reliability cannot be verified were moved to a neutral position and not included in the positive total” (McCoy, 2010, 55). This approach—as well as other methods listed above—have plusses and minuses, but becoming aware of what other special collections are trying gives the rest of us a jumping off point.

A variety of special collections have noted their relationships with outreach and subject liaison librarians. Developing these close relationships can be beneficial for everyone involved. Understanding the holdings in a special collections, and illustrating how those materials might be incorporated into the curriculum, creates a great opportunity for instructing students in the value of primary sources. Drawing on the skills and backgrounds of subject specialists and instruction librarians can help special collections staff (often untrained in these areas) to develop sound instruction techniques.

Additionally, our colleagues in outreach and instruction have done an extraordinary amount of work related to best practices for evaluating instruction. In a 2007 article, Ariew and Lener state that one of the main insights gained in their study “Evaluating instruction: developing a program that supports the teaching librarian” was that teaching evaluation forms should be “tailored to specific classes, objectives and learning outcomes.” Most importantly, the group learned that “effective assessment requires a variety of assessment procedures be used” (Ariew, & Lener, 2007, 512). From teaching portfolios to 3-2-1 cards to surveys, the literature yields a great deal of information about what works and what doesn’t for each type of instruction. Although not all of these practices can be used to evaluate special collections instructional engagement practices, they provide guideposts to start from.

Fortunately, some people are starting to address the problem of how to assess the engagement work being done by special collections departments. The Archival Metrics Toolkits[10], for example, attempt to standardize evaluation in archives. This work recognizes that the “administration and use of primary sources are sufficiently different from libraries that they deserve tools that appropriately measure service to users” (Yakel, & Tibbo, 2010, 221). This creation of a standardized survey tool for archives could relieve a large part of the assessment burden, which is particularly important for archives with small staff. It also begins to answer the call for standardized evaluation that was so apparent in the results of our SPEC Kit survey.

The Archival Metrics Toolkit is particularly useful in laying out a set of standard questions about archives use, and they provide clear instructions on how to gather, compile, and analyze the data from the surveys. This information provides a basis for making comparisons across institutions, and could give special collections a better chance of identifying best practices and trends.

However, even the best of surveys have drawbacks such as rate of completion (particularly difficult in archives due to small numbers)[11], survey fatigue, and a focus on perceptions. Supplementing surveys by seeking evidence of skills mastered, such as citation analysis or testing, seems a more well rounded method to determining “what students have learned as opposed to how they feel about what they have learned” (Barclay, 1993, 198).

Special collections must clearly state engagement goals in order for any type of evaluation to be meaningful. Good practice in evaluating instructional engagement starts “with the learning objectives of the instructor” (or the department), and uses those to shape the tools being applied for evaluation (Areiw, & Lener, 2007, 512). As the libraries at Virginia Tech discovered, evaluation, when possible, should be unique to specific classes and desired student and faculty outcomes and will likely require that a variety of assessment procedures be used (Ariew, 2007, 512).

Conclusions

Today more than ever, library administrators are being asked to describe in a quantifiable way the value of their academic libraries and their practices. Therefore, special collections must be able to articulate to administrators why current evaluation methods are insufficient. Simple forms, tally marks, and baseline ARL statistics will never be able to get at the information we need to improve our practices. Specials collections need to make the case for developing more appropriate evaluation methods — even though this will require a commitment of valuable staff resources — and then make the commitment to using the results of these evaluations to enhance services. Ultimately, more meaningful data will help us provide better service to the students, faculty, and researchers who rely on special collections, and it will better equip us to tell their story and our own.

University Archives Photograph Collection, NCSU Special Collections Research Center

Huge thanks to our editors and advisors: Kathy Brown, Hyun-Duck Chung and Brett Bonfield. Your thoughtful comments have made this a much better post,` and sparked ideas for future avenues of exploration. And of course, thank you so much to all of our SPEC Kit co-authors, Adam Berenbak, Claire Ruswick, Danica Cullinan and Judy Allen-Dodson.

[2] The ARL states that these data “describe collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities” of the 114 university libraries and 10 public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries that collectively form ARL (Association of Research Libraries, 2008).

[3] This is not to imply that no one is attempting to assess instruction, but it is not standardized, and based on the survey responses, in general, it is fairly ad-hoc (Berenbak et al., 2010, 78, 79, 90, 91).

[4] Question 35 in the ARL Spec Kit did not specifically ask about the evaluation of instructional engagement but more broadly inquired, “What measure(s) have been used to evaluate special collections engagement with faculty/scholars/researchers who are affiliated with your institutions.” Many of the responses were similar to the more directed question 28 “What measure(s) are used to evaluate student use of unique materials in research projects.” The following types of statements made up the bulk of the responses: “no evaluation,” “much to few [sic],” “no particular measures have been used,” “nothing systematic,” “little evaluation has been done,” and “none to date.”

[5] The number of respondents actively working to engage students for curricular purposes is even higher at 99% (Berenbak et. al, 2010, 62).

[6] These examples are taken from the responses to the question “What measure(s) are used to evaluate student use of unique materials in research projects?” Responses include examining the “extent and breadth of primary resources and collections in any format,” a “learning outcomes survey,” and “discussion with faculty of results” (Berenbak et. al., 2010, 78, 79 and 80).

[7] Reactionary refers to a short survey after a presentation that often focuses on a students’ perception of the presentation rather than on whether or not new skills have been developed.

[8] When respondents were asked who had primary responsibility for coordinating curricular engagement, 15% had one individual who held primary responsibility, 15% said one individual leads a team or staff, 31% stated that all (or most) special collections staff shared the responsibility, and 39% noted that it varied depending on the project (Berenbak et al, 2010, 64).

[9] These examples are drawn from the responses to questions 28 and 35 of the ARL SPEC Kit 317 “What measure(s) are used to evaluate student use of unique materials in research projects” and “what measure(s) have been used to evaluate special collections engagement with faculty/scholars/researchers who are affiliated with your institution”(Berenbak et. al, 2010 78, 79, 80, 91). The respondent’s institutions are kept anonymous in SPEC Kit publications, so although these are specific examples, we are unable to point out specific schools for the purposes of this post.

[10]The toolkit includes sections for “Researchers” (A user-based evaluation tool for on-site researchers to evaluate the quality of services, facilities, and finding aids in university archives and special collections), “Online Finding Aids” (A user-based evaluation tool for visitors to evaluate the quality and usability of online finding aids in university archives and special collections), “Websites” (A user-based evaluation tool for visitors to evaluate the quality and usability of websites in university archives and special collections), ”Student Researchers”(A user based evaluation tool for students use the archives or special collections as part of a class and participate in archival orientations), and a “Teaching Support” section (A user-based evaluation tool for instructors who have used the university archives and special collections to evaluate its services.)

[11] Small numbers can make it difficult to obtain an appropriate sample size.

Resources

Ariew, S., & Lener, E. (2007). Evaluating instruction: developing a program that supports the teaching librarian. Research Strategies, 20. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W60-4MWXT97-2/2/e3d2a22ec51f17a15bc53a77240d49e7 doi: 10.1016/j.resstr.2006.12.020

Association Of Research Libraries, (2010). Association of Research Libraries: SPEC Kits. Retrieved Sep. 15, 2010, from http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/spec/index.shtml.

Association of Research Libraries. (2008, February 4). Association of research libraries: annual surveys. Retrieved from http://www.arl.org/stats/annualsurveys/index.shtml

Barclay, D (1993). Evaluating library instruction: Doing the best you can with what you have, RQ 33 (2), pp. 195–202.

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Outreach is dead. It’s time we put its body in a coffin, say our collective prayers and move on.
You see, for most of the summer I undertook a long series of “outreach” trips to promote and educate the public at large about a grant-funded project I’d been working on for the past year. I drove all over the state of Oregon, to the desert in the East, the rolling mountains in the South, up and down the rocky coast, and through the farm and ranch land in Western and Central Oregon. During these long trips (imagine expanses of high desert for 200 miles before you hit a rest stop or gas station) I had a lingering feeling that what I was doing was definitely NOT outreach. Instead, I was promoting and marketing a service and tool that, for the past year, I had been helping to build at my place of employ.

What IS outreach in libraries today? It became my mission to discover a succinct working definition of what we do that so many of us consider outreach, yet my conclusion remained embedded in that same violent phrase: outreach is dead. When this thought first occurred to me my brain immediately began singing the lyrics to Bauhaus’s hit Goth Rock song Bela Lugosi’s Dead. (“…Bela Lugosi’s dead/ undead undead undead/Oh, Bela/Bela’s undead…)

We need to lay rest to outreach’s physical body–that separate entity that comprises library departments and ancillary programs. As well we need to lay to rest the word “outreach,” whose separate existence inhibits and deters us from doing what we as libraries, librarians, and information professionals should be doing. Instead of integrating library promotion, advocacy, and community-specific targeted services, we have left “outreach” outside of the inclusive library whole to be an afterthought, a department more likely to get cut, or work function of only a few, such as your subject librarians. If we kill this notion, if we consider the word and the separate entity of outreach as dead, we are more likely to be able to embrace and participate in activities formerly known as outreach and incorporate this essential part of our jobs into our daily work routine.

Definitions

Before I came to the conclusion that outreach is dead, I attempted to re-define outreach as such: Outreach is marketing. If the people who you’re attempting to reach seek services from you (rather than you reaching them) it is not outreach. The agenda behind library outreach should be to offer services without monetary gain, and to identify and fill service voids for people who are not looking for them. Unsatisfied with my definition I asked my dad. His response was “I let the NSF [National Science Foundation] define that for me.” (My dad is an organic chemistry professor.) I was not convinced that a funding agency should have the ultimate say in what “outreach” activities should be or include; particularly in libraries. It was then that I decided to turn to my colleagues and professional literature to seek a good definition.

Scott Pointon (Public Libraries, 2009) refers to the following definition: “Draw a circle around the central or main library building–every library service, program, or library-related endeavor taking place outside that circle is outreach.” (5-6).  Likewise, in her introduction to the Extraordinary Outreach section of Public Libraries last winter, Nann Hilyard points to the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary definition of outreach, “noun: the act of extending community services to a wider section of the population. Transitive Verb: to reach beyond, exceed” (20). Unsatisfied with both of these definitions I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online (thanks, Multnomah County Library, for my remote access to this!) I found:

Outreach. Noun.  b. spec. The activity of an organization in making contact and fostering relations with people unconnected with it, esp. for the purpose of support or education and for increasing awareness of the organization’s aims or message; the fact or extent of this activity.

None of these definitions are satisfactory to me. And none of us define outreach in the same way. Pointon’s definition is great, but it pulls into play the struggle libraries are having with “library as place,” an issue recently addressed in The Journal of Academic Librarianship by Sennyey et al., 2009. Current library services transcend the physical boundaries of a library building. Many collections and services offered by public and academic libraries are used remotely. Users access library services from home, in their offices, and even via mobile devices. “…the bond between users and the physical library will change and if poorly managed the “library as place” will become just another campus building” (Sennyey, et al., 2009). In this way, defining outreach by physical boundaries (a body) does not reflect the wealth of services that libraries provide and undermine our community-centered work.

The OED definition is great, but to me this definition gets back to my first instinct: this is marketing, not outreach. In fact, I looked at the OED definition of marketing, and felt that the two, for our intent, are almost interchangeable.

Marketing  b. The action or business of bringing or sending a product or commodity to market; (now chiefly, Business) the action, business, or process of promoting and selling a product, etc., including market research, advertising, and distribution.

Our product is our service. To many librarians marketing can be a dirty word and outreach almost saintly. But in so many articles about outreach authors seem to refer to library service promotion as marketing anyway.  (see  Dawn Bussey’s Getting the Word Out, Eugene Jeffers’s Electronic Outreach and Our Internet Patrons, and Rebecca Donnelly’s The Misguided Relationship.) I think we should embrace marketing for what it is, and let outreach diffuse into our daily routine. Moreover, the first use of the word outreach in this way was over 100 years ago, in 1899 according to the OED. Since libraries have changed so much over the past 100 years isn’t it time we find a new way to express and incorporate community-centered work? The OED definition reminds me of a picture I snapped while on my outreach excursions.

The paint is peeling. Obviously its current physical manifestation could use some help. Likewise, when we use the term “outreach” we typically refer to an older and more traditional notion of what the word means. For us to move beyond this idea, we just might have to start using different words and detach current assumptions about “outreach” to discuss our “outreach” activities.

Differences Between Academic and Public Libraries

In academic libraries outreach seems to mean one of a few things. First, you have to reach your constituents. Some libraries have a Facebook page and some libraries tweet. You might also provide orientations to new student cohorts or you might offer satellite library services in a different building such as a dorm or a student center. Other examples could be creating relationships with faculty to provide services that support teaching as well as to their students to support course-specific learning. These examples seem to encompass much of what academic “outreach” focused activities include. To me, all of these services should not be contained within a separate body, department, or undertaken by just the “Outreach Librarian.” Instead, they are part in parcel what we do. As professionals we should all be talking about the library in our communities and fostering relationships. We should be offering satellite services and, yes, we should all have down pat our 30 second “why the library is important” elevator speech. These are essential aspects of a library and of any librarian’s job. They are not separate nor should they be contained in a different or a sole unit or entity.

Unlike academic libraries, Public library outreach programs seem much more identified by space and place. Bookmobile services, library services provided to those in jail, services at senior centers and in schools are all examples of what would fall under the “outreach” umbrella. Dawn Bussey discusses the various things that the Glen Ellyn Public Library has done in their community and outside the library’s walls (Public Libraries, 2009). But let’s face it, these services and the community-based nature of public libraries are essential to what today’s library is. It is not extra, it is mandatory and we should all be engaged and providing targeted, community-based services to our constituents.

Community Engagement and Marketing are Essential

The nature of libraries has changed enormously. The physical building is less important. Books are less important. Due to these changes libraries will become obsolete in today’s current market where information needs are created and fulfilled by (my favorite “frenemies”) Google and Facebook. People purchase books from Amazon, they read blogs, wikis and other online commercial (and non-commercial) information sources. But libraries have what they don’t and we need to let our users know this. We have the ability to be in our communities, to engage them and offer specific targeted services. Our engagement with our communities can be the defining aspect of what a library is to any given community—and that sounds a whole lot like what one “outreach librarian” was doing or one “outreach department” does in the old “outreach” paradigm. I am not trying to undermine the importance of marketing, advocacy, or library services. Traditional “outreach” services should be an integrated part of what we do, not an aside, a tacked on item.

Problems We Face in Death

Just because libraries need to change and have changed does not mean that the politics of our respective institutions and governing bodies have. Many institutions, such as my own, have “outreach” outlined in their missions. Institutions might use “outreach” to exemplify their worth for grant or other funding sources, which frequently require “outreach” activities be incorporated into funded projects. (Much like my dad’s example and my recent travel around the state of Oregon.)  We need for our city governments and our library and university administrations to advocate for libraries and library services in the manner I have described.  When crucial administrative decisions get made, for example to open a new campus, build a new building, or to add a new degree program at a college or university, libraries and their services need to be represented. If we have successfully advocated for our constituents by providing them with quality targeted, community-centered services, they will advocate for us. In the end, we might be able to provide those essential library services without being restricted by traditional “outreach” departments or initiatives.

Another issue facing libraries and library staff is training. How are we going to train library staff to provide those 30 second elevator speeches? Who will take the lead to ensure that circulation staff, reference staff, and others know how to engage in the services we’ve been calling outreach? If we expect everyone to engage in this work, staff need to have the skills and knowledge to be able to do so.

Finally, outreach is usually considered a separate department, when marketing and promotion of outreach activities within institutions get delegated to separate “marketing,” “communications,” or “public relations” departments. Wouldn’t it be best if the two were integrated? These departments often produce and distribute printed and written materials such as press releases, brochures and flyers, or craft an organizational mission statement. This kind of community engagement remains essential. We must learn to embrace marketing and collaborate with our marketing and communications departments for our community-centered services to achieve their potential.

The Undead

Kill your notion of outreach. We should demolish the body of outreach, but keep outreach activities alive. We should disallow outreach a separate body, but fold its spirit into our daily work and activities, for it is this spirit of work that is the very kernel of what makes a library. Let’s use different words to talk about what we do. (Please, if you have a suggestion on a new term to replace “outreach” leave a comment!) Let’s work to engage our administrators and our institutions in changing the attitude and political structure surrounding “outreach.” Let’s bridge the divide by collaborating with community and institutional partners to create and promote services. Let’s make sure library staff has the training to be able to give an elevator speech about why the library is important to community. Finally, let’s reshape our attitude and view community-based library services as essential; as the core of what keeps libraries strong and relevant to our communities.

Thanks to Gail Kouame for providing her thoughtful feedback to this post. Also thanks to Lead Pipe Colleagues Derik Badman, Ellie Collier, and Hilary Davis for their edits and feedback. Additionally, thanks to my office-mate, Andrew Hamilton, who is a great springboard for ideas.

References and Further Reading

Adams, T. M., & Sean Evans, R. (2004). Educating the educators: Outreach to the college of education distance faculty and native american students. Journal of Library Administration, 41(1), 3-18.

Aguilar, P., & Keating, K. (2009). Satellite outreach services program to under-represented students: Being in their space, not on MySpace. The Reference Librarian, 50(1), 14-28.

Bussey, D. (2009). Getting the word out. Public Libraries, 48(1), 20-21.

Connell, R. S. (2009). Academic libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and student outreach: A survey of student opinion. Portal: Libraries & the Academy, 9(1), 25-36.

Donnelly, R. (2009). The misguided relationship: Learning from outreach experiences. Public Libraries, 48(1), 24-25.

Hilyard, N. B. (2009). Cultivating support for library advocacy. Public Libraries, 48(3), 16-19.

Jeffers, E. J. (2009). Electronic outreach and our internet patrons. Public Libraries, 48(1), 21-23.

Pointon, S. E. (2009). Library outreach is the future! Public Libraries, 48(2), 2-5, 24.

Sennyey, P., Ross, L., & Mills, C. (2009). Exploring the future of academic libraries: A definitional approach. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 35(3), 252-259.