Academic Law Librarianship
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Elizabeth Manriquez; Michelle J. Penn; Thomas “TJ” Striepe; and Kris Turner
Faculty services are one of the most important job responsibilities of Law Librarians. Often, the law librarians working in faculty services are the most visible to patrons. These services encompass a wide variety of topics, including research, instruction, scholarly impact, and outreach. This chapter will explore different ways for law libraries to structure faculty services, discuss the different types of services that Law Librarians provide to faculty, and examine how law librarians have implemented these services.
- Faculty Services can be structured in many ways and provides a wide range of services to law faculty.
- Scholarly communications is a rapidly growing area of academic law librarianship.
- Outreach for effective Faculty Services involves many different approaches, and strong relationships can be mutually beneficial.
Structure of Faculty Services
Law libraries have many different approaches to faculty services. These approaches range from library liaison programs, individual faculty service librarians, using a technology platform for requests, to hybrid approaches that combine aspects from each of these approaches. Each approach to faculty services has different benefits and downsides, though libraries are increasingly moving towards adopting technology platforms and hybrid approaches.
Library Liaison Programs
Many librarians have a law library “liaison” program. In this program, faculty members are assigned an individual reference librarian. The liaison reference librarian serves as the main library point of contact for the faculty member. The benefit of this approach is that all of the reference librarians can gain experience with faculty research and develop relationships with faculty members. Likewise, faculty members can contact ‘their’ librarian about any matters relating to the library; there is no confusion about who is the ‘right’ person to contact. Additionally, librarians are able to become very familiar with specific faculty research projects. If reference librarians are paired with faculty members in areas of their expertise or interest, reference librarians can offer specialized research assistance. If reference librarians are paired with faculty members in research areas that they are unfamiliar with, this allows librarians to expand their areas of expertise.
A major downside to liaison programs arises when there is high librarian turnover. A faculty member might feel that they are shuffled from one librarian to another and have trouble keeping track of who is their library contact. This approach may also result in inequitable work distribution for librarians as some faculty members may keep their liaison librarian much busier than others. Further inequitable work distribution can also occur if one faculty member finds that they prefer the work of a reference librarian who is not their liaison and bypasses their o