Liaison Librarian Program

The Liaison Librarian Program establishes regular communication and collaboration between academic departments and the library. Liaison librarians facilitate communication, promote library services, and provide essential support to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Faculty and students will in turn have a specific liaison librarian contact who they can turn to for research, collection development, and general library service support. 

The liaison librarians partner with their assigned departments, schools, and colleges in the following areas:  

• Promotion of library services  
• Discipline-specific research services 
• Information literacy instruction  
• Facilitating and providing collection development and OER support  

Communication and Relationship Building: 

• Liaison librarians will establish regular communication channels with assigned academic departments, starting with department chairs, to understand the specific needs, challenges, and research interests of faculty in the department. 

• Liaisons will serve as advocates for the library within their assigned academic departments and in turn advocate for their academic departments in library spaces. 

• Workshops, orientations, or training sessions can be organized for faculty or students on reference managers, use of new or existing databases and resources, searching for and identifying OERs, and more.  

Information Literacy Instruction: 

• Liaison librarians offer upper-level and graduate level discipline specific information literacy instruction, in addition to GenEd and first year instruction. 

• Book using this request form. To discuss opportunities and best practices for integrating information literacy instruction into your courses, or to learn more, reach out to your liaison.  

Subject-Based Research: 

• Liaison librarians can provide research support related to their assigned academic disciplines. 

• They can assist faculty and students in locating relevant scholarly materials, databases, and journals. 

Collection Development & Scholarly Communication: 

• Liaison librarians can collaborate with faculty and the collection development librarian to identify essential library resources and recommend purchases or product subscriptions. 

• Liaison librarians can collaborate with faculty and scholarly communications librarians to provide support on OERs (open educational resources), data management, publishing, and more.