Open for Library-Faculty Collaboration: A Liaison Librarian Use Case at the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin

1 Introduction

How can we best support our faculty and student patrons is THE essential question of academic librarianship at any given university library? However, the answers will depend not only on the fundamental macro-societal changes over time outside the library – the effects of the “technological transformation of scholarship” being one of the main topics currently discussed. Answers will also depend on how the job descriptions and organisational structures of university libraries are open to change and on new approaches to fulfil these tasks. In our paper we want to shed a light on the concept and practice of liaison librarianship as a “system for framing our [librarian’s] work and organisational structures in order to effectively meet the needs of faculty and students”^[1] newly introduced under this term in 2019 at the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin. Thereby and by publishing this paper in English, we aim to connect to the long- and well-established discourse on liaison librarianship in the Anglophone academic library world^[2] as well as to the debate on the transformation of academic librarian’s service spectrum in Germany^[3] connected with the prevalent job position terms “Wissenschaftlicher Dienst” (academic services) or “Fachreferat” (subject specialist).

Before we elaborate in more detail on the concept and praxis of our liaison librarian work at the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin, we want to begin with a selection of introductory citations, which have shaped our understanding of the meaning of “liaison librarianship”.

Liaison librarians function as intermediaries:

“Liaisons are playing two new roles, that of advocate and of consultant, both with an emphasis on campus engagement. As advocates, they have become a research library’s “sales force,” speaking on a wide range of topics and trends in higher education, influencing and persuading campus stakeholders on important issues, and serving as ambassadors of change. […]

As consultants, liaisons identify faculty needs and then make referrals to colleagues with more specialized, often technical, expertise.”^[4]

Liaison librarians provide specialized, just-in-time services:

“This conception of library services, wherein liaison librarians support the missions of specific departments and programs, allows these librarians to pursue more focused disciplinary specialization in service of the varied needs of our diverse academic communities.”^[5]

Liaison librarians as embedded or field librarians:

“Embedding brings librarians out of the centralized libraries they have landed in and puts them back into the academic spaces in which they originated in several different ways”.^[6]

“Embedded librarianship is a relatively new term but an old concept in academic libraries. Specialized services have existed in academic branch libraries since their inception. Branch libraries are examples for embedding services. […] Key concepts for successful programs include location, communication, services, flexibility of librarians, and collaborations among librarians and faculty, staff, researchers, and students. These concepts, combined with non-traditional socialization opportunities, encourage librarians to provide specialized programs for their subject-focused user groups.”^[7]

“Field Librarianship” is another concept and job title to be found in the literature on US-American university libraries, which situates the embedded librarian in the department with an “enormous latitude to create a unique role” with services tailored to the specific “discipline, departmental culture, politics and academic directions”.^[8]

Liaison librarians as research librarians: “[T]he title ‘Research Librarian’ […] may be understood as a role that centres on assisting others in conducting research, rather than one where the core work is research in the domain of librarianship.”^[9]

“By using their data science and digital skills, research librarians have the opportunity to make an impactful contribution to the workflow of their faculty colleagues.”^[10]

These excerpts from the literature exemplify only a selection of major aspects of liaison librarians’ roles as they are practiced and discussed in the Anglo-American library context since the 2010s, but for us they provide inspiring impulses for strategic liaison librarians’ development processes. In the Anglo-American context roles and responsibilities of liaison librarians are often already translated into detailed job descriptions, available e. g., on the library’s homepage like at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Here, four main areas of service are defined – teaching and learning, research services, collection and resources, and scholarly communications – and illustrated with a list of tasks as well as best practices.^[11]

One might argue, that in the German context the responsibilities of liaison librarians described at the University of North Carolina library example correspond to the tasks of a variety of academic librarian’s positions, especially subject specialists (Fachreferent*in), subject librarians (Fachbibliothekar*in), research librarians (Forschungsbibliothekar*in) or functional specialists (i. e., Research Data officer, Open Access officer etc.). It is beyond the scope of this paper to elaborate in more detail about the differences of liaison definitions and recent discourses on the changing scopes of academic librarian’s positions in Germany (see reference three on this topic^[12]). However, regarding the openness for a specialized “just in time”-collaboration with faculty we see the liaison librarian (as well as the research librarian) in-between the roles of a subject specialist who is structurally integrated and whose office is in the library and that of an embedded or field librarian who is integrated – often with an office – in the academic department, or a research project team.

From the engagement with the literature on liaison librarianship an important lesson learned is that the concept is fluid and must be adapted to the specific structures and needs of the institution where it is introduced. Some would even argue that it is THE concept for enabling job positions which are related to a strict user-orientation with their ever-changing needs, and therefore per definition open to constant change.^[13]

Fig. 1:

Illustration of the terms used in the German context and the positioning of liaison librarians

In the following chapters we want to shed a light on how the positions of liaison librarians at the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin are conceptualised and present our own work as a use case. We will illustrate what challenges we have encountered and what chances we see/expectations we have regarding liaison librarianship in the German context.

2 Organisational Change Strategy

In a major organisational change project (2019–2021), development and change processes were initiated in the University Library aiming at being optimally positioned to meet future requirements.^[14] The central goals of this process included increasing user orientation and service quality as well as increasing agility, flexibility, innovative strength, and future orientation. In this context, a strategy for the University Library was developed, which is centred around the needs of users, not around the “needs” of a book/medium, and focussed on the digital future of academic libraries.^[15] The strategy formulates six strategic goals, two of which will be highlighted here because they relate particularly to the work of liaison librarians in the University Library and lay a strategic foundation of the liaison librarian concept:

• “We are already a reliable and competent service provider for the people and organisations with whom we work. In the future, we will strengthen our role as an active and creative partner.

• We will systematically expand our expertise in supporting research and strengthen our relationships with researchers at Freie Universität Berlin.”^[16]

It may be worth mentioning that the work of a liaison librarian is not new to the staff of the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin. Liaison librarian work, as described in chapter 1 (e. g., proactively approaching researchers and students regarding their information needs, and participating in information literacy course programs etc.) is done already by University Library staff. However, in the past this work has tended to be done along the traditional tasks of a library (acquisition, cataloguing, information literacy training for students), in a semi-structured or sometimes unstructured way. Sometimes, a too close orientation on researchers’ needs was even discouraged.

Backed up by the strategy of the University Library, liaison work is now taken into spotlight and the focus was put on the question what it means for librarians to be an “active and creative partner” and to “strengthen our relationships with researchers”. A concrete definition of liaison-related tasks was generated in a next step. A review on which of these tasks are already part of the library staff portfolio (and will possibly need strengthening or re-organisation) as well as which tasks and/or human resources need to be introduced additionally led to a structured development of liaison activities for each subject library and the central library.

As a result of this process, the University Library decided to establish new full-time liaison librarian positions. They have a disciplinary focus on East Asian Studies and Earth Sciences, respectively, and are integrated into the new division “Research and Publication Services” (“Forschungs- und Publikationsservices”), specifically to the “Research Data Management team”. The discipline-focused approach of liaison librarian work allows to tailor services and support with the effect of a greater impact on campus research, teaching, and learning. For five of the university’s subject libraries, liaison library work was explicitly specified in the job descriptions of staff positions that are to be filled in the future (10–50 % of the full working time of the respective positions).

Core duties for full-time liaison librarians at Freie Universität Berlin are defined as follows:

• Close exchange and strong cooperation with faculty of the respective disciplines,

• Observing trends in the disciplines,

• Advising researchers: research data management (RDM)/open science/digital scholarship,

• Conducting teaching activities,

• Cooperation with subject librarians in acquisition, subject information, and indexing.

The different organisational affiliations for full-time liaison librarians (affiliated with library central services) and part-time liaison work (affiliated with subject libraries) stem from the fact that part-time liaison librarians are very much integrated in the traditional day-to-day library business of the subject libraries. On the contrary, full-time liaison librarian positions are designed to interact much more closely with faculty and provide broad support for new services such as textual and data publications, open science, Digital Humanities (DH) and RDM, with a strong link to central library services. To be able to interact this close with faculty, full-time liaison librarians at Freie Universität Berlin are required to be educated academics with a PhD in the disciplines to which they are assigned. Ideally, they have additional experience or training in library work. The University Library of Freie Universität Berlin has filled its two new positions accordingly.

It has been mentioned above that liaison with faculty is nothing new for the University Library. It has always been part of the library staff’s work portfolio. Therefore, when explicitly defining this work and attributing it to job positions with a denomination as “liaison librarian” it was important for the University Library to take an integrative and co-operative approach regarding existing library staff. Furthermore, it is important to take care that staff who performed liaison work (but never labelled it like this) would not get additional workloads. On the contrary, by placing the users and their needs into the focus of the library strategy all librarians are invited to take a new, fresh look to their work and reflect upon the ways this work is accomplished.

In the case of the restructuring of liaison work within an existing library team, it was also important to pay careful attention to fears of loss of status, i. e., whether staff would suspect that liaison librarians were ‘taking away’ tasks that they had previously performed (and enjoyed very much). The University Library took an approach to stress cooperation and the complementing character of liaison librarian work with existing and new tasks and to allow for overlaps in work profiles of co-working staff, where appropriate.

3 Open for library-faculty collaboration: liaison librarianship at Freie Universität Berlin

Here we provide examples of library-faculty collaboration of the two full-time liaison librarians at University Library of Freie Universität Berlin. The liaison librarians are assigned to work with the Department of Earth Sciences and the Seminar of East Asian Studies, respectively. Full-time liaison librarians are still rare positions at German university libraries; thus, these examples might serve as a use case for other institutions who are developing potential future liaison librarians or new academic services positions.

4 Challenges of Liaison Librarianship

Both authors of this paper can only look back on a short period of work experience as dedicated liaison librarians. However, not surprisingly for newly designed positions and ongoing change processes, there are of course challenges to be tackled.^[30] In the following chapter we want to touch shortly upon what we learned so far.

One requirement of liaison librarian work, especially for newly introduced liaison librarians, is to seize every opportunity to proactively contact faculty and to offer extensive help and support. However, if faculty expects to extensively collaborate in the longer term or on topics that do not belong to the liaison librarian’s area of responsibility, this could tie up inappropriate amounts of the liaison librarian’s working time. Here it is necessary to adopt a clear stance, draw limits and – if needed – involve other (functional) specialists in the library and beyond. Otherwise, there may be a risk that if support is promised and cannot be provided, disappointment on the part of the faculty will have a negative impact on the liaison librarian’s image.

An easy way to mitigate the above-mentioned challenge would be if the liaison librarian’s range of tasks were firmly defined and communicated publicly so that the liaison librarian could, in case of inappropriate requests, simply relate to such a listing. However, detailed and clearly defined service portfolios are often not available in libraries where liaison librarian work is newly conceptualised. Apart from that, a rigid definition of a liaison librarians work would be rather obstructive for effective liaison work: a not too tight and detailed service description is needed to keep opportunities open, to give liaison librarians room for manoeuvre and the possibility to respond to the diversity of user needs (which is in line with the request for a closer user-centred orientation of libraries). Additionally, tight job definitions from Central Library administration can often not account for discipline-specific requirements of liaison librarian work.

For the leadership of the library, this means to find a good balance in its liaison concept between a detailed definition of tasks for liaison librarians and to allow for certain degrees of freedom. The same balance must be found regarding liaison librarians and their relationship to subject libraries with whom they collaborate. This may become especially important if liaison librarians are organisationally located in central departments, but do cooperate strongly with subject libraries on campus, because the needs of the subject libraries may be different from the requirements of the central library departments.

For these topics, an international exchange with colleagues from Anglo-American university libraries who are already presenting detailed liaison responsibilities on their websites as mentioned above might prove an effective way to decide for next steps in the local context.

For the liaison librarians at the Freie Universität Berlin, it has proven fruitful to have a lot of leeway for shaping their work along generally formulated tasks in the job description. On the other hand, this presents liaison librarians with the challenge of always keeping an exceptionally good overview of what they themselves would like to do or which tasks they would like to take on (or refuse) from those expected to be taken on by the department.

Another challenge for a library introducing liaison librarians is an increased workload for other teams in the library. Active promotion of library services in the academic departments will certainly lead to more usage of these services. For example, increased requests from researchers regarding the publication of complex and large research data sets in the institutional repository will claim increasing time of the repository team due to high demand for communication with researchers and might require the development of new technical workflows in view of the complexity of the projects.

Other challenges which have also been raised in the literature refer to organisational change processes and liaison librarians as “change agents”. Cynthia Ippoliti (2021) highlights in her article on “Beyond the Looking Glass: Applying a Futures Thinking Perspective for Managing Liaison Roles” the “transformational change as a context for liaison work” in which the liaison librarian can function as a “catalyst” or “change agent”. However, this requires consideration of the readiness and ability of other stakeholders both within and outside the library to embrace change.^[31] An example here would be the difficulty of building sustainable library-faculty liaison collaborations under the current academic working conditions, where more than 90 percent of faculty is hired only on non-tenured short-term or part-time positions in Germany. Consequently, the continuous building of trust with new faculty members is required and makes the development of sustainable innovative teaching or research consulting formats difficult just as it contradicts the aspiration of the library for a strong, sustainable relationship to faculty.

5 Outlook

The discussion at the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin on how to evaluate the success of the concept of liaison librarianship is far from finalized. We observe that the liaison librarians at Freie Universität Berlin are increasingly recognized by the academic departments and their services are actively requested by faculty, what may lead us to the conclusion that the implementation of liaison librarians is on the right track. However, our “data” to support this conclusion is founded mainly on anecdotal evidence; we do not benchmark liaison activities yet or rely on indicators such as the number of contacts to faculty or alike, used in other organisations.^[32] Nevertheless, we believe that measuring success just by the numbers seems to be inadequate as figures don’t answer the crucial question about how useful liaison services are from a faculty perspective and how faculty rates the quality of these services in relation to other, more “traditional” library services they are used to. To capture such aspects, we might apply qualitative methods in the future, like sending out surveys to faculty or interview studies, in collaboration with our University Library’s user experience expert.

As of the beginning of 2023, more full-time as well as part-time liaison positions are on the way. As soon as these positions are being filled, the exchange of experiences between librarians involved in liaison work at our institution will be strengthened. On the one hand, such cross-departmental meetings can provide a space for mutual learning on concrete liaison work for specific academic departments. On the other hand, the meetings can function as a forum to generate impulses for the evolvement of the liaison concept at Freie Universität Berlin University Library in general. The latter will include a regular review of the tasks and procedures of the liaison librarians that should involve all relevant stakeholders (obviously, library management, organisational development team, but also subject librarians, metadata and subject indexing experts, library IT, RDM & Open Access experts) in the library. Ideally, also the heads of the academic departments for which the liaison librarians work will be involved.

Having said this, we would like to emphasize that we are keen to network with colleagues at other institutions who are concerned with liaison concepts or who are practicing liaison work. Moreover, with this article, the authors like to instigate a discussion in the academic library community on liaison work as a method of enabling openness of academic libraries. Such debate may also include a discussion about job titles and a comparison of key directions of activity that liaison librarians start in the Anglo-American library world (see chapter 1) as well as the German context. Beyond that, a conversation about the role of liaison librarians in library organisational change processes, thinking about whether liaisons librarians are merely a “static result” or rather an active “catalyst” within forever ongoing change processes, will hopefully add to a better understanding of liaison librarianship in the future.

“While much of futures work is speculative, thinking about liaison work as a change-related question rather than an infrastructure-related one might open new avenues of exploration. As we look ahead to stronger relationships with faculty, a greater sense of agency and urgency, and a renewed sense of the future where liaisons are as much catalysts for action as they are library representatives, hopefully, these approaches will make for a richer discussion.”^[33]