The Embedded Librarian Program

With the huge increase in online learning at colleges around the country, libraries need to consider how to serve the growing contingent of online students. Some typical library services include a Web site, remote access to databases, e-mail assistance, a toll-free phone number, a procedure for supplying library materials to students, FAQs, interlibrary loan, and online tutorials. Tutorials come closest to replacing traditional course-based library instruction, but without the human element. Offering students an array of library services not directly related to their classes, however, doesn’t make for meaningful and integrated library instruction. As Skank and Dewald explained, “... the closer the link between course assignments and library resources to help with these assignments, the greater the likelihood that students will access library information.”1 In the spring of 2004, we began moving away from providing students with a disjointed array of online services and toward an electronically based, integrated library instruction model. The approach we adopted involved embedding a librarian in an online course. The librarian answered students’ questions and posted research help relevant to the course assignments. Here we discuss the program’s genesis and rapid growth, as well as its benefits and challenges.