Library Liaison Guide for Faculty: Guiding Documents

Mission

The mission of the Missouri State University Meyer Library Liaison Program is to ensure collaborative communication and outreach between library liaisons* and campus-wide faculty.  This collaboration and outreach provides a clear understanding of shared educational goals, and those services and resources available through Duane G. Meyer Library.

Vision

The MSU Libraries vision is campus-wide collaborative and dynamic relationships between library liaisons and Missouri State University faculty, where creative approaches are developed to integrate information literacy and other resources and services into the curriculum, to support faculty research interests and endeavors, and student success.  All faculty are advocates for library advancement, to include programming, collection development, research, information leadership, and the critical role of information in society.

Goals

• Facilitate and improve communication and collaboration between library faculty and MSU faculty.
• Increase the number and course offerings for information literacy sessions, and other pertinent services.
• Establish a baseline for assessment (communications sent/received) in Little Green Light.

Objectives

• Facilitate and improve communication with academic departments and individual faculty members in those departments.
• Promote the services and resources of the library to academic departments and individual faculty members.
• Advocate for the library, its resources and services across campus through personal contacts.
• Advocate for the curricular and research needs of the academic departments and individual faculty members in regard to funding and material selection issues.
• Provide a contact person in the library for academic departments and faculty who is knowledgeable about curricular and research matters, and can directly assist faculty, or refer to other library experts when needed.

Based on The Citadel Liaison Guide: https://library.citadel.edu/liaison 

*Library liaisons are primarily library faculty, and in the interest of best matching background and skill with appropriate departments, occasionally library staff with specialized areas of expertise, supervisor, and liaison chair and committee approval.

Outreach

• Establish and continue meaningful and effective channels of communication with academic departments and individual faculty members. 
• Strategic collaborations
  • Seek out potential partnerships for events, grants, fundraising, etc.
• Public Relations    
  • Act as ambassadors for Missouri State University Libraries- promote services and resources, open lines of communication
• Update as needed Departmental Development Worksheets and Student Success Support Plans

Services

• Accreditation reports
  • Assist as needed/able in departmental accreditation reports.  This will vary considerably by department.  
• Scholarly Communication
  • Promote use of BearWorks
  • Respond to questions and communicate regarding Open Access and Open Educational Resources
• Ownership and maintenance of Subject Guides
  • Work to improve Guide Templates
  • Ultimate goal- transfer Subject Guide ownership of existing department Subject Guides to the Library Liaison for that department 
  • Create new Subject Guides as needed
• Information Literacy Sessions (and other teaching)
  • Presently NOT a requirement for all existing liaisons.  As new positions open, or retirements filled, we can hire with the expectation that faculty will teach within their liaison areas (and in general).  We want to continue our strong Information Literacy Program by having faculty who are passionate about teaching, and who possess the capability and desire to do so.

Resources

• Aid in collection management
  • Stacks refresh
  • In progress
  • Materials review
  • Review materials request prior to sending on to Lindsey and Andrea.  Can this be folded into the materials request process in Trello?
  • Material requests
  • Internal testing of the software Trello to create  transparent and effective tracking of materials requests.  

Assessment

• Little Green Light
  • Use to track email communication to/from liaisons
  • Ideal when tracking mass emails from liaisons (make sure we know everyone is getting them)
  • Work to make Little Green Light easier to filter for committee assessment
• Narrative
  • Previously suggested, a narrative of meaningful liaison interactions could be useful to add to our depth of assessing/understanding liaison work
  • Determine how/if we could implement this
• Other
  • What other data do we want to glean from our liaison efforts?