Subject librarians in my library are responsible for providing general reference desk service in addition to their subject duties, which include managing the collection in their areas, coordinating with central collection services, providing subject-specific reference service to faculty and graduate students, providing training sessions in research in their areas, and coordinating with departments and individual faculty members on library-related issues. These duties are probably typical of those performed by subject librarians in other academic libraries.
Tasks:
1) Create and maintain subject-specific research and resource guides. In my library there is no "template" for these guides but most librarians focus on identifying important and useful resources in a subject area, including abstracting and indexing databases, fulltext journals databases, quick reference information, type-specific resources such as maps, raw data, statistical sources, image databases, government information, etc. Some guides include information on research assignments for large undergraduate classes, information on style guides, and detailed coverage of popular or recurring research topics/issues.
Specific user tasks: In addition to creating and maintaining the textual content of these guides, subject librarians want to include aggregated news feeds in their guides, dynamically generated (i.e., from other parts of our website) lists of databases, dynamically generated lists of new items from our catalogue in their areas, and contact/social networking tools such as meebo and other IM/contact/networking tools into their guides. The guides can be large, complex, frequently update, and can contain tables of contents and other types of internal navigation.
2) Create and maintain workshop/course-specific content. As part of delivering training sessions and workshops, subject librarians often develop content that describe and organize the resources used in the session, provide sample topics and possible research strategies, and provide exercises. These sessions are sometimes tailored to a specific academic course at the request of the faculty instructor, often at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. In many ways this content is a type of highly focused subject guide as described in section 1.
3) Create and maintain detailed resource- or tool-specific guides. Some subject librarians maintain how-to guides and other types of procedural or explanatory content dealing with specialized databases, client software, and complex print resources (although the latter is becoming far less common as these print "databases" move online). This type of content can contain a lot of screen snapshots, numbered lists, decision tables, and other explanatory aids.
4) Maintain subject-specific blogs. Many subject librarians maintain blogs on their subject areas, where they post brief entries on new resources, links to news items of interest to researchers, announcements of training sessions, new library services and events, conferences reports, etc. Most standard blogging applications suffice for these blogs, but one feature that has been requested in my library is that users should be able to select whether they search only the blog they are currently browsing or search all subject area blogs.
Reply
Drupal4libcamp
February 27, 2009, Darien Public Library, Darien, CT
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Subject librarians in an academic library
Users:
Subject librarians in my library are responsible for providing general reference desk service in addition to their subject duties, which include managing the collection in their areas, coordinating with central collection services, providing subject-specific reference service to faculty and graduate students, providing training sessions in research in their areas, and coordinating with departments and individual faculty members on library-related issues. These duties are probably typical of those performed by subject librarians in other academic libraries.
Tasks:
1) Create and maintain subject-specific research and resource guides. In my library there is no "template" for these guides but most librarians focus on identifying important and useful resources in a subject area, including abstracting and indexing databases, fulltext journals databases, quick reference information, type-specific resources such as maps, raw data, statistical sources, image databases, government information, etc. Some guides include information on research assignments for large undergraduate classes, information on style guides, and detailed coverage of popular or recurring research topics/issues.
Specific user tasks: In addition to creating and maintaining the textual content of these guides, subject librarians want to include aggregated news feeds in their guides, dynamically generated (i.e., from other parts of our website) lists of databases, dynamically generated lists of new items from our catalogue in their areas, and contact/social networking tools such as meebo and other IM/contact/networking tools into their guides. The guides can be large, complex, frequently update, and can contain tables of contents and other types of internal navigation.
2) Create and maintain workshop/course-specific content. As part of delivering training sessions and workshops, subject librarians often develop content that describe and organize the resources used in the session, provide sample topics and possible research strategies, and provide exercises. These sessions are sometimes tailored to a specific academic course at the request of the faculty instructor, often at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. In many ways this content is a type of highly focused subject guide as described in section 1.
3) Create and maintain detailed resource- or tool-specific guides. Some subject librarians maintain how-to guides and other types of procedural or explanatory content dealing with specialized databases, client software, and complex print resources (although the latter is becoming far less common as these print "databases" move online). This type of content can contain a lot of screen snapshots, numbered lists, decision tables, and other explanatory aids.
4) Maintain subject-specific blogs. Many subject librarians maintain blogs on their subject areas, where they post brief entries on new resources, links to news items of interest to researchers, announcements of training sessions, new library services and events, conferences reports, etc. Most standard blogging applications suffice for these blogs, but one feature that has been requested in my library is that users should be able to select whether they search only the blog they are currently browsing or search all subject area blogs.