I’ll be blogging for the rest of the week from the Off-Campus Services Library Conference in Salt Lake City. As we talk about things that are interesting and perhaps useful to others, I will share with those of you who read the NLB.

The first discussion I went to really got into what different people are doing as embedded librarians. This is something that I’m really interested in because my university has a few programs that either entirely online or are in remote locations. Honestly, we are not doing much for the most part at this point to really address the needs of this group of students and the instructors in these programs. But it looks like I’m going to get to learn quite a bit about what people are doing.

One things that I discovered is that librarians are involved in various levels of embeddment (is that a word? Well, it is now!) In general, this is not something that is occurring in every online or distance course. Partly because faculty/instructors don’t understand or need it. Also, the amount of time commitment over the semester varies depending on what type of services the embedded librarians is providing.

So, my thoughts are that this is definitely something most places can do. It will depend on the level of involvement that the librarian has. I think that we can have a library section and be a designer in the courses. This is a way to push particular resources that are specific to the classes and would be most helpful to the students. With the wealth of electronic and online resources, librarians should take an active role in distance education to let students know that they don’t have to actually go to a library to use what we have.

Of course, marketing this can be difficult. One things that can make things more enticing is show faculty what stuff is really valuable to them when they teach classes. The university does provide training on using Blackboard and it might be good to explore partnerships with the IT people in being part of the training to introduce what the library can offer through Blackboard.

I’m interested in hearing more about what people are doing in regards to embedded librarianship.