Subject Librarians: Engaging with the Learning and Teaching Environment

Citation

Parry, F. (2007), "Subject Librarians: Engaging with the Learning and Teaching Environment", The Electronic Library, Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 634-635. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2007.25.5.634.8

In their introduction the editors remark that the importance of the work performed by subject librarians has not been fully reflected in the literature. Accepting this as a challenge, I searched LISA and found that they were substantially correct. I was initially faced with the problem of which keywords to use in my search. Should I use subject librarians, experts or specialists, knowledge brokers (suggested by one contributor in this book), faculty or department librarians or even the broader term, academic librarian? In the end, I did separate searches for all of those, but was not convinced that I had it completely nailed. In fact, herein lies the problem. In the light of the momentous changes in education and technology over the last ten years or so, what exactly is the role of subject librarians – however we describe this endangered species? Do they exist any more in the old‐fashioned sense of experts in a particular subject field who work as information and educational auxiliaries in the higher educational environment?

I was hoping to find answers to some of these questions and to see if there is a future for the subject librarian. The example of the eight recently sacked Bangor subject librarians serves as a reminder that not everyone in higher education recognizes the professionalism and expertise of such specialists. The more I read, the more I realized that it was not actually what subject librarians were which this book is describing but what these librarians should become to remain relevant, serve their constituencies and just survive.

The editors have assembled chapters from a wide variety of mainly UK practitioners to showcase the changing roles of subject librarians. The first chapter is a comprehensive literature review and background study which sets the scene quite nicely in its historical context. The second chapter deals very clearly with the modern issues of “professional engagement” in higher education and touches on the thorny problem of the attitude of academic staff to the involvement of librarians within the learning and teaching process. This process is a natural progression for subject specialists in the new educational environment and is explored more fully in a separate chapter. Other chapters of note include one on librarians' contributions to virtual learning environments and four separate but thematically linked reviews on serving different constituencies: undergraduates, asynchronous learners, researchers and international students. Most chapters contain case studies which are useful and interesting. The overwhelming impression is of a very changed environment where librarians require skills which enable them to do a little bit of everything – contributions to e‐learning, planning, liaison, teaching, administration, technical support. In fact, pretty much everything except what a subject specialist was previously known for. Which leads me back to my LISA search and original question, what is a subject librarian?

This book does not really fully answer that question and wanders off‐topic in many directions, but is still an interesting and worthwhile read.