Effective Practices in Academic and Research Librarianship

Peter Stevens Submittor, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu,  206-543-4360

The Foster Business Library offers librarian consultations to Business School students engaged in team research projects.  During a consultation, a librarian meets with the group to discuss research strategies and suggest resources for their project. Librarians may prepare webpages as guides to research strategy and resources.  Sessions are tailored to meet the group's needs.  Follow-up is available after the initial consultation.

 

Since winter quarter of 1998, 550 team consultations have been provided for almost 2,000 students.  Part of the legacy of these consultations is an archive of 250 team consultation webpages covering 87 industries or products, 119 companies, 44 issues or topics, and 25 countries, for over 20 programs or courses.

While other business libraries often provide online research guides (as this library does), these guides are usually about broad topics and are more general in their approach than team consultations are.

The benefits for student team members include lists of resources targeted to a specific assignment as well as an introduction to relevant business research and resources.  Business School students can access the team consultation webpages 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via lists of the webpages and indexes by course, title, industry, and quarter.  For students who prefer the self-help mode, team consultation webpages provide sources that are relevant for similar companies, products, or industries. For librarians, the consultations provide an engaged small group discussion about research strategy, identification of resources, and a structured approach to business research, often with more satisfying results, discussion and feedback than for larger, more general classroom bibliographic instruction.  Webpage preparation is also a useful activity for slow periods at the reference desk; students can also be directed to webpages when the site pertain to reference questions.

There are no extra costs for the consultations beyond the time of the librarians involved, and minimal computer and printing costs.  With the now-substantial archive of consultation webpages, preparation of new consultation webpages is much faster.  In general, preparation for team consultations (including webpage creation) takes just over two hours, with the actual consultations averaging about thirty minutes.  More complex assignments may take up to four or more hours of preparation and an hour or more of consulation time.

TLCs support the Libraries' mission by helping to advance students' research and intellectual discovery skills.  Also, an important aspect of the Libraries' vision is to provide as much service as possible "any time, any place."  The team consultation webpages are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week--of particular importance at a university with three main campuses and students often working or living far from their campus.

Student feedback from the consultations is uniformly highly positive, generating both referrals to other students and repeat business from satisfied team members.  A survey done several years ago also was highly positive in its feedback.  A feedback form on team consulation webpages was provided one quarter but was not used by students.

This program has run since winter quarter of 1998, despite ups and downs in the number of librarians participating in the practice (usually three or four librarians).  No systematic marketing program has been mounted for several years, due to steady high demand for these consultations in a number of classes.  More vigorous advertising of these consultations has the potential to overwhelm the librarian staff in the middle of an academic quarter when demand and librarian workloads are at their peak.

In large universities and programs such as ours, students seem to appreciate in-person expert assistance with their research assignments and webpages to support that assistance.  Team consultations provide a valuable bridge in the gap between individual reference questions and classroom bibliographic instruction.  Webpages act as a record of librarian research that can be used not only by future students but also by librarians working on reference questions or team consultation requests, saving valuable professional time.