Effective Practices in Academic and Research Librarianship

This activity involves librarians, students, faculty and staff at an academic and research library.

Each quarter an invitation is extended to a segment of the University community to select a book that will be the topic of a conversation that is held in the Library. The group that selects the book is responsible for reading the book, creating some discussion questions to keep the conversation going, encouraging participation among its members to attend the conversation, and recruiting additional participants from other parts of the University. The Library helps in the effort to find additional participation, provides the space and refreshments, liaisons with the Barnes & Noble-operated campus bookstore, and assists in marketing and promoting the event. The Book of the Quarter discussions are open to any member of the campus community and also to the general public. It is not necessary to have read the book in order to attend the event.

To date, there have been three "Book of the Quarter" events. The first event was a collaboration with Athletics, and the book was Pat Conroy's My Losing Season. The second was a partnership with the da Vinci Residential Learning Community, reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. And the third Book of the Quarter was a partnership with the Multicultural Center and the Unity Residential Learning Community; the book was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman

The Book of the Quarter program actively supports Santa Clara University's Strategic Initiatives to create a Community of Scholars and provide an Integrated Education, which includes out-of-classroom experiences by bringing all sectors of the university community together in one place, at one time, to engage in an informed conversation.

As Diane Jonte-Pace, Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development, said in a recent email message, "I think this is great. What a good program - an excellent contribution to the intellectual climate at SCU!"

We are able to develop partnerships with the faculty, staff and students at SCU. This helps to increase the visibility of the Library on campus. It also advances the University's strategic initiatives of Integrated Education and Building a Community of Scholars.

Minimal. The Library purchases cookies and beverages for each event. We also produce flyers and table-top signs announcing the event, and that we distribute in the Libarary. I would estimate the total cost to be $250.00-$300.00/event.

As mentioned above, the University Strategic plan has two initiatives that are especially relevant to this program: Integrated Education and Build a Community of Scholars. The discussion of the books that takes place in the Library among faculty, staff and students clearly advances the initiative of Community of Scholars. And relating the events of the book(s) to real life events advances integrated education. For example, in our conversation of Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, we were able to broaden the conversation from the specifics of the narrative to personal experiences of working in multi-cultural health care organizations, thus integrating the practical with the theoretical.

One metric is the number of people who attend the conversation. In the case of The Da Vinci Code, a well-known and popular novel, we had 50 people in attendance.

We also use the number of books sold by the bookstore as an indicator.

It is absolutely sustainable. We do not anticipate any problems in getting colleagues from across campus to partner with us on this program.

The concept is central to the mission of academic libraries. This practice is not only wholly transferable to other libraries supporting institutions of higher education, but one could foresee the SCU Center for Science and Technology selecting a book and partnering with, for example, the Ethics Center, on the issues attendant to genetically altered crops.

There is a great challenge in the world of academic librarianship for us to become more visible on college campuses, and to take more leadership in initiating programs that contribute to the success of the educational mission of our institutions. This program accomplishes both purposes.