Academic librarians interested in collaborating with faculty in online courses often express questions about their role, level of involvement, and activities. This article provides a list of best practices to guide those developing embedded librarian services. The practices are drawn from a review of the literature, a case study of one embedded librarian's experiences, and a mixed methods study of embedded librarianship at six institutions. The resulting best practices will help embedded librarians collaborate effectively with faculty to create a positive learning experience for distance students.

PurposeThis paper seeks to determine common and unique activities, promotional methods, time management strategies, and best practices of academic librarians embedded in online courses at six institutions.Design/methodology/approachThis is a mixed methods study using both interviews and quantitative data to study the activities and experiences of embedded librarians at six institutions.FindingsThe librarians and faculty involved in the embedded services reported unexpected benefits to the service. However, experiences with managing the time required for embedding along with regular reference duties varied, and scaling up the service from a few courses to a regular library service caused staffing issues for a few institutions.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was exploratory by nature and thus its scope was limited. Because only six institutions were studied, it is difficult to determine the true state of embedded librarianship in the USA. Future research should build on the foundation to determine outcomes for which embedded service is best suited and perform cost‐benefit analyses.Practical implicationsBecause embedded services can become popular quickly, individual librarians should work with library administrators to determine whether staffing a full‐scale service will be possible and plan accordingly. If a full‐scale service is not feasible, the service scope may need to be limited (for instance, to core courses or to specific academic departments).Originality/valuePast research on embedded librarianship has been limited to single institutions or to purposes and outcomes of the service. This paper provides a comparative study of embedded librarians at six institutions, and concentrates on the librarian's experience at each.

This study surveyed librarians, researchers, administrators, and others engaged in research on the impact of academic libraries on student success. This study, sponsored by an ACRL Impact Grant, specifically sought to expand the ACRL Academic Library Impact report, which defined strategic directions for library impact research, largely defined from the perspective of high-level administrators. This study addressed this limitation by surveying and interviewing professional librarians who are directly conducting library impact research, asking about their research experience, their attitudes about impact research, and their response to the ACRL report. Notable findings include differences in attitudes between librarians and library administrators about the helpfulness of impact research, administrators' greater agreement with the ACRL report themes, and some pushback among librarians regarding quantitative impact research who are interested in qualitative research and findings that lead to more actionable improvement.

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