When the Wind Blows: Changing Roles for Changing Times

Abstract

Subject liaisons have traditionally focused on providing domain-specific services and collections. Recently, however, their roles have shifted from a support model to actively engaging and collaborating with scholars throughout the academic life cycle and research enterprise. At the same time, users increasingly require functional information support (e.g., for GIS, data visualization, or data mining) in place of or in addition to domain-specific services. As the liaison role continues to evolve, finding the right balance between the roles of generalist, subject specialist, and functional expert will provide both challenges and opportunities. This proceeding focuses on a case study of two librarians in the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries who started out in the Collections & Research Strategy Department and ended up in a new department, Research Engagement. One librarian transitioned from being a libraries fellow into a new role as research librarian for Engineering & Entrepreneurship and the other librarian transitioned from being the associate head of the Collections & Research Strategy Department into being the head of the new department. The librarians will share their perspectives and experiences around helping to shape this new department, including figuring out the role of the new department in the organization, building an identity, and developing goals and priorities. The librarians will also share what traditional skills were still needed in their new roles and what strategies were employed for identifying and building new skills.