Personal Librarian Research Articles

Re-envisioning Reference as Outreach

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed theological education and reference services. Today a growing number of students are studying and accessing the library remotely, and some libraries have found their reference numbers declining. Does reference still matter? If so, how best can we promote reference services to students who may never see us at the reference desk? Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been excellent studies on theological libraries’ services for distance learners, but there have been few studies on reference services in particular. Studies on the promotion of reference services in academic librarianship predate the pandemic, and further research is needed on how theological libraries can promote reference services in the wake of the pandemic. This study addresses that gap by exploring how we can re-envision reference as outreach to better reach students today. It looks at the vital nature of reference services in supporting academic success, equity, wellness, and connection and examines current challenges to reference services and to reaching students. Finally, it looks at innovative strategies for promoting reference services in the wake of the pandemic through partnerships, Personal Librarian programs, communications, instruction, events, and engaging services. I argue that reference is vital today and that we need to be proactive in promoting it.

Implementing a Personal Librarian Program to Rebuild Connections With Medical Students

Health sciences librarians may be experiencing a fundamental sense of disconnection from medical students as the reliance on online resources and post-pandemic acceptance of remote learning chip away at use of the physical library. In response, librarians have investigated a variety of virtual approaches to counter the loss of face-to-face contact with patrons. Numerous reports in the literature explore ways to build virtual relationships with patrons. This case study discusses a project by the Savitt Medical Library of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine to implement a Personal Librarian Program that promoted communication between librarians and learners.

Personal Librarian Philosophies: Discovering Meaning in What We Do

This article summarizes and explores personal librarian philosophies. Much like widely known teaching philosophies, librarian philosophies are statements that reflect an individual's standards and beliefs about their vocation. These statements can be used to incorporate meaning, identity, and direction into professional practice. As a form of self-reflection, personal philosophies allow librarians to delve into their professional values and give meaning to their lifework. There is little literature on personal librarian philosophies; this article describes the concept and how a librarian can develop such a philosophy.

Personal librarian programs in medical and academic health sciences libraries: a preliminary study.

Objective:This preliminary study examined how personal librarian programs are implemented within medical and academic health sciences libraries. Increasing awareness of these programs and how they are implemented could create a larger and more accessible knowledge base for establishing best practices that similar libraries can look to when creating their own programs.Methods:To characterize existing programs, a twenty-two-item survey was sent to MEDLIB-L, AAHSL-ALL, ARCL-HSIG, and PSS-Lists email listservs in October 2018 to reach a broad audience of medical and academic health sciences librarians. Survey responses were analyzed using Qualtrics and Excel.Results:Of the 2,882 potential email recipients, 49 survey sessions were recorded, and a total of 38 survey sessions were completed (1.3% response rate). Of the 38 completed responses, representatives of 12 libraries (31.5%) reported that a personal librarian program had been implemented at their institution. For implementation, eight libraries involved 1–5 librarians, and four involved 6–10. Librarians were assigned 50–100 (n=6), 101–150 (n=1), or 151 or more (n=1) students each. The identified programs served medical students (n=11), nursing students (n=7), health professions students (n=7), dental students (n=2), and students in other fields (n=4). Services provided and communication methods were also identified.Conclusions:The personal librarian programs identified by the survey were uniquely structured to best meet the needs of their users, though similarities in implementation existed across institutions. Medical and academic health sciences libraries can look to these libraries as practical examples when starting their own personal library programs.

Evaluating the Impact of Personal Librarians on Academic and Affective Outcomes

Many academic libraries have implemented personal librarian programs, seeking to improve relationships with students and reduce library anxiety. This pilot study, in which a personal librarian was assigned to sections of a general education course, aimed to expand upon the personal librarianship literature by assessing whether a personal librarian influences student academic outcomes and information literacy confidence. Results from the pilot suggest that the presence of and engagement with the personal librarian had minimal and not statistically significant effect on academic outcomes, but engagement with the personal librarian somewhat correlated with growth in information literacy confidence.

A scoping review of personal librarian programs in academic libraries

Personal librarian programs have been used in academic libraries since 1984, peaking in prevalence in the 2010s, and although assessment varies, they have shown to be a successful student engagement program in academic libraries. To survey and compile these programs for future program development, the authors comprehensively reviewed published literature on academic library programs categorized as personal librarian programs using scoping review methodology. Sources searched were Academic Search Complete, Web of Science core collection, Library and Information Science s, Library and Information Science Sources, Education Research Complete, monographs, conference proceedings, and gray literature. Programs were primarily in North America, with eighteen in the U.S., four in Canada and one in South Africa. The authors found that a plan of assessment should be in place before embarking on a personal librarian program. By reviewing the various models of personal librarian programs, the authors hope that this scoping review will assist librarians in selecting the appropriate model for their academic institution.

Institutional Literacy and Libraries: Addressing Library Anxiety with a Personal Librarian Program

This article considers institutional literacy as a lens through which to consider causes of library anxiety and the development of library programs. Institutional literacy is the ability to read and engage with the ways of being and doing that are -- often invisibly -- embedded into institutions of all kinds. This article posits that the ability of library users to confidently engage with library services is in part predicated on the level of institutional literacy these users have, both in the institution of the library itself and any larger host institution – such as a university.
 A setting such as a university requires a range of literacies, and those developing programs and services in such settings should not assume new and potential library users already have developed these literacies. While librarians are accustomed to considering information literacy as their contribution to this matrix, unfamiliar institutional literacy practices can present obstacles to new library users becoming information literate.
 A comparison of research on the effects of a lack of institutional literacy and research into library anxiety demonstrates parallels that suggest that low levels of institutional literacy are a contributing factor to library anxiety, creating one of the aforementioned obstacles. Acting as institutional literacy mediators is one way library workers can respond to this challenge. The article concludes with a description of how the theoretical lens thus developed was used to inform the development of a personal librarian program at the University of Regina, in part by positioning librarians as institutional literacy mediators.

Utilizing Text Messages for Effective Outreach

ABSTRACT As librarians strive to reach students and share reference content, text messages are a new avenue to explore. Although many libraries receive reference questions through text, few initiate the conversation. Sending text messages with video tutorials relevant to class assignments has been an effective and innovative outreach at Bethel University’s College of Professional Studies (CPS). Over three years, we have sent 1,099 text messages and 38% of the video links included were clicked. Students saw the message and clicked the link at a significantly higher rate than links inside e-mail campaigns, as compared to industry standards and CPS’s statistics. Text messages are an effective form of communication because they are prevalent, have a high likelihood of being read, and their content can be easily tailored. Students and the broader academic community do not expect a text from the library and it builds social capital with them. This social capital is a valuable benefit to librarians seeking to demonstrate their relevancy in a competitive information environment. A similar initiative could benefit several areas in an academic library. Personal librarians, first year experience librarians, distance education librarians, or librarians supporting student success could build relationships through this level of individualized contact.

A philosopher nobleman among his adversaries. From the materials towards a biography of F. Dmitriev-Mamonov

The article is an excerpt from the biography of the Russian writer, historian and collector of curiosities F. Dmitriev-Mamonov, to be published by B.S.G.-Press. The fragment considers three hitherto undisclosed episodes of his life: the 1770 criminal investigation of Mamonov’s attempted poisoning by the writer and former lecturer of the Land Gentry Cadet Corps Johann Fonberg, who had worked as his personal librarian for two months; followed by problems with his mental health in the 1780s, when he began suspecting that his closest family were plotting to kill him and began to subject his serfs to harsh punishments; and, finally, his donations to Moscow University in May 1770, in February 1772 and, probably, in November 1779, which consisted of a collection of medals, copies of P. Lippert’s engraved gems, and the portrait of field marshal P. Saltykov. All three instances appear connected: the donations coincide with three major incidents in Mamonov’s life (the attempted poisoning, a bad wound sustained in Chudov monastery during the suppression of the Plague revolt, and official proceedings against him for cruel treatment of serfs), which forced him to contemplate his mortality and the need to plan for the future of his collection.

Encouraging Engagement with Students and Integrating Librarians into the Curriculum through a Personal Librarian Program

Five years ago, the Harriet F. Ginsburg Health Sciences Library created a Personal Librarian Program (PLP) to encourage librarian engagement with first- and second-year medical students and to promote awareness of library resources and services. Prior to the creation of the PLP, the library struggled with finding ways to connect with its medical students, especially because the library is 98% digital. The PLP was created to give students an individualized library experience and an easier way to interact with librarians. As a result, opportunities for librarian-student engagement increased, and Personal Librarian groups facilitated the integration of librarians into two first- and second-year medical school courses.

The Librarian BFF: A Case Study of a Cohort-Based Personal Librarian Program

This case study presents the development and implementation of a personal librarian program for a cohort-based, executive-style higher education administration doctoral program. Librarians and the program director collaborated to create a student-centered program based on individual research needs. The personal librarian program was designed to build a close relationship between the librarian and individual students; to help identify their research knowledge gaps; and to identify resources to meet each individual students' research needs.

“This Feminine Scholar”: Belle da Costa Greene and the Shaping of J.P. Morgan’s Legacy

During the 1910s, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950), the personal librarian of John Pierpont Morgan (1835–1913), and later the major force behind the establishment of the Morgan Library as a public institution, became a key player in the international art world. Her personal history was rather extraordinary: she was an African American woman who refashioned her identity as a white person and while still in her twenties she became the closest advisor and confidante of Morgan, one of the world’s most powerful men. In my article, I analyze the role that Greene played in the complex web of people and interests that revolved around Morgan’s collecting enterprise. The dominant historical perspective on the art world has favored individual figures rather than the webs of players and mediators whose role was to create these networks. By focusing on Greene’s professional practices and strategies, my goal is to shed light on the “mediator” as a prominent actor of the early twentieth-century art world.

Your Personal Librarian: Connecting First-Year Students to the Library at Reed College

Think back to your first year of college. How did you feel? Eager? Excited? Maybe also fearful, anxious about fitting in, making friends, or being successful? First-year students have a lot on their minds. It can be challenging to help them forge a meaningful connection with the library. Amidst the internal cacophony generated by the transition to college and the slew of departments and services competing for their attention when they arrive on campus, they may not realize that the library is here to help, too. The Reed College Library has had a Personal Librarian program for our first-year students since the 2011 academic year.1 We started our program after realizing that we were having a difficult time connecting with first-year students, for many of the reasons listed above. We were also inspired to start our program after realizing that our liaison model, in which each academic department at Reed is assigned a specific librarian as their subject liaison, might not be reaching students who had yet to declare a major. Finally, like many academic libraries, we were often facing slow traffic at our reference desk and were curious to explore alternative service models.

Keeping in Touch

Keeping in Touch Ilka Scobie (bio) Love, H: The Letters of Helene Dorn and Hettie Jones Hettie JonesDuke University Press www.dukeupress.edu/love-h 384Pages; Print, $29.95 Beatniks of the 1960’s represented a transgressive glamour that is unimaginable today. At twelve, my friends and I wandered around the Village, mesmerized by the cool girls wearing black tights, long hair and clunky Fred Braun shoes. One of those slum goddesses could have been Hettie Jones, except she may have been pushing a stroller. Author of more then twenty books, Hettie Jones is a beloved New York City poet. When Love, H opens, she is a young mother married to an ambitious black poet, Leroi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka. They lived on the Bowery, (where Hettie still resides) in the heart of downtown bohemia. Together, they edited the coolly influential literary magazine Yugen, and published books. In 1960, Hettie met Helene Dorn, and a foundational friendship was born. A bit older, Helene Dorn, an artist left her first marriage to marry the poet Edward Dorn, and they pursued an unconventional creative life, three kids in tow. When Helene and Ed moved to England, a passionate correspondence that spanned handwritten letters, postcards, faxes, and finally emails, began and was maintained until Helene’s death in 2004. Arranged chronologically, these are missives from the front lines of creativity, feminism, single motherhood, ageing, politics, and poetry. Interspersed with Jones’s compassionate and occasionally brilliantly barbed observations, the chapters are introduced with women’s poems selected by the author. As a mother with an interracial family, Jones was on the forefront as an activist and New Yorker. She writes, “I keep asking myself what exactly kept us in touch through our long silences, and invariably, come back to the faith that in time we’d simply pick up where we let off.” Both marriages ended, and Hettie, a single mother worked hard to support her family. She acquired a car and a dog and still found time to hang out with Beat luminaries and enjoy “quiet affairs.” She wrote, “But I also felt that hard work—freelance editing and proofreading was saving my life, so I’d never have to give it away because someone else needed it.” In 1966, she is prescient enough to write “I am bored by Timothy Leary’s guru-ness,” at a time when the counter cultural world was enamored of the LSD pioneer. That same year, she was “fired from a job for ‘black militant beliefs.’” When she discovered an absence of people of color in kids literature, she wrote her own book, which led to a string of children’s books, including the classic American Indian poetry selections, The Trees Stand Shining (1971) and the young adult Big Star Falling’ Mama: Five Women in Black Music (1995). Yet in 1991, Viking’s Portable Beat Reader published a story of Hettie’s, and listed her as a “secretary” while ignoring two decades of publication and teaching. Still a reluctantly dutiful wife, Helene in 1965 reports from England, “I’ve about five pgs. to type for Ed plus a bunch of quotes to look up and copy…” and towards the end of a chatty, supportive missive, reiterates, “I’ve got to quit and work for Ed.” In 1966, missing New York, she writes, “I went on the moors and have a sprig of heather for you.” A later letter complains, “He’s got three books to finish by September and just as I found the time to do some painting, the bastard needs me…” In 1969, Helene, at forty “a discarded wife,” returned to the States, settling in the small port town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, near her great friend, poet Charles Olson. Two years later, she had her first show of mosaics, “discards” of glass and metal found on the harbor beaches. A true autodidact, passionate reader and avid library patron, she extolled Sandra Cisneros, Lorca, Jean Rhys, Emily Dickinson and Alice Walker, and as Hettie’s personal librarian recommended endless eclectic books. In 1989, Dorn records; ”I’m listening to Coltrane, the studio door shut to keep in...

Closing the Distance: Bringing a Personal Librarian Program to Online Learners

ABSTRACTIn an effort to bridge the gap between the one-on-one attention that students receive when they come into the library and the attention given to online learners, the University of West Florida Libraries added an online learner component to its Personal Librarian Program. Personal librarian programs provide an opportunity for individualized outreach to students and can be particularly beneficial to online learners who may not receive it otherwise. While much of the literature on outreach to online students focuses on embedded librarianship, a personal librarian program emphasizes a direct connection and fosters an independent and strong relationship between the librarian and the student. The implementation of a personal librarian program for online learners by the University of West Florida has had successes and challenges that illuminate lessons for other institutions considering implementations of similar programs.

Personal Librarian for Aboriginal Students: A Programmatic Assessment

The Personal Librarian for Aboriginal Students (PLAS) program at the University of Alberta (UofA) is a creative outgrowth of the growing Personal Librarian programs in academic libraries, in which a student is partnered with an individual librarian for the academic year. In the case of the UofA’s PLAS program, first-year undergraduate students who self-identified as Aboriginal during the registration process were selected as participants. The first year of the program saw many successes. This paper provides background on the initiative and the associated action research indicating a creative approach to engaging Aboriginal students.

The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience

The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience

Sources: The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience

The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience champions the personal librarian concept as a revolutionary solution to many of the issues currently facing academic libraries, revealing what a personal library program can do for a library and how such a program should be built. The book is well crafted, flowing and connecting exceptionally well, despite the fact that each chapter embodies a completely separate essay. In particular, the book's organization provides readers with an easy transition from skeptical critic to enthusiastic participant, as each chapter transfers the energy and optimism of the authors to the reader.

Implementing Information Literacy through the Personal Librarian Model: Prospects and Challenges

The paper explores the concept of Personal Librarianship which is fairly a novel concept in the library and information science context in Africa. The Personal Librarian Programme encourages students to build relationships with their personal librarians who provide learning support, and introduce the library as an enabling environment that supports students’ learning needs. The ultimate goal of this concept is to make First Year Students Information Literate. The idea behind the programme is that the personal librarian becomes the student’s primary contact throughout his/her studies. The study reviews the two most widely used models of teaching and imparting Information Literacy by pointing out their strengths and weaknesses. In the end, the research highlights the importance of complementing these existing efforts with the Personal Librarian concept. The research also demonstrates the feasibility of implementing the Personal Librarian Programme in a higher education context in Africa. Finally, the study elicits some challenges in using the Personal Librarian Programme to implement Information Literacy. Overall, the study contributes to efforts aimed at proactively engaging students to enhance their competencies in information usage.

Connecting With Students: Information Literacy and Personal Librarians

Connecting With Students: Information Literacy and Personal Librarians