Networking (or Outreach) with Faculty
• Get a list of new faculty and see if their university/college orientation includes a library component. If not, contact organizers for orientations and see if you can get involved.
• Offer to show new faculty or candidates for faculty positions around the library.
• Make an appointment (via email or phone) to get together either formally or informally with new faculty members to show them electronic resources and discuss research services.
• Learn about faculty members’ teaching/research interests.
• Ask specific questions about the courses they are teaching and the work they are doing towards promotion and tenure.
• Check to see if faculty members have Web pages that include their syllabi, class assignments, and, if appropriate, offer to link them to library/information resources (this isn’t possible with courseware like Blackboard unless you are invited into the class as an “embedded librarian.”
• Ask faculty about resources or services they have used in the past to locate research materials for their areas of interest and then suggest any they are not aware of as part of the conversation.
• Call department chairs and ask if you can attend a departmental faculty meeting to update faculty about changes within the library or to promote new services.
• Aim to be a positive, regular presence in the lives of your faculty members. • Create e-mail distribution lists for your faculty constituencies.
• See if you can be added to faculty listservs within departments you work with.
• Email messages to your faculty distribution lists on new developments in the library. • Publish a Blog that offers customized news about library acquisitions and services for your faculty constituency.
• Attend college or departmental functions that interest you that can potentially relate to library services or collections.
• When problematic class assignments show up at the reference desk, call the faculty member to clarify the assignment and offer to collaborate with them to help students successfully complete future assignments.
Library Instruction Collaborations with Faculty
• When a faculty member calls or emails you for the first time for library instruction, set up a face-to-face meeting to plan the class in detail.
• Go over the course syllabus and collaborate with faculty about what type of session would best suit the assignment, the course, and the constraints of class size and teaching environment.
• Do some form of teaching evaluations for your library instruction sessions and share the results with your faculty members.
• Using teaching evaluations as feedback, continue the dialog about what works best for the students with your faculty.
• Follow up in collaborative efforts with long-term goals and make plans for future projects/improvement.
• If there is a class research assignment, offer to collaborate on creating it and even grading it
Susan A. Ariew. "20 Tips on Networking (or Outreach) and Collaboration" (2010)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/susan_ariew/5/
