Faculty services represent a growing chunk of time, effort, and work product within law libraries. Sponsored by ALL-SIS, this Monday morning panel was an exploration of the shifting constellation of services provided to law faculty by the law library. Each panelist represented a slightly different service model and described the tactics and services provided. As a whole, the panelists sketched out the spectrum of possibilities, and raised interesting questions about the future direction(s) of faculty services.
Before any fruitful discussion could begin about commonalities, the panelists situated themselves in the variegated context of library and school. The panel’s adept moderator, Raquel Gabriel, Assistant Director for Reference and Research Services at City University of New York School of Law (CUNY), represents a university with 400 students, 50 faculty members, and a library staff of 16 (8 of which are librarians). CUNY does not have a formal liaison program, but the librarians actively pursue new faculty and foster research relationships. CUNY provides document delivery and collection development services; it also hires, trains, and supervises two library research assistants dedicated to providing research help to the faculty. In addition, librarians offer research sessions for classes.
Lisa Spar, Assistant Director for Reference and Instructional Services at Hofstra University School of Law, represents a library serving 1,200 students, 60 faculty, and a library staff of 25 (12 of which are librarians). Hofstra University has a faculty liaison program that provides uniform guidelines about the type of services provided by the librarians. Through the liaison program, faculty members are educated about services such as document delivery, course reserves, current awareness notifications and possible in-class research instruction collaboration. Hofstra also has a Library Research Assistant Program, training and managing two research assistants dedicated to faculty research requests.
Jane Edwards, Head of Faculty and Public Services Librarian of Michigan State University (MSU) College of Law, represents a law school with 940 students, 50 faculty, and 7 reference librarians. MSU's law library created an online database that allows faculty to “submit a research, document deliver, course reserve or class instruction request” via a web-based form, and then track the progress of the request. The heart of faculty services, the database allows the librarians and a pool of student assistants to triage and answer requests, precluding a need for a formal faculty liaison program. MSU also provides alerts and updates to its faculty, and will “entertain just about any research request no matter how big, complex or even, unusual.”
Jane Thompson, Assistant Director for Faculty Services of University of Colorado Law School, represents a library serving 546 students, 50 full-time faculty, and a library staff of 19 (7 of which are librarians). University of Colorado provides current awareness alerts, targeted collection development, document delivery, and research assistant training. The library also provides faculty training and research consultation.
Cynthia Lewis, Lawyer/Librarian and adjunct professor at the Vermont Law School (VLS), represents a law school with 600 students, 89 faculty members, and a staff of 11.5 (including 7 librarians). VLS has a Library Faculty Liaison Program that provides targeted collection development, current awareness services, and research assistance. VLS has a Faculty Research Assistant Program; research assistants are trained and supervised by a librarian, and assist in faculty projects ranging from editing casebooks to literature searches.
The provision of faculty services differs depending on staffing, library budget, and the size of the school, but there are five areas of service that every panelist mentioned: targeted collection development, research assistance, document delivery services, current awareness services, and in-class instruction. These areas of service, although not used by every teaching faculty member, are used with increasing frequency, and the pressure on those in the libraries is increasing in response. Many of the panelists, when asked: “What is the biggest problem in faculty services?”, suggested that maintaining balance between the demands of a faculty service program and additional library responsibilities was not easy. Other panelists pointed to time crunches/research deadlines and workflow issues (uneven patches of research assistance throughout the year) and their accompanying budget complications (payment/training of research assistants) as adding to that imbalance.
The growing complexity of faculty requests is another challenge mentioned by some of the panelists. As faculty research becomes more interdisciplinary in focus, law librarians are being asked to become expert researchers in areas of study that stretch well beyond the law library stacks. Empirical, historical, and international research are fair game, and law library faculty service programs are expected to keep up. Learning statistical software is not usually thought of as falling within a law librarian's purview, but, more and more, law librarians and research assistants are being asked to not only be experts in the world of legal resources, but to be (at the very least) competent in navigating resources from other disciplines.
There was no dearth of discussion amongst the panelists about the challenges of faculty services. The bridge-building with other libraries and librarians that once seemed like a good idea has become integral to the professional capabilities of faculty services librarians; working with subject librarians, developing relationships with expert researchers in other fields, and learning about areas outside of the traditional legal world is par for the course. All of these themes led to a provocative question from moderator Raquel Gabriel: Are we becoming generalists? Unfortunately, time constraints prevented a hearty discussion of the question, but, hopefully, we can talk about an answer next year!