The Embedded Librarian: Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge Where It's Needed by Shumaker David

Author:Shumaker, David [Shumaker, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Arts
ISBN: 9781573874526
Google: CqlTLwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1573874523
Barnesnoble: 1573874523
Goodreads: 15711009
Publisher: Information Today
Published: 2003-02-15T07:06:46+00:00

Evaluation

The preceding two chapters demonstrated that evaluation of the embedded librarian’s contribution is very important in both the higher education and the medical settings. Academic librarians are working to establish formal learning goals related to information literacy and exploring ways to connect embedded instruction to student academic success. Medical librarians have conducted a variety of studies, even including at least one controlled, randomized trial, to assess the value of clinical medical librarians and informationists to healthcare practice and patient outcomes.

The corporate and government sectors are different. Over the years, specialized librarians and information professionals in these sectors have repeatedly been exhorted to measure their value in return on investment, time saved, costs saved, and similar measures. Barreau’s research contributed to this approach. Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard has been recommended as a framework for developing goals and measuring outcomes (Matthews, 2003; Matarazzo and Pearlstein, 2007). However, in the reports from practitioners of embedded librarianship in this sector, formal evaluation plays a very limited role.

Evaluation practices were part of the discussions in two separate research visits, in 2009 and 2011, at a large, international law firm (Shumaker and Talley, 2009; Shumaker, 2011b). In the first visit, only librarians and the library manager (the chief library and records officer of the firm) were interviewed. The researchers reported the following:

The Chief noted that the firm does not require ROI [return on investment] or other success measurements, maintenance of statistics or other data to justify the continuation of the programs. Accordingly, there are no formal evaluations of the programs. The Chief does collect and acknowledge kudos received for work well done. Growth in the demand for services within the programs and demand for new programs are proof of success. (Shumaker and Talley, 2009, p. B-3)

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