Merged expertise, mutual benefits: Using a cross-disciplinary, same-campus research team to investigate academic libraries

Abstract

Academic librarians have provided support to research teams on their campuses for many years. The main types of support discussed in the library literature include literature searching, citation management, data management, and information literacy instruction. Supporting research teams has been recommended as outreach, liaison work, and as part of the embedded librarians movement. Martin Kesselman and Sarah Watstein, for example, state, “In academic settings, embedded librarians are in collaborative learning environments. They are on research teams.” Librarians’ contributions to these teams will usually relate to what librarians are well trained to do: “captur[e] group knowledge” and “acquir[e] and organiz[e] internal and external information.”¹