Liaison Academy: Refocusing on the core areas of librarianship

Abstract

Liaison librarianship was a model that our library had been attempting to practice for some time with mixed success. Our dean had phased in a liaison model two years prior, but after a two-year pilot, there were still not many meaningful changes in how instruction and collection development took place. During the course of 2021, after a season of retirements, a global pandemic, and a new strategic plan, the Gonzaga University library was left with six library faculty to serve more than 7,000 students. In addition to this, historically academic departments had been assigned to library faculty in a haphazard fashion, and within the department there was debate about how involved a library liaison should be with their individual departments. For example, should they teach to only their assigned departments or could other library faculty share the work of teaching to those departments? Did they just order books for that department on demand or was it more of a conversation? Or was book ordering something that even needed to be a part of their role?