In his landmark work regarding embedded librarianship, David Shumaker (The Embedded Librarian) has identified an emerging model for special librarianship, one based on a central corporate library or information center that has one or more of its librarians “embedded” in – and working as part of – operational units rather than being located in the library.
However, a related but as yet fairly undefined career path is also evolving, one where librarians who were staff in an existing corporate library are moved into embedded information positions when the corporate library is dissolved. In this case, the librarian is essentially “untethered” from any internal library facility (or resources), creating a very different working dynamic.
As part of the work being done by the SLA Core Competencies committee, we are trying to gather more information about what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call “embedded information professionals.” You might be an EIP as the result of your corporate library’s downsizing, or you may be working as an EIP because that was the nature of the job you applied for (that is, you were never part of an organization’s library, whether or not one existed).
Most of these roles involve research and/or information management at the department level, where you are a member of the operational team and equally committed to its performance goals.
From an LIS career standpoint, I believe this type of professional role could be a very rewarding one for those with information skills, and am hoping to learn more from those who are already in these situations. What is your title? How did you end up in your current role? Were you part of a disbanded information center, or did you answer a job ad for an EIP-type position? What are your job responsibilities? How would you recommend other LIS professionals find jobs like yours? Have there been areas where you needed to enhance your skills in order to most effectively contribute to the team? Are there courses that MLIS grad programs could be offering that would help prepare their graduates to step into these roles?
If you’re comfortable sharing your information, please feel free to leave comments here or e-mail me directly via the contact form on this blog.
In this model, what happens if there are multiple librarians/info professionals that are embedded? Would they be moved to different departments to “spread the knowledge” as it were, or would they all still be working together under a single department? I can see an up and downside for both.
Good question. I think the general trend is that their primary affiliation is with the specific department within which they’re embedded. It would be unlikely that they would move to/work with another department unless they made a job change into a different group.
For example, an embedded information professional working as part of the marketing department would be focused on that department’s goals, and a fellow EIP working for the same company but with the product development group would be focused solely on its goals and information needs.
So would keeping the “library” alive between these professionals (all of the same type, just in different departments), end up turning into more of a “community of practice” within the organization?
Going back to the origins of embedded librarianship, this is part of the scenario described by Michel Bauwens in 1993. He placed the “cybrarian” within three types of networks: the network of the work group the librarian is embedded in, the network of cybrarians within the organization, and the network of external information sources and providers.
In my most recent work, including the webinar I did for SLA’s Leadership & Management Division last month, I include the failure to maintain the network of embedded librarians as a pitfall that can interfere with successful implementation. Personally I think it’s ideal to maintain a central library operation, for various reasons, but I recognize that’s not always going to happen. In those cases, I hope the librarians get together and maintain a community of practice, and that the managers in the organization recognize the value of their doing so.
That’s a great clarification and recommendation, David, since one of the potential issues of this type of embedded work is a sense of isolation for the information professional.
I think we all get so used to the knowledge-sharing among fellow LIS professionals, that its loss can be a strategic loss to the organization as well.