Linking course provision to resources

Introduction

How does your institution link course provision to the availability of resources in theory and, more importantly, in practice?

The pages are aimed primarily at Academic Liaison Librarians and academics who may (or may not) be working together in course teams to maximise the use of a declining stockfund.

At various points in the text questions will prompt you to interact: you will be asked to consider particular ideas.

We are looking for personal experiences and anecdotes relating to your own particular working practice. These might include the strategies you have found effective in your own particular situation or tips you would pass on to someone in a similar position.

'Resources' does not refer only to library resources of course, although that is the focus here. Course structure also has to be matched to the availability of rooms, access to laboratories, to computer connectivity and a whole range of other infrastructural services.

However, when talking about planned programmes of study, large and increasing numbers of students and a shortage of resources (that is to say, our daily lot) it becomes vital for the librarian to discover the precise information needs of the course. The question is one of structuring the Academic Liaison Librarian-academic course team relationship so that it functions effectively.

There are two levels where this relationship needs to work. There is a formal level of liaison, (the so called "top-down" approach,) the round of course meetings and policy documents etc., which although important may not give the librarian specific information and may not even reveal you what is actually going on within the course.

There is also an informal level, (the "bottom-up" approach,) conversations in the corridor or questions to individual academics in their own offices (where they tend to be more forthcoming.) This will be, by its very nature unstructured, but real information can be gained here and real decisions are made.

Here are three possible models of library-academic liaison. They are only in outline - there are probably elements of each in every course.

• Model A - Running Behind
• Model B - Partnerships
• Model C - Sharing Assessment
• Is there a Model D that has not been considered?

Model A - Running Behind

• Academic staff own the course. There is a fairly rigid demarcation between the role of the academic (whose focus is subject knowledge) and the librarian (who concentrates on the organisation of resources, collection building etc). The academic exclusively drives the educational process and the librarian's role is to react to the changes initiated.
• The academic designs and plans the course, then approaches the librarian with a list of resources. The academic assumes that the librarian will be able to provide what is needed. In short, the service providers run behind although they may have the opportunity to sign off a new course at some stage.
• There is some liaison and communication between librarian and academic but it is patchy and may leave much to be desired. The librarian may not be invited to formal course meetings. There may be very little informal contact.
• There may be attention given to the users and to different methods of teaching and learning but this is not a priority. There may only be token efforts to obtain feedback on the library service from staff and students.

From a librarian's perspective, and indeed from an academic's, this model is far from desirable. Librarians are required to provide library support for courses without any understanding of the ideas which underly them. This is less of a problem when resources are plentiful, but for most librarians those days have long gone. It does, however, give ample scope for the librarian to work quietly and diligently in the background.

An outcome of this lack of effective communication is a familiar library horror story. A lecturer provides her students with a reference to a book which the students have to read in order to write an essay and a deadline has already been set. The lecturer has not thought to inform the library. In this story the librarian does not have the range of informal contacts to allow anticipation of such a move. Consequently, 40 students arrive at the library, each requesting a copy of the book. There is only one copy of the book. It is out on loan or the relevant pages are missing.

If you are a librarian, we would like to know if any of this sounds familiar and, if so, how well do you manage to run along behind?

If you are an academic, particularly with responsibility for library liaison, is this a model you recognise? Is it desirable?

Model B - Partnerships

This is the most common model in universities today. The librarian has become a member of the course team and is actively involved in discussion.

• The librarian is a member of the formal structures of the course. S/he attends course boards, course reviews and course committees (where student representatives will be present). There may also be formal agreements between the school and library, for example, on stockholding policy.
• At the same time, the librarian builds up a range of informal contacts within the school. This range of contacts might include not only academics, but also administrators, secretaries, technicians, researchers and students. It will probably be the source of much of the real information about the course.
• The role of the librarian shifts from the background to the foreground: from reactive to proactive. More than anyone else, the librarian must take the initiative in developing effective liaison and in finding ways to anticipate information needs before crises occur.
• This is particularly important in identifying areas where the service is failing to deliver.
• Librarians face a continual problem of dividing their time between the competing demands of routine library work, involvement in courses and membership of a course team.

The librarian will probably be involved in a number of exercises planned with academics. These might include inductions and training for information handling skills. There is a further conflict here, between the desire to teach information skills (which if acquired by students will mean less routine enquiry work) and the time needed for planning and preparation (which is time away from day to day operations).

This model depends for its success on the degree to which the academic culture is penetrated by the librarian at both formal and informal levels. At the informal level it may just be a coping strategy to compensate for the shortcomings of the system. In effect, simply a friendlier version of Model A. At the formal level, the librarian is included in the course design/course planning process so that resources can be planned against course needs from the outset.

Librarians - if you are a member of a course team, what does it involve you doing? What is effective/not effective in working with course teams? What are the benefits/drawbacks?

Academics - What is the value of having a librarian as part of the course team? Has it made your life any easier as a result?

Model C - Sharing Assessment

The librarian has become sufficiently involved in the academic culture of the course to take part in the assessment process. In this model, the course team is identified as the group which shares assessment and not simply course design.

The notion of learning is extended beyond the student's grasp of suject content to include acquired skills such as 'information handling.' Both these components are assessed.

There are a number of places where the librarian might be expected to be a part of the assessment process:

• In any first year course with a large information retrieval component. The librarian is an obvious assessor, setting work, marking work and being present on the course board when it is judged.
• In a final year project. The librarian judges the student's use of information. It would be very interesting to know if anyone in Britain has a double marking system for student dissertations, which reflect both (a) the content and (b) how well they have conducted their search for resources.
• In the new Masters degrees. Those coming into research in higher education are now being asked to take a generic, skills training course for Masters and postgraduate research. Who teaches these courses? Librarians might be expected to assess at a very high level here.