Liaison Engagement Success

Ellen Hampton Filgo is the director of the liaison program in the research and engagement division of Baylor University Libraries. She received her MSLS from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is also a 2017 cohort member of the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. As the director of the liaison program, she manages a team of liaisons who reach out to and engage with their assigned schools, departments, and major programs on campus to provide high quality and effective research, information literacy, collections and scholarly communication services. She is also the liaison to four social science and humanities departments. Sha Towers is the associate dean for research and engagement in the Baylor University Libraries, leading a team of directors who oversee the liaison program, public services, instruction and information literacy, special collections, data and digital scholarship. He holds the Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Texas and the Master of Music History and Literature degree from Baylor University. He is a 2011 cohort member of the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians, and in 2018, he was promoted to the highest rank of faculty librarians at Baylor University. Towers served as the head of the fine arts library at Baylor for nine years, during which time he developed a new model of librarian engagement with the faculty and students in the arts fields. As a result of this work, he was invited to lead the reference department in a major reorganization with the goal of transitioning the reference librarians to a more proactive liaison model. Towers led the liaison program at the Baylor Libraries from 2012 until 2019. Towers and Filgo have authored and presented on engaged liaison work in numerous venues, both separately and as co-authors and co-presenters.

Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface



History and Evolution of Liaison Librarianship
Getting to Know Your User Community
Mindsets for Liaison Work
Strategies for Outreach
Engagement with the Humanities
Engagement with the Social Sciences
Engagement with the STEM Fields
Engagement with the Arts
Engagement with the Professional Disciplines
Engagement with Non-Academic Units
Collaboration and Partnership Inside and Outside the Library
Leadership of Engaged Liaisons
Assessment and Evaluation of Engaged Librarians

Bibliography

About the Authors