Presence is more than just being there.
—Malcom Forbes
Admittedly, there are a myriad of ways to embed a librarian and many more ways to actually be embedded; that is to say, once you are “there,” what you will focus on and how you will make your presence known are both highly individual and contextual. While I recognize the many, many shapes that embedded librarianship takes, I am primarily interested in “being there”—in proximity, which will be the focus of this book. In my own personal experience, embedded at a distance, that is, online, did not interest me as much as actually being in the classroom with the students I was there to help. My own personal bias and my own sense of how I could make a difference was clearly situated in the classroom. Moreover, I had a vision of how things would work in the classroom—how I would interact with the professor and the students, how important I imagined it would be to actually hear what they were hearing, watch them process themselves and each other, and use that as a springboard for my own involvement.
My own reasons for wanting to embed were very closely related to my interest in one of the liaison departments, English. I was a new librarian, eager at the reference desk, and in about mid-October began receiving some rather frantic reference questions regarding an English thesis. The questions varied in length and intensity, but a fair amount were from students simply throwing their hands up in the air, lamenting that they simply did not know where to begin. My own response was a bit of exasperation—how to help a student with the pinnacle of papers? Tougher, even, was trying to get them to calmly explain to me what the actual requirements were, and so on. A few handed me their assignment papers that were, I was told later, kept deliberately vague in order to allow for their own “vision” to develop. What was missing in the picture is what they were actually hearing in the classroom and how they were processing the information. I had no window, really, into that information. At the end of the semester, I made an appointment with the thesis professor, who met with me willingly but offered little comfort as he could not understand, “quite frankly, where the difficulty is coming from.” Then he said, “They ask no questions in class. And I assume they know how to find sources—they’ve come this far and after all, they have been writing papers for four years now!” Ah, the misconception. I was expecting it somewhat, but not as much as was expressed. But the good news is, it gave me a starting point, and I began thinking and planning. I did not know much about embedded librarianship at that point, as none of my colleagues were “embedded” in the “traditional” sense, though our sciences librarian was the closest, doing more sessions in and out of the classroom than any of us. My instincts, coupled with the fact that my colleagues and I were looking for better ways to collaborate with faculty, told me that getting into the next semester’s thesis class was probably a really good idea. However, I needed buy-in from the thesis professor.
I set up another meeting with him, but he just kept asking me what I could possibly do in the classroom that I could not do with the students in my office, one-on-one or during my hours at the reference desk. I admit to being flustered at his questioning. His eyebrows raised, he waited for an answer. I remember spreading all ten of my fingers out in front of me and placing them on my lap—because I thought that I had articulated my reasons as best as I could, already. He declined my offer of embedding (a term that puzzled him) and suggested that it might help students (and assuage me) if he required that each student meet with me, at least once, for a one-on-one meeting. I was frustrated, but I agreed.
It helped. Quite simply, being able to just sit and talk with a student in a mutually agreed upon time, without the kind of frantic desperation that we experienced the previous semester, made a world of difference. Because we know that learning happens in conversation, I felt that what was happening in my office, at my table (never while I am behind a desk!), was good and worthwhile. I asked each student to fill out an “intake” form, which collected various answers to questions such as which primary text they thought they would use, their comfort (or discomfort) with both databases and approaching librarians, and other pertinent questions. Each time they met with me I would keep notes on our meeting and have “action steps” for them. My other requirements were that the meeting would last no more than twenty minutes (they were encouraged to make another appointment), they should do more of the talking than I would, and they would be both encouraged and expected to take notes.
While they were only required to meet with me once a semester, imagine my pleasure at meeting many (though not all) students two or three times, at their own initiation. It was during these meetings that I was able to consistently reinforce the fact that research is a process, and that it is rarely, if ever, as easy as we want it to be. Moreover, the research process is not a linear one. I came to be very, very invested in the process with these students. I felt their frustration at the writing/research process and worked assiduously with them. The missing piece of the puzzle, for me, was that I really did not know what they were doing in class—each of them had their own subjective experience, but I approached each of them with a sort of veil of “unknowing.” I wanted to be with them, in class—I wanted to be able to hear what they were hearing from the professor and I wanted to be able to see how and if they were processing things. While I had all sorts of ideas of how I would build my approach with the students in the class, how I could do this by implementing strategies and information literacy with the professor into the syllabus, I decided to work within the constraints imposed on me and then assess with the professor at the end of the semester.
I learned quite a bit through the process. While I had pressed this professor hard to be embedded, the truth is, it had most definitely served my process of working with students and my understanding of the commitment that embedded librarianship takes to have eased into it—by having a semester of working with the students with an eye toward further commitment the next time around. It became a process for me, much in the same way I have preached to my students about their research process: it takes time, and mistakes will be made.
At the end of the semester, I met again with the professor, who proclaimed that he saw an overall improvement in the quality of the papers that were turned in. He said that he was also consulted much, much less than he had been in all of the previous years of teaching the course. This pleased me, even though of course it was anecdotal. It was satisfying, nonetheless. Still, the goal was actually being in the classroom. I saw the need and was determined to make it happen. If it is true that we make our way by walking it, this is exactly what I set out to do. And I managed to achieve this goal when in the following fall semester, a professor with whom I had worked quite successfully in the past would teach the thesis course. He was enthusiastic about my participation; in fact, he welcomed it. I was on my way.
• Have a plan. While my instincts told me that being embedded in the English senior thesis course was a great idea, I needed to not only have a solid rationalization and plan on paper, but I needed to be able to articulate it in the clearest way possible.
• Set goals both for yourself and your students. How will you be effective in the classroom? What will you expect of the students? How will “being there” actually make a difference?
• Understand the realities of being embedded in the classroom; time is not the only commitment you will need to make.
• Clearly articulate your role during the first class. Most students do not think of librarians as professors in any way—in fact, they often have no idea what we actually do or what our education level is. Let them know! Introduce yourself. Explain yourself. Share who you are with the students you will be spending an entire semester with.
• Show up. While this seems incredibly and embarrassingly obvious, you must be consistent. To be sure, there will be days where you feel just like the students might feel—that you simply cannot drag yourself to class. Don’t give in. Being there means just that.
• Do not melt into the woodwork. I will admit that I was so excited when I finally got my chance to actually be present in the classroom that I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. This simply did not make sense—I was there to do a job! I led class discussions and I participated in them, too. I gave feedback on presentations. I made my presence both known and understood.
• Do not be afraid to make suggestions to the professor in class. I worked with a professor that I had known for quite some time and whom I greatly respected. There were occasions when he would remark to me during a class break that students seemed “low energy,” or “disconnected.” I would give a gentle assessment and often suggest a change of pace, some group work or other strategies that might change the tone of the class.
I will admit that I came to embedded librarianship the way I come to most things: largely by instinct and by what I felt and still feel has the potential for being a better way to do things. I have come to realize how important the actual desire to “be there” is in the entire process, because, to be sure, being embedded in the classroom can be arduous, challenging, and extremely time-consuming. Being there means being fully present and understanding that at times you will be sitting and listening and absorbing and other times you will be actively engaged. Being there helps you to gauge the confidence and frustration level of students. You will pick up on their boredom, their fatigue. You will see how their enthusiasm will wax and wane during different parts of the semester and on any given day. You will feel their desperation, feel their anxiety. You will come to understand how this will affect their performance in class, with assignments, with writing papers. You will find that you are not an objective person in the classroom—something I believe is a fallacy—because, really, who can escape their own point of view? You will have opinions, strategies, thoughts, and sometimes objections. And while you may not be the professor in the class, let there be no doubt that your task at hand is just as important.
One of the most important aspects of being embedded in the classroom is being in the privileged position of being able to observe the learning and research cycle of students as it happens, and to be able to fully participate and influence this cycle, rather than just enter it at irregular intervals, by chance, over the reference desk. Kesselman and Watstein put it succinctly when they assert, in their wonderful article “Creating Opportunities: Embedded Librarians,” “If we are truly to be where the user is and to be user-centric, we need to be embedded. Embedded librarianship is a major focus for the future of our profession.”1 Additionally, and ultimately, being embedded exemplifies collaboration at its very best: “because the librarian becomes a member of the customer community rather than a service provider standing apart.”2 Of course, I could not agree more.
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