dec11b.indd C&RL News December 2011 646 Iknew when I decided to pack my bags and move across the country to begin my career as an academic librarian that I would meet some challenges. Learning campus cul- ture, navigating organizational charts, and building relationships with my co-workers and departments would all be a part of my initiation. Less clear was how I was going to define my role as a library liaison when I lacked subject knowledge in some of my assigned areas. As a liaison to Spanish Languages and Literature, I met the position description’s “reading and writing ability” requirement, but I hardly possessed expertise. No worries, I thought. I am a librarian: I don’t have to know everything; I just need to know where to find it. Librarians with subject knowledge pos- sess an obvious advantage: a deep under- standing of the scholarship and research process in their area enables them to better serve their academic users and gain cred- ibility with teaching faculty. But, many librarians are assigned subjects outside of their expertise. What can they do to ensure good service to their departments? The liaison’s role will depend on faculty information needs, and liaising relies on the librarian’s ability to ferret out these needs and respond to them. The imperative task is to gain expert knowledge about the de- partment, not the discipline, and apply that knowledge to make oneself an indispens- able part of it. Shifting my focus from expertise to relationships, I have spent the past year experimenting and improving on ways to better connect faculty and students with the library. Through this strategy I have learned this much: Success is had not by posturing as an expert, but by adding value and convenience to the work students and faculty do and by effectively communicat- ing—promoting—that value. The following practices are the way I see liaisons making the best of their potential as information professionals. 1. Sell. Like any good salesman, begin by targeting your best prospects. Determine who is most likely to benefit from the li- brary’s collections and services. When you meet your students and faculty face-to-face, you can better anticipate their needs—per- haps identifying some that they weren’t even aware that they had—and demonstrate how the library can offer solutions. Start by finding out what faculty are teaching and researching. Imagine what it is like to be a student: read course descriptions and note core requirements, being mindful of their sequence. Then, equipped with this information, commence with the shameless self-promotion. No flashy marketing tools are necessary: knocking on doors and hand- ing out fliers are effective even in the era of Web 2.0. The point is to make sure faculty see your face. In fact, hand out a flier with your face on it. Go to faculty meetings (if you can). Attend faculty lectures or events. To capture the attention of my faculty, I of- fered to buy each of them a cup of coffee (passing out “coupons” cobbled together in minutes with Word and a Flickr image) in exchange for a conversation about their re- Meagan Lacy The virtues of a committed dilettante Embracing nonexpert expertise Meagan Lacy is humanities librarian at IUPUI University Library, e-mail: lacym@iupui.edu © 2011 Meagan Lacy the way I see it December 2011 647 C&RL News search interests and their students. Through this outreach, I was able to introduce myself to most of the department. As a result, I have received regular invitations to speak in their classrooms and to attend their events. 2. Find new opportunities. Assess your library’s strengths and determine whether you can offer any new services to your stu- dents and faculty. For example, digitization projects are a major focus at the university library, so I invited faculty to participate in our institutional repository, offering to coor- dinate with the digital libraries team and to obtain the necessary permissions to deposit their work on their behalf. Promoting this service offered me the added opportunity to educate faculty about institutional reposi- tories, open access, copyright issues, and copyright negotiation. It also helped me to redefine their expecta- tions of librarians and academic libraries. 3. Understand your collection. In addition to writing a collec- tion policy, familiarize yourself with selection tools. For Spanish I look at Criticas Reviews and America Reads Spanish, both online, and I subscribe to RSS feeds of book reviews from journals my faculty read (like Hispania). I also browse the humanities section of HLAS Web. These are invaluable collection tools for the non- subject expert since they can acquaint you very quickly with major figures and current research interests. 4. Understand the publishing industry. Find out the peculiarities of publication in your discipline. In Latin America, it’s a prickly business. Not surprisingly, large media conglomerates dominate Spanish- language publishing. However, compared to the United States, print runs are small (around 4,000 copies). Distribution in Latin America is highly segmented and intra-con- tinental distribution is almost nonexistent. In my case, setting up approval plans became imperative. Not only does a vendor em- ploy knowledgeable bibliographers who will select titles based on my profile, but the vendor also obtains these materials in a timely manner so I can get them on the library’s shelves before they go out of print. 5. Associate. Look for professional or- ganizations that can help you fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, the primary association for academic librarians special- izing in Spanish and Latin American Studies collections is the Seminar on the Acquisi- tion of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM). Its Web site and electronic list flows with helpful information—providing links to scholarly resources, major vendors, and news—and their a n n u a l c o n f e r e n c e rains with learning op- portunities, including workshops specifically tailored to the non- specialist. For those who do not have the time or money to join professional organiza- tions, another option is to join an online community. For example, La Cuna is a social networking site devoted to mentoring Latin American and Iberian librarians. 6. Continue your education. Take ad- vantage of being on a college campus and audit a course once a semester. Or work on another degree. Many tenure track positions are contingent upon applicants earning a second master’s degree in their liaison area. Even if you don’t go for a degree, you will still fashion some subject knowledge and obtain perspective on how your faculty teach and what they are teaching, and you will be better able to anticipate your faculty and students’ research needs in the future. Because departments are in a constant state of flux, adding value and convenience to the work students and faculty do will af- fect the liaison’s indispensableness far more than any depth of subject expertise. Six ways to become an indispensable liaison 1. Sell. 2. Find new opportunities. 3. Understand your collection. 4. Understand the publishing industry. 5. Associate. 6. Continue your education.