Liaison Services

The University Libraries has established an extensive program of liaison services to serve as its primary communication link with the academic community of faculty, staff, and students. Library Faculty serve as the Libraries' primary contacts with specific academic departments and administrative units on campus. To determine the name of the liaison librarian assigned to your academic department or administrative unit consult the Subject Specialists section of this website.

For a complete listing of librarians at the University Libraries, visit Librarians by Name.

SERVICES PROVIDED

Communication
Ongoing dialogue with its primary user populations is vital to the Libraries. Through their interaction with faculty, staff, and students, liaison librarians:

• monitor the information needs of assigned departments
• keep members of their assigned departments well-informed about the services, policies, and resources available through the University Libraries

Personalized Services
Just as disciplines differ in their basic approaches to knowledge, they also differ in their approaches to library research. Liaison librarians develop services and collections that fit individual and departmental needs and goals. Such services may include:

• classroom or individualized instruction in information retrieval skills
• reference/research consultation, student referrals and dissertation consultation
• departmental presentations and workshops
• bibliographic searching
• special materials purchases

Liaison librarians welcome opportunities to work with faculty, staff, and students on special projects, such as designing effective library assignments, identifying and purchasing resources to strengthen specific areas of the collection, and integrating information technology into the curriculum.

Collection Development
Liaison librarians maintain and build the Libraries' collections. Materials of all types - books, journals, electronic resources, and multimedia - are purchased, or acquired, through a variety of selection processes. With far more literature published each year than can be purchased with available funds, liaison librarians place great importance upon staying informed about faculty and student research and teaching, so that they can make judicious decisions about what materials to add to the UNL collections.

Promoting User Input
The University Libraries' liaison program is designed to promote input from the academic community regarding the Libraries' collections, services, and policies. The more a liaison librarian knows about the needs, priorities, goals and unique perspectives of the members of his or her liaison departments, the better suited he or she will be to tailor library services and collections to serve that population. Faculty and student groups are encouraged to invite their liaison librarians to attend departmental functions as a means of keeping them informed of changing needs, concerns and priorities. The more contact liaison librarians have with the members of their liaison departments, the better able they are to keep users informed of the resources and services available through the Libraries, and how they can be used more effectively.