After something of a gap it was good to have a return of the Journal Club at work.  The article this time was

The Impact of Physically Embedded Librarianship on Academic Departments – Erin O’Toole, Rebecca Barham, Jo Monahan 2016 Portal: Libraries and the Academy

This was interesting for the team as a way to consider how librarians might best approach closer working with faculties and in particular whether physical collocation is important.

The article examines the impact of a shift to three liaisons being based more with their faculty following changes to the delivery of enquiry services within the library.

There is a big emphasis on counting different routes to interactions.  The picture from these figures is unconvincing.  There are a number of variables that can be controlled for.  There is little consideration of any change in the type, quality or depth of the enquiries.  This would be more useful to know – a fall in enquiries could be a positive thing if more useful enquiries are replacing them.

Given the focus on quantitative data it was also disappointing to not have any examination of data around their use of Libguides.

Generally the study would have been more interesting by including qualitative elements. There is a brief mention of chats with faculty and it would be these interactions that are interesting.

So a helpful paper from prompting discussion but not one where you can draw much that is transferable.