sept08b.indd


Caitlin Tillman 

Library
orientation
for
professors


Give
a
pitch,
not
a
tour



What should a librarian say when ad­dressing faculty? Because our profes­
sional literature concentrates more on the 
librarian’s undergraduate constituency than 
it does on professors, transient patrons at 
the expense of the permanent, fi nding an­
swers to this question can be diffi cult. At 
the University of Ottawa Library we face this 
problem every summer when we participate 
in the university­wide orientation program 
for new professors. Our library orientation 
consists of an interactive presentation on the 
library for incoming professors from several 
faculties and includes a university­provided 
breakfast and lunch. The session consistently 
attracts a large number of professors and is 
often the most popular event in the entire 
orientation program, and therefore constitutes 
a major opportunity to establish a produc­
tive relationship between researchers and 
research resources and services. However, 
until recently, we inadvertently communi­
cated an outmoded vision of the library’s 
role in the university. We used the presenta­
tion to describe collections and instructional 
services, instead of demonstrating that the 
library is more than a repository of books. 
We needed to stress, the more complex range 
of services we increasingly provide and the 
expanding research potential of the librarian 
in the digital age. 

Library orientation for professors is a 
marketing opportunity 
Most academics probably do not need to 
be sold on the importance of a campus li­
brary, but many may have to be sold on the 
usefulness of the campus librarian. This is 

hardly surprising; our own literature rarely 
discusses faculty services or needs, con­
centrating instead on students—specifi cally 
instruction and information literacy. When 
giving orientation sessions we tend follow 
the familiar instruction model of highlight­
ing databases and demonstrating search 
techniques. A catalog tour or explanation of 
Boolean operators may prove useful to some 
members of the audience, but it does little 
to convince faculty members that librarians 
understand their ambition to write an award­
winning book or attract graduate students. So 
if you find yourself in the fortunate position 
of addressing a group of professors, tell them 
what they want to hear: the library defi nes its 
success in terms of the success of its faculties’ 
research and teaching. As a result, librarians 
want to tailor acquisitions and provide ser­
vices to support specific faculty agendas but 
can do so only to the extent that the faculty 
talk to the librarians. 

So what can you do to market your 
importance to a group of professors? 

• Make “talk to us” your most impor­
tant point. Start with this, end with this, 
and mention it every chance you get. The 
audience should eventually be saying it with 
you. If your library has assigned librarians to 
specific groups of faculty, be sure to point this 
out so that your audience knows that there 
is a particular librarian dedicated to them. In 

C a i t l i n  T i l l m a n  i s  a c t i n g  a s s o c i a te  d i re c to r  o f  
Morisset Library at the University of Ottawa, e-mail: 
ctillman@uottawa.ca 
© 2008 Caitlin Tillman 

C&RL News September 2008  470 

mailto:ctillman@uottawa.ca


our session, we ask as many librarians as pos­
sible to come for the opening remarks or the 
lunch so that they can introduce themselves 
to the faculty. This gives the faculty member a 
chance to talk to someone who works at the 
physical library and helps put a human face 
on an increasingly virtual space. Distribute 
the business cards of librarians who cannot 
attend the session. 

• Engage discussion. We encourage 
interruptions and solicit questions to try to 
make the session as informal as possible. 
Spend some time getting to know the people 
in the audience. Ask them questions about 
their research and then, if possible, highlight 
the library’s strengths in their area or suggest 
a few ways the library can otherwise assist 
their research. 

• Emphasize the role the library plays 
in research and teaching. We do this by 
informing the faculty members of library 
services, such as interlibrary loan and acquisi­
tion funds for building new collections, and 
by asking the information literacy librarian 
briefly to present collaborative library instruc­
tion opportunities. If you can afford to buy all 
requested books, do not miss this opportunity 
to tell them. If you cannot, sell them on your 
interlibrary loan system or suggest buying a 
list of books over several years. When faculty 
members believe that librarians want to help 
them win teaching awards and book prizes, 
they might be more willing to trust us to teach 
their students, and maybe even them. 

• Stress the fundamentally collabora­
tive aspect of collection building and in­
struction. We remind professors that we are 
not mind readers and that we need regular 
input from them to integrate our resources 
to their needs. For example, we point out 
that gaps in the collection and the omission 
of specific library workshops—two frequent 
problems—often exist because faculty mem­
bers do not keep us informed about their 
work or new courses. We then stress our 
willingness to work with them to make their 
courses successful and provide examples 
of previous productive faculty­librarian col­
laborations. 

• Describe the library’s strengths and 
weaknesses honestly. To benefit from the 
full potential of the library’s resources, faculty 
need as precise an understanding of the col­
lections’ weak spots and limitations as they do 
of its strengths and capabilities. In addition, 
speaking with equal candour and precision 
about weaknesses as well as strengths will 
help gain the trust of incoming faculty, who 
will hear first from you what they will sub­
sequently hear from colleagues. 

• Pick one interesting product, event, 
or promotion to discuss. The abundance 
of electronic information makes it diffi cult 
for researchers to keep abreast of new prod­
ucts, even within their own fields. Let faculty 
members know that the library will do this 
for them. Emphasize this point with a short 
demonstration. We invite faculty members 
to contact us for one­on­one assistance and 
alert them to our calendar of instructional 
workshops. In your demonstration, remember 
that it is not an instruction session—in this 
context the research tool is the librarian, not 
the database. 

• Ensure a working, stable, and fast 
connection. Because the virtual aspect of 
the academic library is a large component of 
the services offered, a mediocre connection 
to your own services will reflect poorly on the 
competence of the library. Take responsibility 
for a good connection. Even if the event is 
not held in the library building, involve your 
own IT staff to ensure a reliable connection. 
Library IT staff know the products and the 
importance of the event to the library. 

• Involve those responsible for mar­
keting and promotion in the library. 
We distribute goodie bags prepared by our 
marketing committee that include library­
branded items and gifts from vendors. Some 
may object that handing out vendors’ gifts 
implies library endorsement of a particular 
product or group of products, rather than 
promoting the library itself. In our case, we 
think the distribution of branded items and 
vendors’ gifts is worth the risk, since our goal 
is to promote faculty awareness of library 

(continues on page 475) 

September 2008  471 C&RL News 



group, not just students. We need to include, 
reach out, and encourage faculty, as well. 

Compelled to get started? 
Here are some ways to start acting on your 
own campus: 

1. Share your and your fellow librarians’ 
successes and interests. Given the pace of 
change in both libraries and technology, does 
your faculty know what today’s libraries are 
really about? 

2. Get out there! Librarians are educators, 
teachers, and colleagues too. Go to a faculty 
event. Create a faculty event. Mingle, even if 
it is difficult for you. 

3. Present, publish, and share among fac­
ulty, not just your library peers. Librarians are 
amazing at sharing ideas, thoughts, and ap­
plications with each other. But as I have tried 
to point out here, faculty need to be reached 
as well. Take a chance: submit a conference 
proposal for an nonlibrary conference about 
what you’re doing to bring 2.0 to students. 

2.0 technology has changed the landscape 
of computing, information sharing, and con­
tent creation. With it comes changes to how 
we collaborate, learn, and teach. That change 
needs to be shared with all of our patrons, and 
particularly our faculties. Faculty play many 
roles at our institutions. They are gateways to 
our students, partners in the educational pro­
cess, and educators, but they are also patrons 
and learners themselves. 

Librarians must use their skills as instruc­
tors and act as partners in the academic en­
vironment. 2.0 offers many opportunities for 
sharing, learning, and communicating. Let’s 
use them to engage our faculty, both virtually 
and face­to­face. 

Notes 
1. Mark Edmundson, “Dwelling in Possibili­

ties,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 54.27 
(14 Mar. 2008): B7. 

2. Gloria J. Leckie “Desperately Seeking 
Citations: Undercovering Faculty Assumptions 
about the Undergraduate Research Process,” 
Journal of Academic Librarianship 22.3 (May 
1996): 201–8. 

3. “Observations—What Does This Mean?” 
ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and 
Information Technology, 2007, Sept. 2007, 
www.educause/ecar 

4. “Explanations In Plain English,” www. 
commoncraft.com/show. 

5. “Wikis in Plain English,” www. 
commoncraft.com/video­wikis­plain­english. 

6. Melissa Mallon, “My thoughts on 
ACRL’s Springboard Event.” Weblog post. 
ACRLog. 2 April 2008, acrlog.org/2008/04/02 
/my­thoughts­on­acrls­springboard­event/. 

(“Library orientation...” continues from p. 471) 

services. A visible presence among faculty of 
library pens, tote bags, and similar products 
may not illuminate the real strengths of your 
library, but it will implicitly reinforce the 
library’s presence on campus. 

• Always fi nish by offering a tour of 
the library. There may be people in the 
audience who signed up in the expectation 
of one. 

Conclusion 
Librarians can play a catalytic role in the 
process of persuading faculty that we are 
one of the library’s best resources, capable of 
bringing a wide range of specialized knowl­
edge to help solve any problem and advance 
any research agenda. To communicate that 
vision, librarians need to speak effectively 
and persuasively to faculty. We need to rec­
ognize that faculty constitute a fundamentally 
different audience than undergraduate and 
graduate students, with fundamentally dif­
ferent needs and outlooks. We have recently 
begun to address this issue in our orientation 
program for new professors. In the absence 
of formal literature on the subject, we have 
proceeded through trial and error. We modify 
both content and style of the presentation 
every year, trying always to improve the 
presentation on the basis of past experience. 
We have found the points outlined above 
consistently effective, and offer them as a 
useful first step in a relatively unexplored but 
important subject. 

September 2008  475 C&RL News 

www.educause/ecar