Introduction
Whereas previous studies interpret collaboration between academics and librarians in higher education from a perspective of information sharing (e.g. Pham & Williamson, 2018), few studies include social networks. Since ‘social network structures play a role in how easily information circulates’ (Haythornthwaite, 2017), investigating how social networks are configured contributes to understanding how academics and librarians collaborate. This study aims to explore the collaboration in information literacy settings for first year students from a perspective in which information sharing and social networks are combined, based on a case study of Aalto University in Finland.
Method & Results
A qualitative case study approach was adopted. Aalto University was selected because of its library reorganisation. The library was divided into eight teams embedded in four institutional service sections, and librarians were allocated across these teams in 2018. Then, information literacy instructional services were divided into two teams: the learning services team responsible for first year students and the research services team responsible for graduation theses (Nagasawa, 2022). This study focuses on the learning services team after the reorganisation. The data were collected between June and December 2021 through semi-structured interviews, using Zoom, with librarians and academics at Aalto University. For this study, data was collected from a total of three interviews of two librarians in the learning services team-one group interview with both librarians and then two individual interviews. The material was analysed via thematic analysis. Findings were identified in relation to the types of information sharing proposed by Talja (2002).
Following the reorganisation, no cohesive ties between academics and librarians were formed although new ties were built between librarians and various learning service teams including units within schools. One of the librarians allocated to the learning services team was asked to deliver library orientation for first year students across all schools of the university. As a result of this, the librarian started to participate in the institutional orientation group meetings, which were composed of various learning service team members. Although information around orientation, including in the various departments of schools, began to be shared with the librarian, the librarian independently prepared library orientation materials based on previously listed basic information from the schools because the sessions’ input and outcomes were basic and universal enough to be designed without further information. Since this task is accomplished based on indirectly sharing routine information with schools rather than with academics, the information sharing between academics and librarians identified in this study is categorised as ‘nonsharing’.
Conclusions
This study finds that the library reorganisation built no cohesive networks between academics and librarians but did develop institutional learning service networks which include librarians and staff in the schools. The information literacy instructional task for first year students is carried out based not on sharing information between academics and librarians but based on routine information indirectly from schools and transmitted through the expanded learning service networks.
References
- Hathornthwaite, C. (2017). Social networks and information transfer. In J. D. McDonald, & M. Levine-Clark (Eds.), Encyclopedia of library and information sciences (pp. 4235–4245).
- Nagasawa, T. (2022). Collaboration between academics and librarians in information literacy instruction at Aalto University following a decentralising restructure. Information Research, 27(Special issue), paper colis2215.
- Pham, H.T., & Williamson, K. (2018). A two-way street: Collaboration and information sharing in academia. Information Research, 23(4), paper isic1810.
- Talja, S. (2002). Information sharing in academic communities. New Review of Information Behavior Research, 3(1).
Tayo Nagasawa
Åbo Akademi University, Turku/Åbo, Finland