Agricultural librarians becoming informationists: A paradigm shift

Abstract

Librarian liaisons to the agricultural sciences offer many traditional services, such as teaching classes, purchasing materials, managing collections, and providing guidance on scholarly communication issues. Data management and data literacy instruction are two emerging service opportunities for agricultural librarians to develop new roles and work with researchers to set standards and meet data management needs within the disciplinary context. Taking advantage of these opportunities will require new skills, shifts in attitudes, and increased interaction with the students and faculty to understand their needs and provide timely and appropriate services. This paper proposes creating new strategies, expectations, and opportunities for agricultural librarianship by constructing a new model based on the informationist. The informationist, developed in medical librarianship, offers a model for creating highly engaged liaison services. Within a medical context the informationist is an extension of the traditional model of librarian engagement in which an information professional is embedded within clinical and research settings. Librarians can have an impact outside of the traditional library contexts by developing new skills and strategies for librarians working in the agricultural sciences. The informationist model also provides the opportunity to act as a direct collaborator in the creation of new methodologies in the field, such as systematic reviews.