The Iraq war brought us the concept of "embedded journalists". Now we have the concept of "embedded librarians". An embedded journalist is supposed to have better access to a story; an embedded librarian provides better access for students to him/herself and to the library's resources.
There are several ways for a librarian to be embedded in an online course. In order from greatest presence to least presence:
- Add the Librarian as a Guest Lecturer or Auditing Student within the online course. Students can consult the Librarian within the course by any of the in-course communications methods, and the Librarian can address that come up in discussion and chat.
- Add active scripts that allow students direct, synchronous access to the librarian, such as the chat service, Meebo, on the right of this page.
Students have the advantage of complete privacy, encouraging the proverbial "dumb questions". ("The only 'dumb questions' are the ones we don't ask.")
- Add resources and links assembled in consulation between the faculty member and the librarian to the online course (maybe in a Library Resources module). There are several ways of doing this, including the creation of a feed that will add resources automatically as the Librarian finds them.
- Add contact information for the Subject Librarian to the course informational pages, so that students can contact the Librarian at need. Link to Librarian Profiles (see the box to the left), or ask for contact information or a link.
