The Academic Liaison team make sure that the academic and student voice are heard and that key messages from the Library and Archives are being communicated. We are responsible for the delivery of information literacy teaching within departments and also work to ensure that the Library collections are developed to reflect your teaching and research needs. Our knowledge of the collections informs our teaching and our teaching informs our collection knowledge.

Each department's Academic Liaison Librarian is your main contact in the Library. Additional specialist support for staff and postgraduate researchers is provided by the Library's Open Research team.

Academic Liaison: a visual summary

Your Academic Liaison Librarian can help students to find resources for their subject ...

... and bridge the gap between academic departments and the Library.

We run hundreds of 1-2-1 Library Specialist appointments every year.

We provide around 550 hours of information skills training each year, reaching more than 11,500 students.

Subject Guides are accessed more than 435,000 times a year.

Watch the video below to find out more.

You can get in touch with your Academic Liaison Librarian using the email address for your department, which you can find on the relevant Subject Guide.

Support for students

Your Academic Liaison Librarian can help you to identify specific resources for your subject and talk to you about tools and techniques for working effectively to make the most of what the Library offers. We can support students via:

• Our teaching, offered within relevant modules identified by your department
• The Library's Subject Guides, where you can find links to specific resources and information relevant to you
• The University Referencing Style Guides, containing advice and examples to help you to reference correctly
• One to one appointments if you need help making the most of the Library and our resources.

Support for staff

The Academic Liaison team consists of information professionals who are qualified to provide information literacy training and collection advice. We are ex officio members of departmental Boards of Studies and are happy to attend other relevant meetings such as Teaching Committee.

If you are a module leader, contact us to discuss how we can provide embedded teaching relevant to your course and student assessments. We are also here if you wish to discuss collection needs, especially if you are planning a new module or programme.

Further information about how we, and other Library Teams, can support you with Modularisation and Semesterisation is available on the University googlesite. 

Collections

We work with departments to ensure that you have the resources needed to support your research and teaching endeavours. Specifically we work with academics who wish to identify and submit cases to the Library for new subscription requests e.g. new journal or database titles.

Teaching

Information literacy is the ability to think critically and make balanced judgements about any information we find and use. It empowers us as citizens to reach and express informed views and to engage fully with society.
(CILIP 2018)

Our teaching principles:

1. We provide information literacy sessions within departments and work with departments to identify additional digital literacy support needs
2. We aim for our information literacy teaching to be:
   1. Relevant: our approach to delivering information literacy teaching may be different across departments due to the varying needs of students and departments.
   2. Embedded: our teaching is embedded, closely aligned to the module and programme learning outcomes, and linked directly to assessments wherever possible.
   3. Collaborative: we work closely with module leaders when developing our teaching materials and co-deliver with module teaching staff whenever possible.

You can find out more about our teaching via our Teaching Offer summary.

Representing our community and making service improvements

We facilitate communications between the Library and departments, keeping departments informed about Library services and resources and representing your views and needs in Library and Archives discussions about service improvements. We regularly identify and lead strategic change projects and service improvements based on these discussions as well as our knowledge and experience of department and student needs.