Embed Yourself: Reaching Students Where They Are

Reaching students in a digital landscape is becoming increasingly more important and essential to student success, especially as institutions expand their online course and degree offerings and increase their use of Learning Management Systems (LMS). Embedded librarians have a unique opportunity to play a vital role in providing point of need services, by supporting information literacy and library resources in LMS courses. Many of these students, namely distance and online students, may never set foot physically on campus, so it becomes critical to reach these students where they are, in the digital landscape. To that end, librarians employ various levels of engagement such as embedded pages, LibGuides, toolkits, discussion boards, graded assignments, web conferencing tools, etc. to reach students and promote library services in an LMS environment. This panel presentation will explore the embedded librarian services (or programs) at four universities: Athens State University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of South Alabama, and Augusta University. Panelists will discuss how and what information is presented in various Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard, Canvas, and Brightspace. Each participant will also discuss their own institution’s embedded librarian services, faculty and administration buy-in, and promoting services across campus