Embedded librarians as research partners in South Korea

Abstract

Recently, many articles co-authored by librarians have been published in non-library and information science journals. This may indicate that embedded librarians are actively working as research partners in various fields. However, studies have rarely discussed the roles and experience of embedded librarians and, unlike the USA and European countries, the activities of embedded librarians in Korea are not well reported. This study collected and analysed co-authored articles from Korean faculty and librarians. In addition to identifying the role of the embedded librarian by analysing the author-contributions texts of the articles, the study examined the backgrounds of librarians and the difficulties of collaborating through interviews with librarian authors. The results of the analyses show that the number of collaborative articles by faculty and embedded librarians increased over the years and, of these, almost 70% were medical publications. The roles of the librarians outlined in the author-contributions texts were as reported in previous studies but, in many cases, their role was more significant than traditional liaison work, such as reporting the study’s methodology or approving the final draft. In the interviews, the embedded librarians expressed that they had experienced some difficulties, such as lack of time, insufficient guidelines and an inadequate curriculum in their library and information science department. For librarians to be recognized as research partners, they need to communicate well with team members and have knowledge, skills and abilities related to the research. Further, to achieve this collaboration, the curriculum of departments should be reformed. If such efforts are made, it is expected that embedded librarians will continue to excel in their role as liaison librarians, which has contributed to supporting research projects.

Keywords

Embedded librarian liaison librarian faculty–librarian collaboration co-authorship research partner research support acknowledgement Scopus data librarian South Korea

Introduction

Reference librarians in academic libraries have traditionally provided various forms of research support for researchers. Their services are diverse and professional, such as consulting about information sources, searching bibliographies, accessing full texts and instructing research assistants on how to use databases. If professional librarians are invited as collaborators from the beginning of a research project, there is the advantage of continuously receiving in-depth research support in a timely manner (Desmeules et al., 2016; Féret and Cros, 2019; Nicholson et al., 2017). In other words, it is possible to reduce the trial and error of database searches, facilitate the management of obtained data and manuscripts after the study has been completed. Articles co-authored by librarians have often been published in numerous non-library and information science (LIS) journals, which implies that reference/liaison librarians have been participating as research partners in various fields (Blecic et al., 2017; Borrego et al., 2018).

Faculty–librarian collaboration is particularly frequently observed in evidence-based research or meta-research. Evidence-based research adopts a scientific methodology that draws objective conclusions by comprehensively collecting, evaluating and synthesizing data, literature and sources. Therefore, the role of ‘embedded librarians’ is integral to these evidence-based research projects. Specifically, the tasks of embedded librarians are developing search strategies, selecting appropriate sources and assisting with the use of data collections in a project (Brahmi and Kaplan, 2017; Carlson and Kneale, 2011). In addition, these librarians report on scientific methodology and review the final manuscript with the other authors (Gore and Jones, 2015; Rethlefsen et al., 2015). In other words, the traditional reference/liaison work of the academic library has been transformed into a new type of research support demanded by the research project team, and the embedded librarian performs such a modified research support service (Bedi and Walde, 2017; Jaguszewski and Williams, 2013; Si et al., 2019).

However, studies have rarely discussed the role and experience of embedded librarians who have participated as research partners in faculty research projects (Bedi and Walde, 2017; Ragon, 2019). In other words, embedded librarianship is still in its infancy and perceived as an emerging model, and the strategy for how to succeed is not fully established (Abrizah et al., 2016). Moreover, studies on embedded librarianship are largely focused on academic libraries in the USA and Europe.

This study focused on identifying the activities of embedded librarians – an essential component of current academic library services. Collaborative articles by faculty research teams and librarians in Korea were collected and analysed, and the role of the embedded librarians was clarified. Author librarians were interviewed to discover their backgrounds and the difficulties in cooperating in research projects. Through these processes, this study attempted to provide guidelines on the policy of embedded librarianship.

In Korea, like Canada, there is little to no formal structure for librarians’ research achievements to take part in promotion or tenure, and overall practices vary among institutions (Bedi and Walde, 2017). Nevertheless, the non-LIS journal publishing of Korean embedded librarians may mean that they understand their mission and practise it well. If not, it may be the result of an institutional culture that places greater value on contributing to the academic community (Tran and Chan, forthcoming). In any case, it would be meaningful to investigate the activities of Korean embedded librarians who are performing their mission, even though academic libraries in Korea do not operate in an environment that specifically encourages publishing. This may be especially useful for academic librarians in countries other than the USA and Europe.

Literature review

Rather than simply asking for help, in an increasing number of cases, researchers are attempting to collaborate by including a librarian as a team member from the beginning of a faculty research project. However, it is more effective to examine the medical library literature than the academic library literature to determine the activities of embedded librarians who have joined a research team. Foutch (2016) emphasizes that medical librarians do not simply assist in collecting information, but also make a direct contribution to the process of creating new knowledge by utilizing specialized knowledge and skills. In particular, she explains that a librarian’s performance is more prominent in systematic-review studies, which draw a reliable objective conclusion by comprehensively compiling, evaluating and synthesizing a large volume of data, literature and material. As a librarian, she engaged with a faculty research team to study nutrition and behavioural health, and published an article covering her embedded service experience in a systematic literature review. She reports that she was responsible for formulating search strategies, conducting test searches, advising on the identification of databases, updating Zotero on reference management programmes and in-depth consultation on library resources. She also instructed a research assistant on exploring full texts, reminded them of the significance of copyright and attended weekly team meetings throughout the project.

There are studies on cases where librarians embedded in research projects were recognized as co-workers rather than research assistants. According to Brandenburg et al. (2017), as a result of analysing the activities of librarians cooperating in the three MCubed programmes at the University of Michigan, it was found that the embedded librarians’ roles ranged from mentoring on literature searches to project management. These librarians were deeply involved in systematic literature reviews, such as accumulating, evaluating and synthesizing literature related to the research. For example, in a health studies project, the embedded librarians pooled data from PubMed without bias, unlike other scientists. In addition, they acted as informationists, filtering out duplicates and completely writing references. Some project managers evaluated that research projects could be operated very efficiently with the addition of embedded librarians, and the quality of the research was also improved.

Bedi and Walde (2017) explored through semi-structured interviews the personal and professional experiences of Canadian academic librarians who were involved in faculty research projects. In an interview with eight academic librarians from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, some responded that they had acted in a variety of roles, such as searching the literature or exploring the most relevant sources, while others helped with grant applications. This study reveals that librarians were perceived to be active within the framework of traditional liaison work related to collection development, acquisition and information-literacy instruction, but were also playing a greater role. In other words, their role was not limited to searching literature at the beginning of a study or assisting in writing references at the end of a study, but expanded into the specialist role that the academic community is currently expecting.

As librarians’ research project involvement has increased, so has their frequency of having articles published in non-LIS journals. Blecic et al. (2017) point out that the number of articles published in LIS and non-LIS journals was almost the same from 2003 to 2012. Borrego et al. (2018) analysed articles by librarians in non-LIS journals from 2006 to 2015 and found that the quantity of non-LIS journal publications had doubled in 2015 compared to 2006. Further, in 2015, there were 1385 non-LIS journal articles, which was comparable with 1492 LIS journal articles. They also confirm that librarians were active in a diverse array of fields in addition to LIS, including social sciences, medicine, engineering and science. Their results indicate that academic librarians frequently collaborate as research team members and publish as co-authors.

The number of project teams demanding data librarian support is also increasing and, in more cases, librarians are being requested to join a team rather than required simply as research support. Therefore, more libraries have hired data librarians who can reinforce faculty research teams. As a result, one study evaluated the jobs and qualifications of data librarians using recruitment announcements for data librarians. Eclevia et al. (2019) gathered 104 recruitment announcements from academic libraries in the USA, Canada and the UK, and analysed the knowledge, skills, abilities and careers expected of these data librarians. In their investigation, data curation and management (21.5%) ranked highest among the knowledge required. The top-ranked skills were interpersonal and communication skills (44.4%) and the required abilities were working independently and collaboratively (35.7%). In addition, the most recommended experience was professional engagement and work experience (21.3%). Thus, many libraries seek to employ new data librarians with data-related, subject-related and people-related qualifications or aptitudes to promote cooperation with research teams.

Regarding the contribution of librarians who work as research participants, Desmeules et al. (2016) surveyed 14 Canadian academic health libraries in a systematic-review study investigating official expressions of appreciation such as co-authorship or acknowledgements. In this regard, 36% of the respondents said that they received recognition all the time, 50% responded most of the time and 14% responded some of the time. In addition, discussions with team members about how to communicate with the reseach team showed the following – negotiated verbally at the first meeting (44%), written into a grant proposal (30%) or search protocol from addresses (19%). In the future, 79% of the respondents said that the demand for the partnership of librarians would increase. Further, 93% answered ‘yes’ in response to whether they expected to be named as a co-author if a librarian cooperated in a systematic review.

Based on the literature, this study intended specifically to examine the roles and activities of embedded librarians as research partners and answers the following research questions:

What is the status of faculty–librarian collaboration identified through academic articles published in Korea? Which fields have many articles co-produced by faculty and librarians? What is the trend of academic articles co-published by Korean librarians?

What are the roles of Korean embedded librarians printed in author-contributions texts? Is there a distinction between the roles of embedded librarians in previous studies and the author-contributions texts in this study?

What strategies can be adopted to promote collaboration among professors and Korean librarians in a research project? Why is the embedded librarian service active in some specific academic libraries? Which obstacles hinder the activity of embedded librarians?

Methodology

Three research methods – descriptive statistics, text analysis and interviews – were adopted to analyse the activities of embedded librarians participating in faculty research projects. First, the study collected articles published by Korean librarians over the last 10 years from Scopus. Specifically, ‘Korea’ was entered in the affiliation country field and ‘library’ in the affiliation organization field, and the publication year was set to search from 2010 to 2019. This search strategy generated 568 articles; of these, 495 articles, where Korean librarians were not co-authors, were excluded. For example, articles which were a collaboration between Korean professors and American librarians were excluded. As a result, 67 articles in which Korean librarians were listed as co-authors were investigated according to the volume of articles by year, discipline and the librarians’ affiliated library types.

The study accessed the full texts of the 67 articles and examined each author-contributions section individually. This section is a helpful key to the roles or contributions of the authors participating in a joint study. It was found that only 32 articles included an author-contributions section, either in the form of full sentences or a list of the authors’ initials and roles. An example of the latter is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

An example of author contributions list (Ha et al., 2017: 7).

This study identified the general roles performed by the librarians cooperating in the projects of three former studies. The librarians’ roles in the former studies and the collected author-contributions texts were compared. It was noted from the previous studies that the librarians collaborating with the research teams were mainly liaison or data librarians. Therefore, this study reviewed the previous studies to clarify the roles of the liaison or data librarians and pinpoint the roles of the librarians in joining a faculty research team.

First, this study referred to the seven types of research support offered by liaison librarians as outlined by Si et al. (2019): research data management, open access, scholarly publishing, research impact measurement, research guides, research consultation and recommendation of research tools. Moreover, this study considered Eclevia et al.’s (2019) study, which identifies the top-10 most sought-after experiences when hiring data librarians: professional engagement and work experience, software and tools, data curation and analysis, research methods and statistics, collaboration and community engagement, teaching, digital repositories, management and leadership, project management, research support, referencing and instructional services. Further, this study used Desmeules et al.’s (2016) article to explore the roles of librarians engaging in a systematic-review research project. Desmeules et al. assert that the main tasks of embedded librarians participating in systematic reviews are structuring the search, adapting it to various databases, and writing about the search strategy in the methods section of an article. Among the survey questions Desmeules et al. conducted, this study utilized 13 tasks presented as examples of ‘Choose all tasks that librarians are responsible for in systematic review’.

In designing a policy that would encourage co-work between research teams and embedded librarians, this study expected that embedded librarians may be helpful. However, half of the articles aggregated by this study were publications from librarians affiliated to three medical libraries: Seoul National University, the Catholic University of Korea and Yonsei University Wonju College of Medicine. Three librarians were interviewed in May 2020 at the Medical Library of the Catholic University of Korea, which has the largest number of users among the three libraries. In the interviews, the questionnaire produced by Desmeules et al. (2016) was referred to. The main content of the interview questions was their history of co-working with a research team, their achievements/awards, difficulties experienced and policies to boost collaboration.

Results

Articles co-authored by faculty and librarians in Korea

Figure 2 shows the number of Scopus articles published by collaboration between professors and librarians from 2010 to 2019. In the early 2010s, there were very few articles; the number increased slightly in the middle of the decade and, at the end, it was found to be significantly higher than in the early days.

Figure 2.

Number of articles per year with librarian collaboration.

Figure 3 shows the number of articles classified by subject field. The field in which librarians most actively published was medicine, accounting for 68.66% of the total. Computer science and multidisciplinary articles represented 7.46%, followed by biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (5.97%). Of the 67 articles gathered for this study, 12 were published by a large group of authors. For example, an article written by the Global Burden of Disease 2016 Healthcare Access and Quality Collaborators had 869 authors, including Korean librarians. Except for 12 publications, 55 articles were published by a usual number of authors. The number of authors of these articles ranged from 2 to 14, with an average of 5.5. This indicates that there is generally more than one Korean librarian among a group of about five authors.

Figure 3.

Articles by subject field.

Figure 4 shows the distribution of Korean librarians by type of affiliated library. Most of the libraries were medical libraries, accounting for 82% of the total – that is, articles written by medical librarians exceeded three-quarters of the sample, followed by academic librarians (12%) and public librarians (4%).

Figure 4.

Articles by librarians’ type of affiliated library.

Embedded librarianship roles

Table 1 shows the results of examining the author-contributions sections of the articles. There were 32 articles with an author-contributions section and 35 publications without. The subject field of the articles with author-contributions texts was mostly medicine (28), followed by biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (2) and multiple disciplines (2). Among the publications with author-contributions sections, there were 24 articles that clearly described the roles the authors specifically performed after each name. The remaining 8 did not list individual roles, but reported the activities of the author group as follows: ‘All other authors provided data, developed models, reviewed results, initiated modeling infrastructure, and/or reviewed and contributed to the report’ (Wang et al., 2016: 1772). For this study, the librarians’ role descriptors were extracted from 24 author-contributions texts showing the authors’ individual roles. As seen in Figure 5, the number of librarian roles ranged from 1 to 7 per article, with an average of 2.67. Thirteen articles described two roles, accounting for the largest share of the publishing outlets.

Table 1.

Number of articles with or without an author-contributions section.

	Number	%
Articles with an author-contributions section	32	47.76
With individual contributor information	24
Without individual contributor information	8
Articles without an author-contributions section	35	52.24
Total	67	100.00

Figure 5.

Number of librarian roles in author-contributions sections.

Table 2 summarizes the roles of the embedded librarians in the three previous studies. The roles in these studies were often the same, but descriptors with the same meaning were referred to variously. For example, ‘teaching’ and ‘instruct research team member who is doing the search’ might be regarded in the same sense. Both roles would have focused on the librarian’s instruction. In this study, the descriptors are similar or related to the same row in Table 2. Table 3 shows the roles of librarians in the 24 author-contributions texts. The most frequent role as a librarian was search strategies (13), followed by data curation (7), read and approved the final manuscript (7) and critical revisions (6). A few reported that the mission of a librarian was study supervision. In the author-contributions texts, roles in the search category – such as search strategies, search the databases and search for trials – were the most common, followed by data-related tasks, such as data curation, data analysis and validation. Writing tasks, such as ‘librarians contributed to critical revision’ or ‘written original draft and methodology’, were sometimes described. Comparing Tables 2 and 3, these librarians generally carried out the same or similar roles. The data librarian in Table 2 is similar to the role in the data category in Table 3. Systematic-review librarians in Table 2 often match the keyword roles of search, writing, project management and final check in Table 3. Conversely, there are some keywords in Table 2 that do not appear in Table 3. Teaching or instruction is a routine task for data librarians and systematic-review librarians (Nesbitt, 2017), but there is no role descriptor for this in the author-contributions texts in Table 3.

Table 2.

Roles of the librarians in the three studies.

Category	Subject/liaison librarian(Si et al., 2019)	Data librarian(Eclevia et al., 2019)	Systematic-review librarian(Desmeules et al., 2016)
Data	Research data management	Data curation and analysis	Execute search of selected databases
Research/ search consultation	Research consultation; research guides	Research support, reference and instructional service	Plan search strategy with research team; have search strategy peer reviewed; search for literature by important authors; execute search for literature cited by eligible studies; execute search of grey literature databases, clinical trial registers and other sources of unpublished information about studies; remove duplicate articles; hand-search selected journals and conference abstracts; screen and select studies
Research methods	Recommendation of research tools	Research methods and statistics; software and tools	Provide training and mentorship on research methods; write search methodology for article
Teaching		Teaching	Instruct research team member who is doing the search
Publishing	Research impact; scholarly publishing	Collaboration and community engagement; professional engagement	Review and approve final draft; critical appraisal of articles
Open access	Open access	Digital repositories
Project support		Project management; management and leadership	Contact study sponsors and others to submit unpublished data

Table 3.

Librarians’ roles in author-contributions sections.

Category	Roles	Frequency	Subtotal
Search	Search strategies	13	20
	Search databases	2
	Search for trials	5
Data	Acquisition of data	1	17
	Data curation	7
	Data analysis	2
	Formal analysis	1
	Resources	1
	Investigation	2
	Interpret data	1
	Validation	2
Writing	Writing – original draft	3	10
	Methodology	1
	Critical revision	6
Technical support	Experiments	1	6
	Reagents/materials/analysis tools	2
	The protocol	2
	Technical support	1
Project management	Conceptualization	2	4
	Study supervision	1
	Administrative support	1
Final check	Read and approve the final manuscript	7	7

Interviews with Korean embedded librarians

Table 4 shows the demographic information of the participating librarians. All three were providing information services and had more than five years of experience as an embedded librarian. The interviewer first asked how collaboration with faculty research teams begins. Librarian A said that most researchers enquire about a search and then realize that they can receive individual instruction in the library; this develops into a request for the librarian to join in with the research while receiving individual instruction. Through a librarian explaining database searching and the library’s resources, the researcher realizes that the support of librarians throughout the study process will help, and decides to suggest co-work. Librarian B’s remarks were analogous to Librarian A’s. It is rare for librarians to join a project from the beginning, and the researcher asks a librarian to participate in a project over the course of inquiries about solving errors caused by searching a database by themselves or in communication with librarians who can recommend the appropriate database via a visit, phone or email. Librarian C also expressed that he frequently received invitations to collaborate from researchers who he had got to know personally while conducting research consultations or guides, adding that new suggestions for joining a team frequently occurred when researchers shared their collaborative results with colleagues.

Table 4.

Interviewees’ personal details.

	Sex	Degree*	Duties	Number of years of embedded service	Number of years as a librarian
Librarian A	Female	Bachelor of Science	Information services, instruction	8	16
Librarian B	Male	Bachelor of Science	Information services	5	8
Librarian C	Male	Bachelor of Science	Information services	5	20

In Korea, most librarians have Bachelor of Science in library and information science.

When asked how they became listed as a co-author, Librarian A answered that, at the end of a project, it was typical practice to inform the project director that she should be named as a co-author. Since 2015, Librarian B has asked researchers to complete a search form and answer the question ‘How will you announce the contribution of the librarian after participating in the project?’ by indicating ‘co-authorship’, ‘acknowledgement’ or ‘not sure’. He stated that this seemed to be an effective approach. It was easier when supporting scholars who had indicated ‘co-authorship’ on the form. This was because they were more inclined to explain carefully the details of what they wanted the librarian to assist them with from the beginning to the end of the project. Librarian C announced that he would actively assist a research team that elaborated on their needs and spent a considerable amount of time communicating with him. Once he became friendly with the team members, he would demand co-authorship. He emphasized that the librarian’s contribution was critical when writing a research methodology section (tables, diagrams and references in end notes), and the granting of co-authorship was a reasonable demand.

Regarding the difficulties encountered in joining a research project, Librarian A mentioned a ‘lack of time’, which indicates insufficient time to conduct searches. She reported that search methods almost always vary according to each database; search skills are disparate; there is much trial and error involved; and the time needed is usually much longer than expected. She stated that she was very sorry when she needed to stop searching at a certain point because there was not enough time to do the work. Moreover, she added that she wanted more librarians to be in an environment where they could provide services freely without being constrained by time. Librarian B said it was difficult when he felt that it was not easy to communicate with a team member. When a team member was unable to state clearly what they wanted, he was sorry that he could not better understand their demands due to being provided with inadequate medical knowledge in advance. Similarly, Librarian C commented that it was the most frustrating to figure out what the researcher actually want to search when given a few words as ‘search request’.

When asked about the policy to actively involve embedded librarians in more research projects, Librarian A said that the answer was to recruit more librarians. Among the various library services, despite research support being a very valuable mission to demonstrate the professionalism of librarians, the number of current librarians is insufficient. Librarian B said that when he first took on the duty of an embedded librarian, he felt burdened due to the lack of guidelines or manuals. He disclosed that he continued to accumulate knowledge and skills while working and shared what he had learned with his peers. While he frequently trained his research team on database searches, he stated that he had learned a lot of medical knowledge and terminology from team members and recorded it for additional support. He suggested that it would be helpful to have regular or occasional workshops with scientists to explain library support to scholars, while also having the opportunity to listen to scholars’ needs. Librarian C pointed out that there was a gap between the LIS department’s curriculum and the duties currently undertaken by embedded librarians, and they were obliged to make efforts to reduce this gap. For instance, he said that there was a need to change and upgrade the curriculum of universities to make them more realistic.

Conclusions

This study explored through data analyses the activities and roles of embedded librarians participating in faculty research projects. The main findings, which were obtained through considering Korean professor–librarian joint articles, author-contributions texts and interviews with embedded librarians, are as follows.

First, the number of faculty and embedded librarian co-authored articles has been increasing over the last decade. Of these articles, medical journals accounted for the largest portion (almost 70%). This appears to be different from the results of a study where the distribution of co-authored articles by librarians around the world in 2015 was 58% in social sciences, 27% in medicine and 19% in computer science (Borrego et al., 2018). When comparing the roles of librarians in author-contributions texts with those in earlier studies, they were generally consistent with regard to the roles/tasks classified by the data, search and writing categories. Meanwhile, whereas teaching or instruction appeared as the typical role of librarians in previous studies, it was not directly reported in the author-contributions texts. In the interviews with the librarians, it was found that, in many cases, one-on-one assistance or a search consultation was often the reason for requesting joint research. The librarian’s co-authorship was achieved via various channels, such as the recommendation of the manager of the project, marking the search application and the librarian themself requesting co-authorship. The librarians revealed difficulties when engaging in projects with regard to a lack of time, insufficient guidelines and an unsatisfactory undergraduate curriculum.

The results of this study show that for a librarian to succeed as a research partner, it is necessary to meet several conditions, both internally and externally. Above all, communication with researchers, including formal and informal discussions, is essential (Nicholson et al., 2017). This is because the librarian wants to know exactly what the research team is demanding, so that they can effectively support searches and data gathering, and consequently reduce the total time required for the study. The librarian and team members should be in close contact from the beginning of the project (Bedi and Walde, 2017). In addition, it should be noted that it is better to negotiate the librarian’s co-authorship verbally during the initial meeting (Desmeules et al., 2016). Embedded librarians need to have knowledge, skills and abilities related to the study to be a research partner. A data librarian’s job description provides valuable insights into the specific knowledge, skills and abilities that embedded librarians need (Eclevia et al., 2019). For instance, research data curation and management, experience in using software and tools, and interpersonal communication skills are necessary for data librarians to work independently and collaboratively.

Training in the knowledge and skills that data librarians need can be easily acquired through the iSchools programme. This programme is also useful for fostering embedded librarians who support research. However, there are only three LIS departments that have opened an iSchool in Korea (iSchools, 2020), and it is hard to compensate for the gap between the required knowledge and abilities of embedded librarians and the current LIS curriculum. In Korea and countries other than the USA and those in Europe, it is desirable, in order to alleviate this gap, for LIS departments to offer basic courses in data curation, data management and data preservation, for example, even if iSchool is not present. Continuing education classes for librarians will also help. The Research Support Ambassador programme at the University of Cambridge (Sewell and Kingsley, 2017) and the systematic-review class of the Health Sciences Library System at the University of Pittsburgh (Folb et al., 2020) are examples.

It also requires understanding and encouragement within the library organization of librarians who are participating as research collaborators. A librarian whose research outcomes are considered in their retention, tenure and promotion will accept research participation as a natural part of their career path (Hart, 2000). In addition, a cooperative institutional culture would offer fertile ground for promoting co-authored publications (Tran and Chan, forthcoming).

One limitation is that this study focused only on research collaborators and co-authorship activities with respect to embedded librarian roles. Embedded librarians also play a prominent role in supporting material in online learning, teaching information literacy and providing access to library resources in class (Abrizah et al., 2016). The roles of embedded librarians are manifold, and their contributions to academia are significant. It will be helpful when research on the role of embedded librarians and research collaborators has been completed, and their endeavours are recognized in the workplace. The roles of embedded librarians will then become core competencies for the 21st-century academic librarian.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Eun-Ja Shin

Author biography

Eun-Ja Shin, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Sejong University, South Korea. She served as a chief librarian in the library and databank of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. Her research interests include academic librarianship, information-sharing, journal publishing and scholarly communication. Her research has been published in Interlending and Document Supply, Libri, Serials Review and Journal of Information Science. She has been a visiting scholar at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. For many years, she sat on the editorial board of the Journal of the Korean Society for Information Management. She has also been vice-president of the Korean Society for Information Management. She has an excellent track record in education and research, including awards for Sejong’s best teacher and best researcher.

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