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As Users See Us: The Library Liaison Program
Elizabeth M. Mahan
Associate Extension Professor
Institute of Public Service International
Latin America and the Caribbean pose particular challenges for those who undertake to become "area experts." In the first place, Latin American and Caribbean Studies denotes an interdisciplinary field of study; second, it presumes that students and faculty pursuing knowledge in this field will do so in languages other than English, especiallly Spanish and Portuguese. Students in Latin American Studies must become familiar with this region (which comprises the area south of the Rio Grande and north of Tierra del Fuego, plus the islands of the Caribbean) from the perspectives of history, political science, literature, the arts, anthropology, and sociology, to say nothing of the possibilities offered by fields like tropical ecology, development economics, education, law, business, or public health. How can this potential interdisciplinary overload be managed so that students don't simply dabble in bits of knowledge but rather become deeply and broadly knowledgeable about the region?
Part of the answer lies in the mission of UConn's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, which offers faculty from the above-mentioned fields a locus for combining their various research and teaching specialties into coherent programs of study for undergraduate and graduate students. The Center provides administrative and academic support for Latin Americanist faculty and oversees the coherence and quality of the undergraduate certificate, BA, and MA programs.
Coherence and quality, however, are more than administrative matters; they depend on knowledge of and access to scholarly resources that support the various fields contributing to Latin American Studies and that permit students to build bridges across disciplines, to take the first step toward true interdisciplinary understanding. Established and fledgling Latin Americanists at UConn depend on the library to provide these two key buffers against interdisciplinary overload. Through the Library Liaison Program, we gain knowledge and access, thanks to the efforts of Darlene Waller, our "very own" (though we share her with the Political Science Department) information specialist. Darlene's services to the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies span the usual library liaison contacts with a single department: she keeps the Latin Americanist faculty informed about what's new in the library in their fields; she oversees the acquisition of Latin America-related materials in a variety of disciplines, formats and languages; and she consults with us over the implementation of new library programs and procedures.
We rely on her, too, for instructional support in two interdisciplinary seminars. Our senior seminar (LAMS 290) provides one three-hour class period for hands-on bibliographic instruction in the library, focused on students' research topics. Beginning Master's students in the Latin American Studies Proseminar (LAMS 390) spend three sessions in the library learning how information on Latin America is organized and how to retrieve it. These are not examples of shipping students off to the library for a tour and a talk. In both cases, Darlene has been involved in course planning so as to schedule work in the library at times that permit the students to be active learners and researchers, not just listeners.
In addition to helping to plan and teach the senior capstone seminar and the introductory graduate seminar, Darlene provides tours (on occasion in Spanish) of UConn's Latin American library resources for visiting scholars; she writes a regular column in our semi-annual newsletter, Ariel, updating faculty and students on what's new in the library's collections or on the electronic information retrieval horizon; and she participates in our extracurricular program, faithfully attending colloquia and conferences, many of which she has helped organize.
Taking advantage of the Library Liaison Program, we in Latin American and Caribbean Studies have integrated Darlene Waller into our programs. She is, in effect, an adjunct faculty member, making the library a focal point for our students and the strong anchor for our academic programs.
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