Why won't they answer me?: Understanding the barriers to communication between libraries and non-librarian faculty about collection development and scholarly communication

In order to make wise decisions about which resources to acquire or which to cut, libraries often reach out to teaching and research faculty throughout their institution. The same is true when libraries wish to inform faculty about the causes and consequences of the serials crisis as well as the educational and economic impact of new developments in scholarly communication. These communication efforts take a wide variety of forms ranging from emails to town halls. And while some result in robust involvement from faculty, all too many do not.

In this session we describe the results of a series of studies we undertook to better understand what makes some communication attempts successful and others unsuccessful. In the first study, we surveyed non-library faculty from U.S. universities and asked them to identify the conditions that would be most likely to lead them to respond to an inquiry from a librarian. For the second study we interviewed a portion of the survey participants to learn more about how librarians should frame their questions and messages to encourage useful responses. In the third study, we surveyed librarians from U.S. universities to learn about their assumptions regarding the communication preferences of non-library faculty. And for the fourth study we interviewed a portion of the survey participants to learn about communication strategies they have found to be successful or unsuccessful.

Attendees will leave the session with examples of successful strategies for communicating with faculty as well as an understanding of the discrepancies between what faculty want us to say to them and what we think they want us to say. This knowledge will enable attendees to improve their own attempts to engage faculty in conversations that we think should be of interest to them.

Sponsored by RUSA-CODES