Embedded Records Management: A Case Study Emphasizing the Importance of Community as a Key to Success

Abstract

Embedded librarianship has become increasingly common; however, this concept has not been widely applied to other information professions. We first survey the literature on embedded librarianship as a model of service delivery with a view to identifying those criteria that are considered essential to its success. Next, we demonstrate how best practices in embedded librarianship can inspire and inform a similar practice in another sector of the information professions, namely records management. We present and evaluate a pilot project where a records manager was embedded within the quality assurance team in the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the University of Ottawa. In particular, we consider how community-building efforts contributed to the success of this project.