During my freshman year, I was assigned an extensive research project for my upper-level history class. I struggled to find a topic and relevant sources, overwhelmed by the vast pool of knowledge Dartmouth libraries had to offer. Unsure of how to proceed, I confided in my professor, who advised me to make an appointment with a research librarian. It turned out to be the best advice I could have received.
Dartmouth’s research librarians are one of the most unique and under-appreciated services on campus. Each of the College’s 20 research librarians serves as the expert on at least one academic subject, from chemistry to medieval and Renaissance studies. These librarians provide a variety of research services, including individual consultations and in-depth guides of databases and sources for each subject.
According to head of research and learning Jennifer Natale, librarians also manage the libraries’ collections and databases, subscribe to information sources and facilitate outreach between the library and the greater Dartmouth community. These services are not only accessible to students but also to faculty and staff, Natale added.
“A research librarian could be doing any number of things such as purchasing books for the collection [and] reviewing what new publications have come out in order to make decisions on those,” Natale said. “We also make decisions on all the databases of which ones we subscribe to and manage the budget that we have for those items.”
Despite their academic expertise, research librarians feel that their resource value is “not even remotely” used enough, according to Wendel Cox, the English, creative writing, government and history subjects librarian. Cox said he feels his job is to connect students with the library to help them “undertake the pursuit of information.”
“[Research librarians are] kind of like a conjunction … between the community that the libraries serve, and that has all sorts of different constituents: staff, faculty [and] students,” Cox said.
Research librarians often form those connections through consultations. Students can book an appointment online with the librarian relevant to their subject of interest, who can help them locate sources, discuss potentially useful databases and learn more about their research subject. Lily Sweeney ’25, who enlisted the help of Spanish subject librarian Jill Baron for a research project she undertook in SPAN 53, Topics in Spanish Linguistics, Rhetoric and Poetics, added that her consultation was “really helpful and really easy.”
“I just sent her [Baron] a blurb about what my topic was about and what my research question was,” Sweeney said. “Then, we met, and we talked about a few databases and she helped me pull up a few sources.”
Librarians often tailor their consultations to the needs of a given student, Natale explained. When working with first-year students, Natale said she often starts with a broader approach, asking students to share their research ideas before searching for relevant sources.
“We might help [students] refine [their research topic] a little bit based on what we find when we do some searching,” she said. “So, in those cases, we’re often showing students the basics: how do you search for information, and how do you use basic tools?”
Sweeney, who works as an RWIT student tutor, said she often recommends that her pupils make appointments with a research librarian. The library’s resources, she believes, can offer resources that may have been previously inaccessible to some students — or nonexistent in some of their high schools.
“For first-year students or people coming to college for the first time who don’t have a lot of experience with the research process, I think the research librarians are super helpful,” Sweeney said.
In addition to consultations, research librarians offer a host of other resources, including research guides and databases available to Dartmouth students. Librarians curate designated research guides for their subjects of expertise, complete with top databases and sources.
Although research librarians have backgrounds in both library science and their academic field of expertise, they may also advise on subjects that are not necessarily within — but “stretch” into — their concentration, according to Cox. For example, while Cox is a historian by training, he also serves as the subject librarian in three other fields because of his Humanities background. Natale noted that research librarians have a skill set that can be applied to any discipline, even outside their areas of expertise.
“We just lean into the fact that we know about information and about searching and evaluating information and being critical … [even] if we don’t have the disciplinary expertise,” Natale said.
Although research librarians are available to all students, in Cox’s experience, students begin visiting him more often during their sophomore summer when they realize that “there are things that [they] know that [they] don’t know.”
While research librarians can prove to be critical student resources, Natale said there seems to be a disconnect between the two. Natale encouraged students to take advantage of research librarians, who are there to make studying easier, she explained.
“We are a service, so to speak, that [students have] already paid for … so why not get a little bit of extra help with brainstorming your topic or finding articles?” Natale said. “It just really can kind of take you up to the next level, so why not?”
Some faculty members even invite research librarians into their classes to support students through the research process. Baron’s visit to Sweeney’s class, for instance, made Sweeney more comfortable with scheduling an appointment to further discuss her paper, she said.
“[Baron] came to speak with our class a few times throughout the term, so we were working pretty closely with her,” Sweeney said. “I had never done a research paper in Spanish before, so I didn’t really know how to access resources and databases in Spanish. I scheduled an appointment with her, and it was so easy.”
Sweeney said she would recommend professors host research librarians in class more often, in an effort to boost collaboration.
“Something that would be helpful is definitely going to speak with a class … that’s a good reminder that they exist,” Sweeney said.
