Olga Koz

As I prepared for my promotion, I contacted faculty, students, researchers, and colleagues to gauge my impact and added value. One response from the faculty underscores the effect of my work, “I didn’t know that librarians can do that.” At my current university, from the beginning, I offered an embedded and on-site librarian service model that led to collaboration with the college faculty and administration in collection development, co-teaching, and building the college research infrastructure. This model allows the college to graduate more doctoral students and increase the productivity of their research teams, which played an essential role in gaining R2 status for the whole university.

One of my main contributions is teaching thesis and dissertation writers how to conduct a literature review. As you know, only a few universities offer such courses, and it took some time to move from the literature review “bootcamps” or a series of webinars to a credit course. Nothing can compare to the immediate gratification of “your” student defending the dissertation and acknowledging your role.

The most impactful inputs are the results of teamwork. Our team of graduate librarians not only built new services for graduate students but organized the first national conference, “ Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students.” I joined the college faculty in creating a community of practice for researchers, “Research Consortium,” and was fortunate to assist with many research endeavors. One such initiative was the creation of the Interactive Research Methods Lab, where I continue to serve as IRML librarian and methodologist. This is a novel library service model where an academic librarian is embedded into the research process and integrates library resources into each research step. Drs. Jorrin-Abellan and I were awarded first place and received the Sage Innovators Award for this innovation. The work in the lab allowed me to offer a new service, evidence synthesis support for research teams, and design tutorials and guides on using AI for literature discovery and review.