Just-in-case or just-in-time? An examination of the timing and duration of an online embedded librarian in an online English course

Students are increasingly participating in online courses. This increased participation in online courses can result in students being more distant from their campuses, thus receiving a different kind of service from their institution. Along with this increase in participation in online courses is the increase in availability of information online. Librarians are actively working to provide services to distance learning students, with the knowledge that these students are expected to produce high quality researched work in college with little to no access of the physical library. This often results in librarians embedding in online courses to improve students' information literacy skills. Librarians have found great success when embedding in online courses, yet often indicate that the time required for such projects is a challenge.;This study focused on the embedment of a librarian in four sections of an online English II course at a community college. The purpose of the study was to examine the timing and duration of the embedded librarian in the course and the impact on students' information literacy skills. The librarian embedded in three sections of the course for a two-week duration, and embedded in one section of the course for a full-semester.;Students' information literacy skills were measured by their performance on two course assignments, a library research assignment and citation analysis of a researched essay. Results indicate that students' information literacy skills were not significantly different regardless of the timing or duration of the embedded librarian. This suggests that librarians can effectively provide embedded librarian services to students in courses for a duration other than the entire semester, which allows librarians to provide embedded services to more courses each semester.