Embedded librarianship has become one of the hottest topics of professional conversation in academic library circles, and this essay collection edited by Erin McCaffrey and Elizabeth Leonard provides a broad overview of how librarians can embed themselves in higher education using a wide array of online tools. The dozen essays in this volume provide case studies, best practices, and literature reviews that analyze how librarians can leverage technology, such as learning management systems, online videos, social networking sites, and other library-related products, to collaborate with faculty and reach students in their virtual learning spaces. As with many such collections, the reader might lose sight of the forest for the trees while delving into specific stories of what did or did not work in various libraries’ explorations into virtual embeddedness, but the book does ultimately give a roadmap of different directions that libraries can take to engage with their academic constituencies in an online medium.

The first part of the collection offers a historical overview of online embedded librarianship and defines the terms for analyzing the role of embedded librarians in the contemporary academic library community. Part two outlines four examples of how online embedded librarians have successfully established a presence in virtual learning at universities across the world. Chapters on embedding librarians in online graduate programs, military distance education courses, and the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand demonstrate how librarians can engage with patrons even in a virtual environment. This section concludes by providing the embedded librarian with a virtual toolkit of Web 2.0 applications, such a blogs, wikis, social bookmarking sites, and other resources, that can help them connect with patrons. Following this, the collection examines how embedded librarians can work with faculty outside the classroom and can contribute to the instructional design process. The final section contains three chapters on scaling and sustaining online embedded librarianship through the use of student librarians, online widgets in the course management system (Blackboard in this instance), and LibGuides. The last chapter offers some thoughts on how academic librarians might seek to embed themselves in the still somewhat uncharted territories of MOOCs.

This showcase of online embedded partnerships provides examples for readers seeking approaches to reaching faculty and students in the increasingly virtual realm of academe. It does not give a comprehensive, step-by-step blueprint for how to implement such programs, but it does help readers identify the issues and processes they will need to consider as they investigate new ways of online engagement with their patron base.