Speaking of Books… Connecting with Faculty through a Campus Author Series

Abstract

A faculty author speaker series is an effective way to build bridges between academic librarians and the teaching faculty, as well as raise the profile of the university library. To explore the challenges and rewards of hosting such a series, this article presents a history of the series “Speaking of Books… Conversations with Campus Authors” at the University of Maryland. It discusses the details of planning and executing author events, in the hope that others can use this information to host their own lecture series. Finally, it presents a few ideas for future directions of the faculty author series.