Librarians Matter: A New Materialist Perspective on the Professional Expertise of Liaison Librarians

This thesis employs a new materialist approach to explore liaison librarians’ professional expertise. It examines the role of liaison librarians teaching students and researchers how to search for and access scholarly literature provided by library platforms. Power over decisions about the preservation of the scholarly record, access to research, measurement of the value of scholarly output, and the future shape of professional and academic work in universities increasingly resides within these platforms. The measuring mechanisms of library platforms have material consequences for academics and students, enacting some as valued and excluding others. University libraries are implicated in this measurement.