Outreach by academic libraries can take on nearly as many meanings as there are libraries. Outreach Librarian Darren G. Poley addressed the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries (ACRL-DVC) spring meeting at the Goodstay Center of the University of Delaware in Wilmington, Del., on April 20, 2012.

He talked about the path Falvey Memorial Library chose in its effort to navigate what it means to do outreach in the university setting.

Poley discussed the varied scholarly communication-related projects Falvey’s Outreach team works on, and how, at the same time, the team serves both the Library and Villanova University by reaching out to the scholarly community. Some of the team’s activities include developing academic and social event programs, mounting regular cultural displays, hosting online journals and encouraging digital publishing, and maintaining the institutional bibliography as it relates to both recording faculty publications and documenting University-wide intellectual contributions.

“Scholarly outreach is about a library proactively engaging the increasingly transitional academic community it serves,” says Poley. His talk focused on ways to innovate with scholarly communication using the intellectual and cultural initiatives academic libraries are uniquely positioned to support, thereby fostering scholarly outreach and community development. The theme of the ACRL-DVC program was “Stepping Out, Stepping Up: Making a Difference on Campus.”

Poley, a librarian at Falvey since 1999, has been coordinating programming and outreach for the Library since 2005. He is the Events & Outreach team leader, as well as an instructor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University.

Also contributing: Gerald Dierkes and Laura Hutelmyer