Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2026
Abstract
The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical paradox that poses a question of identity: If you repair every plank of a ship, replacing each with new wood, at what point does the ship cease to be the same ship? This is a useful metaphor for academic liaison librarians to consider when thinking about outreach to departments: your relationship to a department as a whole consists of the component connections, which change as individuals retire or leave. The goals of this chapter are to acknowledge the primacy of relationships in library outreach (and the consequences to the library of those relationships ending) and to advocate for librarians to apply principles from organizational behavior to make their outreach efforts more effective.
Recommended Citation
Witt, Alan, "Rebuilding the Ship of Theseus: Navigating Faculty-Librarian Relationships Through Changing Waters" (2026). Milne Library. 25.
https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/library-research/25
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.