Author Archives: vew908

What I’ve Favourited on Twitter Lately

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by Virginia Wilson
Director, Centre of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

I click on a lot of stars on Twitter. Clicking on the star marks a tweet as a favourite and the idea is that I will go back to these favourites and read whatever it is that first interested me in more depth. Most often, these faves include a link to a blog post or an article that I don’t want to lose track of. What I’ve found is that while well-intentioned, I rarely go back to these stars and explore further. To that end, I’m going to dig through my Twitter favourites and include some of them here. This will serve as double duty: I can get a look at these fascinating links that sparked something in me when I first saw them and I can share them out to hopefully spark you as well. Here we go!

• @Write4Research posted a link to the LSE Impact Blog with the following tweet: “Focus and credibility will help academic blogs thrive but negative perceptions must be challenged.” Turns out this tweet is the title of the blog post and I find it very interesting especially as C-EBLIP has just embarked on this academic blog. I believe there are many good reasons to blog from our own professional perspectives and the author of this post, Achilleas Kostoulas, a Postgraduate Researcher at the University of Manchester, lists quite a few of them plus lots more interesting tidbits. Here’s the link to the LSE post: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/04/focus-credibility-academic-blogging-kostoulas/

• @EBLIP8 posted the call for conference submissions. I’m particularly excited about this as the 8th International Evidence Based Library and Information Practice conference is going to be held July 6-8, 2015 in Brisbane, Australia and I’m going! I’m hoping to have something to present and I’d better get at is because the call for proposals closes on October 13, 2014. http://eblip8.info/2014/08/03/call-for-contributions-now-open/

• @dededawson, a colleague of mine at the University Library, U of S, posted this tweet: More evidence of the OA citation effect. OA articles viewed & cited more than subscription articles. Here’s the link: http://www.nature.com/press_releases/ncomms-report.html DeDe writes an Open Access blog and you can access that here: http://words.usask.ca/openaccess/

• A list of all Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) on Twitter. Twitter allows for the creation of lists and Kitt McGoveran (@kittmcg) created a list of CARL libraries that post on twitter. Here’s the url: https://twitter.com/kittmcg/lists/carl-libraries

• @LibrarySherpa posted “How to be a social media team of one: 7 tips.” These are 7 powerful tips! http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-be-a-social-media-team-of-one-7-tips/

Here are a few of my favourite tweets that don’t include links. It’s amazing how helpful a 140-character (or less) post can be!

• @MariaJGrant: Writing Tip: The *perfect* word/sentence isnt essential to communicate ideas but words/sentences are. Write them down & start communicating!
• @bfister: I think librarians can and should be awesome themselves, not just invisible team members.
• @LibSkrat: I’ll say this as often as I need to: judging a person’s career by the JIF of the journals they publish in is unethical and stupid.
• @ChristineWalde: What’s one of the best things about #librarians doing #research in #LIS? We get to lead the conversation about libraries
• @melioravit: “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” ― Christopher Hitchens

I find Twitter to be an excellent way to keep up professionally. I created my account in 2009 (@VirginiaPrimary) but it took me a few years of only tweeting at conferences to really jump on board and make it part of my daily routine.

This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

Librarians Need to “Walk the Talk” on OA Publishing: C-EBLIP Journal Club, July 17, 2014

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by DeDe Dawson
Science Library, University of Saskatchewan

This post discusses a recent article in In the Library with the Lead Pipe:

Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals by Micah Vandegrift & Chealsye Bowley

Librarians are at the forefront of many discussions and actions related to advancing the open access movement. We often talk about the need to change the culture of researchers in academia. Researchers need to understand the importance of the issues and their rights as authors – then put this into action by changing their scholarly communications practices. It is the researchers that have the real power to create change in academic publishing. By “researchers” though we’re usually referring to the disciplinary faculty we support… but what about researching librarians?

Increasingly, librarians are publishing researchers in their own right. Indeed, it is a job requirement of many academic librarians. So why isn’t there a stronger movement within our own community of scholars to change our scholarly communications systems, and culture, to be more open? Even though we preach to other researchers at our institutions about the benefits of publishing in gold OA journals, or archiving copies of manuscripts in repositories, we have a dismal track record of following through on this ourselves.

Vandegrift and Bowley review the literature in this area and conclude:
“Taken together, the research could lead one to think that academic librarians are invested in changes to the scholarly publishing system about as little as disciplinary faculty and are just as cautious about evolving their own publishing habits.”

So, there is a problem – but what is the solution? The authors of this paper hope to ignite this discussion among librarians with their analysis of the openness of the main Library and Information Science (LIS) journals in our field. They adapt the “How Open Is It?” scale produced by SPARC/PLOS to propose a new measure: the “Journal Openness Index” (J.O.I.). And proceed to code 111 LIS journals according to this criteria, then apply the J.O.I. Factor to 11 “prestige” LIS journals (as identified by Nixon, 2013).

Information Technology and Libraries, published by Library and Information Technology Association/ALA, comes out on top with another ALA publication, College & Research Libraries (C&RL), close behind (see Table 2). Unsurprisingly, commercial publishers land at the bottom of the list. An aside: In the Library with the Lead Pipe runs on a blog-style format which allows comments and discussion at the end of the article. There is an interesting back and forth in the Comments between the current editor of C&RL and Vandegrift.

The authors intend that this application of the J.O.I. Factor serves as a “proof of concept”, and encourage others to use their coded data on the 111 journals (posted as a Google doc and in FigShare). They end the article with this:

“It is our hope that this article prompts furious and fair debate, but mostly that it produces real, substantive evolution within our profession, how we research, how we assign value to scholarship, and how we share the products of our intellectual work.”
The article did receive a flurry of attention back in April 2014 when first posted (see some of the trackbacks in the Comments section), but this has now died down. I share the authors’ desire for furious and fair debate in this arena. However, I am continually surprised, and disappointed, by the apparent apathy of many librarians on scholarly communications topics – especially related to their own research output. How can we account for this?

Our C-EBLIP Journal Club met today to discuss this article and also the topic of librarian values regarding their own research/publishing activities. We had a wide-ranging and compelling discussion… but kept arriving back at the distorted importance placed on various metrics like the impact factor. We need to satisfy our tenure and promotion committees just as any other faculty member. So, long-standing traditional proxies for “quality” are slow to change.
We did not solve all the problems of the [academic] world at Journal Club today, but I think we came a little closer to some understanding of what some of those problems are.

Bowley, C., & Vandegrift, M. (2014). Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/healthyself/

This blog post was originally posted on the blog, Open Access @ UofS Library.

This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

Liminality, or what’s in the space between the roles of librarian and researcher

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by Virginia Wilson
Director, Centre of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of liminal space ever since my undergrad in English at the U of S. I believe it was first brought to my attention by Professor Parkinson in either a Medieval English or a Fantasy class. It was summertime, anyway. At the time, it came up in the Victor Turner cultural anthropology sense around rites of passage. Then there’s this definition of “liminal” in the Oxford English Dictionary online:

Liminal: Characterized by being on a boundary or threshold, esp. by being transitional or intermediate between two states, situations, etc. (OED online)

My two states or situations are that of librarian and researcher. One of the main reasons I wanted to work in an academic setting was the idea that I could conduct research; that I could be an academic as well as a librarian. That’s always been a strong appeal for me. I was lucky in that the University of Saskatchewan Library has a robust requirement for research that I’ve embraced. In my 9 years at the U of S, I’ve discovered that many of my colleagues also have been attracted to the research component, although it’s not all easy, all the time.

What I like about the idea of liminality is that it can be either/or and both/and. I can be either a librarian or a researcher. I can be both a librarian and a researcher. I can wear one hat. I can wear two hats. (/Dr. Suess) There’s a flexibility in the space between being a librarian and a researcher. It contains both and it’s fluid and constantly shifting. That seems to suit the current climate, doesn’t it? Change is the new black so you might as well hunker down and hang on as best you can. But it’s not about just hanging on. It’s surviving and thriving in that mysterious liminal space between librarian and researcher. How?

I’ve been thinking, writing, and doing research about librarians as researchers for a couple of years now, and I started within my own context. I first thought about why librarians do research. The first things I came up with (and remember, this is from out of my own head based on what I was experiencing myself – going for tenure and promotion as a librarian faculty member) was “so that we can get tenure and then promotion” and then “because we have to.” There wasn’t a lot of talk about other reasons to conduct research. The academic requirements are vast and at times overpowering. Well, that didn’t seem to be enough, or sustainable! There had to be more of a reason to do research other than the fact that we need to do research to get tenure. No wonder librarians can feel uneasy about the research process. There’s this constant need to quantify so we can put together the right basket of goodies in order to move forward in our careers. What we need to unpack is what is underneath the output. We need the why before we can get to the how and the what of research.

While it is important to have guidelines on what requirements need to be met, attention needs to be given to the other aspects of why research is important, and important in our academic context. It’s important outside of the academic context, too. To me, the focus on LIS research should be on research as it enriches our discipline, enables our practice, and contributes to our immediate communities and beyond. I sometimes get the sense that we might not feel a part of the University research landscape. No, we are not researching new vaccines, or cures for diseases, or ways to conserve water, or feed hungry people. But our research, research as it pertains to our practice as librarians, can enrich the profession as a whole. With a mandate for research, librarians here are in a unique position to be able to pursue their research interests, research various areas of practice, and implement research findings in order to better serve our user groups on and off campus. And as practitioner-researchers, we come at things from the perspective of practice. We’re not looking at issues from a wholly theoretical vantage point, although our research can indeed be theoretical. We’re in the trenches, doing the work, and finding ways to get things done. We’re existing in that liminal space between librarian and researcher, where the lines are blurred and we’re wearing both hats simultaneously. When librarian-research is set alongside research coming from LIS scholars, I think we can get a more complete picture.

If research is perceived to be a meaningful process by which we add to the body of knowledge in our field and contribute to our professional practice, we as librarian-researchers can perhaps have an easier relationship with our research pursuits. Adding meaning for ourselves and seeing the larger value of our research endeavours can add focus to our tasks as researchers and provide comfort in our liminal space.

This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

What’s All This About Evidence? C-EBLIP Journal Club, June 9, 2014

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by Virginia Wilson
Director, Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

On June 9 over lunch, the C-EBLIP Journal Club met for the first time with 9 librarians in attendance. The plan is to meet every 6 weeks or so, and dates have been set until May 2015 to get us going. The club will run around rotating convenors, with the convenor’s role being to choose an article to discuss, book the meeting space, send out meeting announcements and reminder emails, lead the journal club discussion, and write up a discussion summary for the blog. I convened the first meeting and here’s how it went.

Article:
Koufogiannakis, D. (2012). Academic librarians’ conception and use of evidence sources in practice. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 7(4): 5-24. https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/18072

1. Brief summary of article

This is a qualitative study using grounded theory methodology that addresses these research questions: What forms of evidence do academic librarians use when making professional decisions? Why do they use these types of evidence? How do academic librarians incorporate research into their professional decision making? Koufogiannakis recruited 19 academic librarian participants using purposeful sampling (in other words, she looked for a particular population – librarians who “had some interest in exploring the use of evidence in relation to their professional decision-making” (p. 8)). These librarians kept a private blog diary for a month, noting questions or problems related to their professional practice and how they came to resolve those issues. She followed up with semi-structured phone interviews which enabled her to clarify and get a deeper analysis of specific aspects participants noted in their diaries. The results of this study include two variations of evidence: hard and soft, and the librarians in the study used both kinds to inform decision-making. They often didn’t think of the soft types of evidence as real evidence, but were using them in conjunction with the harder forms of evidence such as the research literature to inform their practice. The piece concludes with the idea that EBLIP needs to expand to include a wide variety of evidence types to “bring the EBLIP model closer to one that has truly considered the needs of librarians” (p. 21).

2. Discussion Summary
In retrospect, it is a difficult process to fully participate in a journal club discussion and to take notes for some kind of discussion summary after the fact. The following discussion points are highly contextual. The journal club discussion was informal and conversational, allowing us to take different roads.

• The discussion began with general impressions of the article and these impressions included praise for the clarity of the writing and an appreciation for the articulation and demonstration of material that at first glance seemed obvious but upon deeper reading revealed itself to be thought-provoking and meaningful.
• There was some discussion about the sample of librarians who participated in the study – how was that sample generated, were the librarians similar to the researcher, what would be the implications of that?
• The article takes a broad view of what is considered evidence. A comment was made that we are still so uncertain and that the article highlights an ongoing struggle. Other people may not accept the soft evidence. As librarians we can evaluate sources and all have the potential to have something to offer. Where it can get complex for us (as librarians) is the fact that we serve other research communities. We sometimes inherit those value systems through that work.
• There was a comment about the reflective nature of the research and someone commented that the humanities are doing the same kind of introspective things.
• The discussion moved to evidence based practice in health/medicine. In many models of EBP, the focus seems to be only on the research and not the other two aspects (professional knowledge/expertise; user/client/patient preference).
• Why aren’t librarians going to their associations for information/evidence, i.e. ACRL – tools, checklists, etc.?
• Is soft evidence used in the absence of hard evidence? After this question arose, there was a discussion around the designations of the terms “hard” and “soft.” Is the designation imposing some kind of bias? These are not neutral terms. Why have we as a culture or a society determined a hierarchy for these terms? What other terms might have been used to classify these two types of evidence? We couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t hierarchical to some extent, and we put that down to the idea that we are organizers by nature.
• If the definition of evidence is expanding, does it not just dilute everything? i.e. describing our situation versus prescribing a direction
• Tacit knowledge: gut reactions help to pose the questions which ideally we go on to explore. The impetus to “prove it” helps to solidify thoughts. We often don’t believe our own knowledge is good or that it’s appropriate proof.
• We need to get away from the idea that right and wrong are forever. Need a new standard that allows for new knowledge and flexibility.

This was a great article with which to kick off the C-EBLIP Journal Club. Not only did we discuss the particulars of the research reported in the article, it also acted as a catalyst that sparked a professional discussion that we may well not have had without it about how we practice as librarians and what it means to practice in a evidence-based way.

This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

Welcome to the Launch of Brain-Work, C-EBLIP’s Blog!

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by Virginia Wilson
Director, Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

The Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (C-EBLIP) officially came into being on July 1, 2013, created by the University Library, University of Saskatchewan, for the benefit of the University Library. C-EBLIP’s mission in brief is to support librarians as researchers and to promote evidence based library and information practice. And while activities have been held over the past year particularly for University Library librarians (i.e. workshops, seminars, a journal club, and discussion groups) there are some activities that look outwards from the local context. C-EBLIP recognizes the benefits of engaging with librarians and libraries outside of our own milieu as a way to facilitate collaboration, sharing, and idea creation, as well as to contribute to the development of a national culture of research amongst academic librarians and libraries. If the messages and the methods stray further than the national context, so much the better!

That said, welcome to Brain-Work’s summer 2014 launch! Brain-Work, the C-EBLIP blog, is a multi-authored blog (although this summer you’ll mostly hear from me) broadly covering topics related to research, evidence based library and information practice, and librarianship. This blog is inspired by the London School of Economics’ The Impact Blog (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/) as well as Scholarly Kitchen (http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/) and other topnotch multi-authored, academic blogs. The blog title, Brain-Work, comes from a Sherlock Holmes quote in Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, The Sign of the Four. In it, Holmes states, “I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?” Holmes also asserts, in A Study in Scarlet, that “there is nothing like first-hand evidence.” So despite some of his more extreme character traits, Sherlock Holmes seems like a good muse for this blog.

Why a blog?

Academic blogging is becoming more popular and more prevalent. Martin Weller states that “in terms of intellectual fulfillment, creativity, networking, impact, productivity, and overall benefit to [his] scholarly life, blogging wins hands down.” (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Virtues-of-Blogging-as/131666/). Mark Carrigan reminds us that “academic blogging does not take place in a vacuum. It is grounded in existing research and expertise. The flexibility it affords allows this relationship to be a dynamic one – blogging can be underwritten by research conducted, in progress or is merely planned. It also provides a degree of space and freedom to extend beyond the realms of research.” (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/02/04/the-value-of-academic-blogging/) Librarians at the University of Saskatchewan are faculty members with requirements for research and publication tied to tenure and promotion activities and an obligation as academic citizens to create and disseminate new knowledge. This blog is an in-between space that allows for certain types of discourse that run beyond or prior to the traditional journal article or conference presentation.

The intent of this blog is to be a space for thoughts and ideas that perhaps are not yet ready for research or a more formal journal article. It will be a space for our voices to be heard, and a space that allows us to explore our ideas in a more public forum. Not only will it be beneficial to librarians internal to the University Library, it will also be an activity (like the C-EBLIP Fall Symposium: Librarians as Researchers) that turns outward and engages with people from outside of the University Library.

Raising issues, discussing current events and trends, mulling stuff over – all will be welcome on this blog. We are anticipating posts that have some depth and substance, and that can get readers thinking and ideally participating in a conversation. This blog will be written by folks internal to our library. As well, guests from other areas and other institutions will contribute blog posts. The guest posters will be designated as Adjunct Members of C-EBLIP. I’m pleased to announce that Frank Winter and David Fox, Librarians Emeriti to the University Library, and Denise Koufogiannakis from the University of Alberta are our first Adjunct Members and will be participating in Centre blogging activities. If you would like more information about participating as an Adjunct Member, contact me at virginia.wilson@usask.ca. Comments are welcome and stay tuned for the next posting as we anticipate a weekly Tuesday post.

This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

C-EBLIP Blog is Coming Soon

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The Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (C-EBLIP) resides in the University Library (Murray building), University of Saskatchewan. It will also soon reside online, right here! Watch this space.