Tag Archives: research

The Sound of Music: What do you listen to when you write?

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by Jaclyn McLean
Collection Services, University Library
University of Saskatchewan

Creating the right environment when you need to fully engage your brain, whether you’re reading some difficult theory, writing a research article, or learning something new, is important, and different for everyone. As a new tenure-track librarian embarking on the adventure of conducting research and writing about what I learn, I am interested in how others shape their audio environment for success. So I threw the question out to my social media networks and colleagues the last couple of weeks, and was surprised by some of the results.

First, the data:

  • 24 respondents
  • 18 of them librarians

Some people gave multiple responses, as their preferences are changeable. Here’s how the responses broke down:

  • 12 – Instrumental/classical/jazz
  • 8 – Silence
  • 6 – Music with words
  • 5 – Ambient
  • 1 – Cars, the movie

As I expected, ambient background noise or music with no words (classical, jazz, nature sounds with orchestra) were near the top, but as someone who almost constantly has some kind of music playing, I was surprised by how many people say their ideal state is silence. Clearly, this is a very personal choice, and you, dear reader, probably have your own preferences.

If you’re interested in reading more about the link between music and productivity, this (http://www.sparringmind.com/music-productivity/) is worth a read (and also has some great online playlists if you want to try something different). If you want to know what the New York Times thinks about listening to music while you’re working, then check this out (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/jobs/how-music-can-improve-worker-productivity-workstation.html). If you want to see some of the research that’s been done, then this is the one for you (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048). In a very timely coincidence, this article about musical preferences and cognitive styles (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131151) was published on July 22 in PLOS ONE, and the national media is already picking it up (http://music.cbc.ca/#!/blogs/2015/7/Your-musical-tastes-reveal-how-you-think-a-new-study).

My best takeaway from this informal survey is some new music to listen to as I try to find my own preferences in this new kind of work. I know what I prefer when I’m at my desk, librarianing at my usual tasks, but am not sure what my sweet spot will be during those research activities. If you, too, are looking for some new suggestions, why not try these artists/playlists recommended by some of the interesting folks I know:

Instrumental/Classical:

Ambient

And, of course, you can always try putting on the movie Cars, and seeing if it works for you too, especially if you have a toddler running around who needs distraction. What do you listen to while you’re writing or otherwise engaged in deep concentration tasks?

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.

Forest, Trees, and Underbrush: Becoming the Arborist of Your Own Research

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by Frank Winter, Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan

The phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees” is a common expression describing someone so sunk in minutiae that the big picture eludes them. I have, however, occasionally worked with colleagues who, to my way of thinking, cannot even see the trees for the underbrush. In the area of research, they are so mired in the details of producing that first published paper and then, somehow, the next, that the context in which they are researching eludes them. This leads to frustration, resentment, and resistance, often expressed in complaints such as, “Why do I do publish research? Because the Standards say I have to.” I have come to think of this as an issue of forest, trees, and underbrush. In this metaphor, the underbrush is the specific research project. The trees are how the specific studies are combined into a program of research. The forest is the broad area or field of interest at the highest level.

New faculty members or even prospective faculty members in the job market typically face the challenge of describing their research program, or research agenda, to hiring committees, granting bodies, and tenure committees. Librarians with tenure-track appointments face the same requirement. For example, the University of Saskatchewan’s Standards for Promotion and Tenure state that, for tenure or promotion, “there must also be evidence of the promise of future development as a scholar, including the presence of a defined program of research or scholarship.” The University of Saskatchewan’s Library Standards require that the candidate’s case file include, “a statement on the nature of the candidate’s research and future research plans.” In my experience, this requirement for a defined program of research causes some new librarians – often, but not exclusively, those who have not completed a subject level master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation – some anxiety. For an inexperienced researcher, as many librarians tend to be, struggling to find a researchable topic and publish that first article looms as a significant barrier to stepping back and thinking in broader terms of a program or an agenda. Typically, by the time a statement is necessary for a case file, colleagues are consulted and eventually something is cobbled together. But for some, even after this statement is written, uncertainty remains. It seems difficult to fit all the pieces together into a broadly coherent – and helpful – whole.

As noted above, this challenge is by no means unique to new university librarians as the sheer quantity of resources and programs aimed at helping new faculty members get started on an academic career suggests. Googling “research agenda” or similar phrases produces some helpful links, such as one entitled Developing Your Research Statement. Although this particular resource was developed to assist new geoscience faculty members in the development of their careers, its contents and links are broadly applicable to new researchers in all fields. Janet Brennan Croft at the University of Oklahoma has written a helpful paper entitled Library Faculty and the Research Agenda: A Building Block for the Successful Academic Career, including some interesting thoughts on pursuing a program of research in popular culture (JRR Tolkien in her case), not librarianship – a useful reminder that scholarship and research can be very broadly deployed by librarian researchers.

Another resource that I have felt to be underutilized when new librarians are struggling to find a topic are the research agendas that top level scholars in a field sometimes produce, such as those which appear from time to time in journals such as Library and Information Science Research. Professional associations are another source of research agendas. These documents are statements of the big questions and issues currently facing the field. They can be used to suggest how specific studies might be placed in context. Googling “research agenda for…” returns potentially helpful results as well. Examples specific to librarianship include suggested research agendas for leadership in library and information science, information literacy, law librarianship, and medical librarianship. Such high level research agendas are extraordinarily helpful in enabling a beginning researcher to see how a particular study can be part of a much larger set of questions or issues. Clarity with respect to an individual research agenda provides not only a sense of direction, but also a sense of why and how and where and who and what. This clarity enables the researcher to approach a topic from top down or bottom up and not lose track of where he or she is. This clarity also enables a researcher to participate in the ongoing and evolving conversation that is research.* It helps other researchers to understand where you are coming from and what you are trying to achieve.

And, finally, a research agenda is helpful in understanding when a particular program of research has reached an end. Research programs change for everyone over time and it is perfectly normal for one to end and another to open. A research program does not need to be a seamless whole – the parts can be loosely coupled as it evolves as a librarian’s interests and the environment evolve and as opportunities present themselves. There should, however, be some demonstrable underlying logic so that research projects do not appear to be random.

* To a degree this post was shaped by a conversation with my son, several years after he had completed a MSc in Computer Science. He said that he wished he had fully understood at the time he was a student that he was a participant in a broad field called, simply, “AI and Learning.” It would, he said, have provided some overall clarity and sense of direction that got lost in the day to day activities of working on his thesis, writing and delivering conference papers, participating in the activities of his advisor’s research group, TAing, and so on. That something so seemingly obvious eluded a bright graduate student seems unusual but this sort of after-the-fact insight into the big picture is, I believe, very common.,

References:

American Association of Law Libraries. 2013. AALL Research Agenda 2013-2016. http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Member-Resources/grants/research-grants/research-agenda.htm

Association of College and Research Libraries. IS Research and Scholarship Committee. Research Agenda for Library Instruction and Information Literacy. http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/is/iswebsite/projpubs/researchagendalibrary.

Argow, Britt, and Beane, Rachel. 2009. Developing your Research Statement. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep/jobsearch/research_statement.html.

Croft, Janet. 2012. Library Faculty and the Research Agenda: A Building Block for the Successful Academic Career. http://www.academia.edu/1416295/Library_Faculty_and_the_Research_Agenda.

Harris, Martha “Molly” R., Homes, Heather N., Ascher, Marie T., and Eldredge Jonathan D. 2013. “Inventory of Research Questions Identified by the 2011
MLA Research Agenda Delphi Study.” Hypothesis 24 (2), 5 – 16. http://research.mlanet.org/wp/wp-content/hypothesis/Hypothesis_Winter2012-2013.pdf.

Hernon, Peter, and Schwartz, Candy. 2008. “Leadership: Developing a research agenda for academic libraries.” Library & Information Science Research, 30, no. 4: 243-249. doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2008.08.001.

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.

Preparing for a Study/Research/Sabbatical Leave

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by Marjorie Mitchell
Librarian, Learning and Research Services
UBC Okanagan Library

Ah, sabbatical. The term can conjure up many images to many people. Maybe yours is a vision of a quiet office at home with the whole day ahead to read some scholarly articles, wrestle with the mound of data you’ve been meaning to get to for months, and, perhaps, to write. Maybe you have plans to travel and present at a number of conferences. Maybe you want to spend some quality time with your collaborator and put the finishing touches on a project you’ve worked on for the better part of the past two years. Whatever your ideal there is a certain amount of planning that needs to take place before it can happen.

I am on the cusp of my leave. At my institution, the University of British Columbia, it is called Study Leave and it “permits a member of faculty to pursue study or research, of benefit to the individual and the University…” (UBC/UBCFA, 2014). Planning has taken most of a year and had some unexpected twists and turns. I outline here some of the steps I took and hope it assists others planning their leaves. Different people will have different requirements and different goals. This only reflects my experience.

My first step to securing leave was a conversation with my supervisor. This discussion had the dual purpose of notifying my supervisor I was thinking seriously about this request, but also of testing the waters with them. Would they be supportive of my request? Was this a good time, institutionally, for me to take leave, or could we negotiate a time that would be better? Was the topic I wanted to investigate one that not only interested me but one that would have benefit to the University when I returned? This wasn’t the only conversation, but it started the process in a very systematic way. It also started to identify the long (much, much longer) list of questions I would work through over the year.

Planning covered the logistical requirements of being away from not only the workplace, but also leaving the country for a year, as well as beginning to develop the intended intellectual content of the leave (the real work of the leave). There were a few areas where these meld together, but, for the most part they occupied different streams of planning.

Many people work at institutions where librarians have a long and established history of taking sabbatical or study leaves, and, because of this, the procedure is, if not clearer and simpler, then at least documented and standardized. My institution is 10 years old, and I am only the second librarian to take a leave, and the first librarian to take a 12 month leave in a completely different location. Because of this institutional youthfulness, it took effort to find the required forms, to determine whether I was completing them thoroughly enough, to track down the written confirmation of my leave (verbal confirmation arrived quite speedily), and to gather all the information I needed for the academic visitor visa application.

On the intellectual content side of this equation my topic was clear to me right from the start: research data management. Here in Canada, libraries have been working on research data management supports for faculty and the intensity of the conversations on this topic have only been increasing. Libraries in the UK have been supporting their researchers systematically for some time because a number of their grant funding bodies have made research data management a condition to be met by researchers receiving funding. So not only did I have a topic (Research Data Management), but also a location (the UK).

In preparation to delve more deeply into this I took two steps that laid a solid groundwork for my leave. The first was to attend the Canadian Association of Research Libraries Librarians’ Research Institute in late June. The Institute gathers 28 participants and five mentors for a focused and intense look at doing the work of research from developing a research problem through methods, theory, data, writing and, finally, dissemination. I now have a set of great tools along with a supportive group of peers as I head into my leave. The second step I took was to contact librarians at my destination who have already been researching aspects of my topic to arrange for one-on-one meetings with them. All the people I approached responded positively and I am looking forward to some interesting and informed conversations after I get to the UK.

The kernels of wisdom I hope you take away are to start planning early, be persistent and patient in equal measures, and develop a network of people outside of your workplace to sustain your momentum. I’m looking forward to a wonderful research adventure this year.

References

University of British Columbia & The Faculty Association of the University of British Columbia. (2014). Collective agreement between the University of British Columbia and the Faculty Association of the University of British Columbia, July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2014. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia.

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.

Collaborating for Research – Experiences and Lessons Learnt

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by Maha Kumaran
Leslie and Irene Dubé Health Sciences Library, University of Saskatchewan

True collaboration does not happen unless all involved researchers invest time and energy towards every step of the project. Depending on the project, grants may need to be applied for and funding secured, ethics cleared from all required institutions, research assistants interviewed and hired, research participants contacted, interviews or forums set up, survey questionnaire prepared, tested, sent, and data gathered and analyzed, and a literature review conducted. Then the article needs to be written, the journal chosen and seen through the peer-review process, and the order of authors for publication established. Accomplishing all of this takes time, teamwork, communication, and a willingness accept and finish assigned tasks in a timely fashion.

In my most recent project I worked with one collaborator. Our project involved surveying and interviewing internationally educated nurses (IENs) employed at health regions in Saskatchewan. I needed to secure ethics clearance or operational approval from all 13 health regions in the province. My collaborator and I also sought ethics clearance from our own institutions which was a straightforward process. Securing ethics clearance from health regions was a little more complicated and time consuming. In some of the health regions, the contact information for ethics personnel was not clearly stated. In a few health regions, we had to wait for the health region’s board meeting where our ethics clearance request was placed on the agenda. In one case, they did not have time to discuss this at the scheduled board meeting, so we had to wait for the next meeting before we could get clearance. Many reminders had to be sent and finally ethics was cleared over a period of 3 months.

Our project was divided into 2 phases. In phase 1, I learnt to use FluidSurvey to create a survey. We hired a student from the U of S’s Social Sciences Research Laboratories (SSRL) to analyze the survey data. In Phase 2, interviews were set up for IENs with the SSRL researcher. Later we learnt to use NVivo to analyze the interview results.

Once all the research was completed I learnt to use NLM citation format to publish our paper in the journal of our choice. Unfortunately we hadn’t decided on the journal beforehand, so this stage also involved some learning. Throughout our research project, we planned for conference presentations and worked on posters in PowerPoint. This involved learning or re-learning many features of Excel and PowerPoint to create charts, graphs, and tables to present data.

Our project ran over a period of 3 years and this also meant a lot of communication – between collaborators, participants, SSRL, ethics and grant personnel, our journal editor and finance personnel to have our conference expenses reimbursed.

Lessons Learnt:
When seeking a collaborator, remember to find someone who is as invested and significantly engaged in the topic. This will be a huge motivating factor in accomplishing all the required work and seeing the project to finish. Be prepared to invest time and energy towards communications, learning new technologies and skills, writing the article and seeing it through the peer-review process. If collaborators are geographically apart, virtual meetings may need to be set up. Since my collaborator and I were in two different cities, we set up phone, Zoom, and Skype sessions. Initially, we set up agendas and took notes of what needed to be done after each meeting. As time progressed and our work lives got busier we were less industrious about such meetings and tried to accomplish everything through email. There were miscommunications or misunderstandings along the way, but we were both professional and mature enough to get past these hurdles. Be patient and understand that collaborators also have other priorities. There were many occasions when I felt overwhelmed with amount of work involved. On such occasions, I took a short break, made lists, prioritized the work, assigned tasks, and set deadlines.

Collaborative research when done well can be a rich and rewarding experience. Researchers learn to problem solve, gain new knowledge and skills, and ultimately have a strong project published in a high impact journal.

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 as Practitioner-Researchers: Limiting Label

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by Selinda Berg
Schulich School of Medicine – Windsor Program
Leddy Library, University of Windsor

This is a complementary post to Kristin Hoffmann’s post, Librarians as Practitioner-Researchers: Constructive Concept. Kristin and I are both deeply interested in the development of research culture in academic libraries, and together we have discussed the possibilities of framing academic librarians as practitioner-researchers. We have taken diverging approaches in our posts, but we have many points of convergence as well.

I would like to suggest that the term “practitioner-researcher” has the potential to also be a limiting label. I agree with much of Kristin’s argument: We are both researchers and practitioners and we want to embrace the distinctive knowledge about research and practice that can only come from our unique vantage point. My concern is that this label will not only inform our identity as researchers, but also dictate our image as researchers. It is not only about the way we view ourselves from the inside, but also how we are viewed from the outside. Ultimately, naming is a not only a personal issue, but also a political one.

One of the primary texts on the practitioner-researcher identity is Peter Jarvis’s The Practitioner-Researcher published in 1999. There are multiple examples in Jarvis’s book where the research of professionals and practitioners is presented as second class. One such example is:

[Practitioners] often are not recognized a researchers. They certainly do not have the traditional image of the researcher, and they may not always be in a position to conduct their research in a most satisfactory way, nor do they necessarily meet the stringent demands of some members of the traditional research community. Nevertheless this does not mean that they should not be viewed as practitioner-researchers, because that is what they are. (Jarvis, 1999, p.9)

This description of practitioner research as low quality and sub-standard is disheartening, but not necessarily rare. The library community of researchers to which I belong strives to produce high quality and valuable research. (At the same time, we recognize that there is always lots to learn and ways to grow as a researcher). No researcher wants their output to be viewed as unsatisfactory or low quality, but this may be the reality of how the practitioner-researcher’s work is perceived. It has been suggested that we need to reclaim and redefine the term practitioner-researcher and make it into what we desire. It is likely, however, that we can only reclaim and redefine this term for ourselves. The ways those on the “outside” view the practitioner-researcher will likely be quite different, and I fear that their perceptions will be more aligned with Jarvis than what we desire. This image of practitioner-researcher is limiting and will continue to limit where we, as librarians, are able to take our research.

I would like to provide one concrete example of how this inaccurate view of our research could be limiting—funding. I have heard on three occasions about academic librarians applying for SSHRC[1] grants, and being told (either from within the formal feedback process or from outside of the formal process) that academic librarians should not be applying for these grants, because these grants are “not for them, but for faculty researchers.” I do understand the magnitude and significance of the SSHRC grant. However, if it is not our research itself, but rather our image or even identity, that is precluding us from such opportunities, I see this as deeply problematic. In the future more and more librarians will have the credentials, supports, and research programs that meet SSHRC’s criteria: They should not be limited by their image. While a SSHRC grant may not be of interest to all, these same kinds of limitations may play out in the type of journals we publish in; the conferences we are comfortable at; the institutional funding we have access to; and our overall position in the research community.

I recognize the importance of the interplay between our professional work and our research; yet I also believe that before we embrace the term ‘practitioner-researcher,’ there must be acknowledgement and recognition that labels and naming are not only personal issues, they are also political issues.

Jarvis, P. (1999). The practitioner-researcher: Developing theory from practice. Josey-Bass: San Francisco.
____________________
1. SSHRC: Social Science and Humanities Research Council is Canada’s federal research funding agency that promotes and supports postsecondary-based research and training in the humanities and social sciences.

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.

Research and navigating the changing cataloging environment

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by Donna Frederick
Services to Libraries, University of Saskatchewan

The nature of a technological disruption is that it interrupts the continuity between past and present. Traditions and tried and true methods may lose their effectiveness or even begin to fail outright. In disrupted environments, practitioners may find themselves lacking both the theory and experience to feel confident in making decisions and taking action. As I meet with the Copy Cataloging Group at the University Library each week, I am reminded of this reality as cataloguers bring the cataloging conundrums they encounter to the meeting.

In the environment of traditional cataloguing, the mental model of a catalogue record is that of a flat and linear container for descriptive information. The cataloging process was well-supported by a set of relatively concrete cataloging rules. However, in today’s environment where the mental model is multidimensional and characterized by the expression of various relationships among resources and resource characteristics, the old “rules” simply aren’t relevant anymore. Conundrums soon begin to arise as it becomes apparent that we are attempting to create complex multidimensional metadata in the MARC metadata container which only accommodates flat, linear records. Further difficulty is added to the situation when it is realized that not only do the new “guidelines” for creating metadata fail to address many day-to-day challenges, but searches of listserv archives and the posting questions to these lists reveals that neither the “experts” nor librarianship in general have viable solutions for many of these problems either. So then, how does the practice of metadata creation avoid being mired by unanswered questions and seemingly unresolvable challenges?

Ultimately, those involved with what is sometimes called the “reinvention of cataloguing” need a solid base of theory upon which to make decisions. Up until recently, cataloguers have been struggling with the FRBR model (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), including the new RDA descriptive standard, and the concept of linked data. The gap between the conceptual models and the day to day practice of cataloguing is often experienced as being impossibly wide for many who have been trained in traditional cataloguing. Fortunately, IFLA (2015) has recently released their latest draft of the “Statement of International Cataloguing Principles” which will help bridge the existing gap by providing specific principles upon which decisions can be made. While the principles help to alleviate some of the abstraction created by the theoretical models, cataloguers face the day to day challenges of working in an “in-between land” where the theory and practice has begun to take root but the actual systems in which we create and use metadata is still largely based on concepts from the late 1960s. In addition to shifting our mental models, cataloguers are also charged with informing and sometimes re-educating other library workers about the morphing reality of the metadata. This metadata is central to many library processes ranging from discovery of and access to resources and information to functions such as acquisitions and interlibrary loan. Finding a way to effectively inform non-cataloguers about the new reality in a relevant and meaningful way remains one more challenge which has yet to be effectively addressed.

As I concluded a recent research project on the very topic of how to effectively communicate information about the new cataloging models and standards, I was reminded of the importance of research and evidence in professional practice. One measure of the effectiveness of training I was using in my study was to track changes in the volume and frequency of cataloguing questions asked over time. My hypothesis was that the introduction of training would lead to a reduction in questions but the reality was that a steady increase was observed. Puzzled by the results, I did an examination of the actual content of the questions to reveal an increasing complexity and thoughtfulness of questions over time. While in the past there were “cataloguing rules” which could be learned and mastered, in this new environment training didn’t actually lead to mastery. Instead training lead to a new and deeper level of understanding. The evidence suggests an ongoing learning process where the issue of mastery many not be relevant. Without purposely undertaking research and learning from the evidence, the nature of the impact of the disruption on the process of learning the new cataloguing models would likely not have been discovered. In fact, the lack of mastery and the ever-increasing number of questions would likely have been a source of frustration. This is a highly valuable finding both for the training of cataloguers and library staff in general and will inform the creation of positive and effective future learning experiences.

References
IFLA (2015). Statement of International Cataloguing Principles ICP Haag: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Retrieved from: http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/icp/icp_2015_worldwide_review.pdf

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.

The 8Rs Redux: How National Trends Can Inform Local Responses

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by Vicki Williamson
Dean, University Library, University of Saskatchewan

Last December, I blogged about the value of big picture library trend reports in the smaller context of your local library. In this blog, I continue that same theme.

Over a decade ago, ground-breaking research into the Canadian library workforce was published. The original study of the Canadian library workforce (The Future of Human Resources in Canadian Libraries, 2006, is also known as the “8Rs Study”) was widely disseminated; marked the first time that human resources issues were so thoroughly and widely examined across Canada; and, was always intended to be used as a baseline from which future research would be compared. Follow-up research for the research libraries sector across Canada is now a reality with the recently completed (and soon to be released) report from the 8Rs Redux CARL Libraries Human Resource Study, 2015.

The 8Rs Redux, for libraries that are members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), has delivered a quantitative mapping (within a 10-year timeframe) of the many ways in which CARL libraries and their staffing requirements have changed, as well as how they have responded to changes in their operating environment. I am very pleased to have been a co-investigator with the 8Rs Redux Study, led by Kathleen DeLong, Principal Investigator, and Marianne Sorensen, Co-Investigator, as it provides a strong body of evidence to inform future workforce planning locally and nationally.

The 8Rs Redux Study tells us many things, but overall it shows that: “Retirements, alongside the hiring of younger librarians and the restructuring of some roles and the attrition of others, has resulted in a noteworthy turnover of CARL library staff and a slightly larger and younger librarian workforce, many of whom are learning more new tasks in challenging and interesting roles that increasingly encompass specialised skills and that engender comparatively high levels of job satisfaction.”

The soon to be released final report will provide many other insights into the current make-up of the CARL workforce around the themes of staff characteristics; organizational context of change; recruitment; retirement; professional and paraprofessional population and role change; librarian competency and competency change; education and training; and, quality of work life and job satisfaction. The 2015 study shows that 8Rs have grown to be 9Rs, with role change joining the 2005 identified workforce themes of recruitment, retirement, retention, remuneration, repatriation, rejuvenation, re-accreditation, and restructuring.

But to get to that local library-specific context, what does this national longitudinal data have to do with workforce planning at the local level? Well for a start, it provides the opportunities to review whether our local cohort characteristics reflect those at the national level. If they do, then what does that mean in terms of workforce planning, recruitment, and training and development? If not, then what local factors impact our library, and why are those national trends not obvious in our environment?

A welcome addition to the 8Rs Redux Report (2015) is the inclusion of a strategic human resources planning implication section for each of the major report categories. This section should be helpful to deans/directors, human resource managers, and others involved with library human resources planning. For example, the section within the retirement theme poses questions about succession planning that may need action both the local and national levels.

Overall, the final report from the 8Rs Redux CARL Libraries Human Resources Study (2015) contains a wealth of evidence-based data and information to help inform the ongoing development of the CARL workforce.

Librarians as Practitioner-Researchers: Constructive Concept

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by Kristin Hoffmann
Associate Librarian, University of Western Ontario

Librarians as practitioner-researchers: constructive concept or limiting label? Last summer, my colleague Selinda Berg and I had an invigorating conversation about this question. We presented our reflections at the 2014 C-EBLIP Fall Symposium, and this post is my part of that presentation. Selinda’s part will be published here later this spring.

We want to share our conversation about librarians as practitioner-researchers because we see a link between researcher identity and research culture. Academic librarians, particularly in Canada, are in the process of establishing and shaping a research culture for ourselves. Part of establishing a research culture is having a clear sense of who we are as researchers and what it means to us to be researchers. We hope that our conversation can spark similar conversations for others.

Peter Jarvis developed the concept of practitioner-researcher in his 1999 book The practitioner-researcher: developing theory from practice. Rebecca Watson-Boone (2000) and Virginia Wilson (2013) have examined the concept specifically for librarianship.

I want to share two reasons why I believe that “practitioner-researcher” is a constructive concept for librarians.

1. We are both practitioners and researchers and so we need an identity that encompasses both of those roles, rather than trying to manage or embody two distinct identities.

The practitioner-researcher concept is a truer and better representation of who we are and what we do as academic librarians than either practitioner or researcher on their own. We often talk about the challenge of how to “fit” research into our workdays, and I think part of that is because we are separating our researcher selves from our practitioner selves and trying to create a separate place for each of those identities. Embracing the identity of practitioner-researcher can help us truly affirm the importance of both roles and the interplay between them.

2. Embracing the practitioner-researcher identity can bring us to a fuller, and unique, understanding of both practice and research.

Previous discussions of practitioner-researchers first emphasize the practitioner role, and research is seen as something that informs practice: we are practitioners who also happen to be researchers, therefore we are practitioner-researchers.

However, our knowledge and understanding of our practice can also inform and enlighten our research. This may be a much more powerful and constructive concept for librarians. To illustrate this, I offer an example from my own research.

In a recent project, I worked with the sociological theory of strategic action fields. Very briefly, this is a theory that provides a framework for thinking about stability and change in social institutions. Since libraries are a social institution, applying this theory to librarianship can help us come to a deeper understanding of change in librarianship. Why do some things change in library-land, why do other things never seem to change even though we wish they would, and what might it take for those changes to happen?

My research looked at librarian-vendor relations and why there seems to be so much enthusiasm for librarians to stand up to vendors and yet so little apparent meaningful change in this aspect of collections. The theory of fields was the tool I used to analyze this situation in an objective, systematic way.

It was through the process of applying the theory of fields to this collections-related example that I really came to see myself as a practitioner-researcher. My research with this theory was deeply informed and influenced by my practice as a librarian. Because I’m an “insider”, intimately familiar with librarianship, I could see aspects of the theory that a so-called “pure” researcher couldn’t – I had unique insight from practice that informed my research.

The theory of fields sociologists came to their theory as researchers; their book (Fligstein and McAdam 2012) makes no mention of practice or how their ideas might shape or be shaped by real-life situations. Librarians who talk about implementing change management might have approached my topic as practitioners. I was seeing it as a practitioner-researcher.

My practice directly informed my approach to this research project. And, yes, my research also informed my practice: having a rigorous and systematic theoretical framework to apply to my practice gave me new insight that has influenced how I understand my profession.

In summary, therefore, practitioner-research is a constructive concept because:
• embracing the practitioner-researcher identity can bring us to a fuller understanding of and a unique perspective on both practice and research; and
• we are both practitioners and researchers and need an identity that encompasses both of those roles.

References

Fligstein, N. and McAdam, D. (2012). Theory of fields. Oxford: Oxford U Press.

Jarvis, P. (1999). The practitioner-researcher: developing theory from practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Watson-Boone, R. (2000). Academic librarians as practitioner-researchers. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 26(2), 85-93. DOI:10.1016/S0099-1333(99)00144-5

Wilson, V. (2013). Formalized curiosity: reflecting on the librarian practitioner-researcher. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 8(1), 111-117. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/18901

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.

EBLIP + IL = SoTL

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by Margy MacMillan
Mount Royal University Library

I practiced SoTL for at least 5 years in blissful ignorance of its existence. You too may be a SoTList or have SoTList leanings and not even know it; it may well be time to explore the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

The research projects I’m currently involved in occur at the intersection of information literacy (IL) and SoTL, and like all intersections it’s an exciting, slightly unsettling place to be. There’s a lot of movement in many directions, a lot of choices on where to go next, and some things just have to wait until there’s a break in the traffic to get going. Standing at this intersection I`ve had some time to think about the links between SoTL and evidence based library and information practice (EBLIP)…
MargyHanoi
Hanoi, 2013. By D. MacMillan

EBLIP and SoTL

SoTL might be described as evidence-based practice in teaching. It is focused, like EBLIP on gathering evidence to understand different situations and/or the impact of different interventions. It uses a range of methodologies and works both within and across discipline boundaries. While it is most obviously akin to evidence-based research in IL, branches of SoTL concerned with technology or institutional cultures may resonate with other library researchers. Much like EBLIP conferences where those who work with bioinformatics data discover common ground with public librarians working with citizen science initiatives, SoTL fosters conversations between people who might not otherwise meet. Academics working in SoTL don’t always get much support for their research at their own institutions (sound familiar?) or within their own disciplines and they value conferences both for finding kindred spirits and for the interdisciplinarity that brings fresh ideas and approaches. Since arriving in this welcoming SoTLsphere, I have enjoyed exploring further – attending conferences, getting involved in SoTL on my campus and currently supporting the SoTL work of colleagues through Mount Royal`s Institute for SoTL.

3 ways SoTL has helped me EBLIP

Methodologies – SoTL work rests on applying disciplinary research methods to understanding teaching and learning. I’ve encountered a really broad range of methods in SoTL work that also apply to EBLIP.

Understanding Threshold Concepts (TCs) – While I had first heard of TC’s at a library conference, this way of looking at learning is a major focus in SoTL and I have been able to bring knowledge from SoTL folks into discussions around the new TC-informed Framework for IL.

Focus on building a community – Some SoTLers are involved with building communities on campuses by expanding relationships, providing support, and developing policy. There are many useful insights here for library initiatives and I have benefited from becoming part of a very supportive, cross disciplinary group of scholars.

3 ways EBLIP has helped me SoTL

Better understanding of diverse literatures and how to search them – This has helped me enter a new field, but also allows me to contribute back to the SoTL community on campus as I am aware of resources and tools for searching outside their disciplines.

Longer experience with evaluating usefulness of small steps and interventions – IL is often assessed at micro levels: the use of a particular tool, or the effectiveness of a teaching strategy, often within a single class. We have developed a number of strategies to examine teaching and learning at this atomized level useful for instructors accustomed to thinking in course-sized chunks.

Understanding how dissemination works – Work like Cara Bradley`s is informing my work with SoTLers in identifying venues for publication, and my next project on studying dissemination patterns in SoTL.

Interest in SoTL among librarians is growing, as evidenced by increasing numbers at conferences and a colleague in the UK who is writing a book about SoTL and librarians (many thanks to Emma Coonan for a great conversation that clarified many of these thoughts and if you aren’t reading her The Mongoose Librarian blog on a regular basis … .well, you should be!). Explore a little, dip into their literature, maybe go to a conference or talk to the teaching and learning folks on your campus… they can use our help and we might be able to borrow a few things from them. Maybe we’re overdue for a change.

3 good reads about SoTL

Felten, P. (2013). Principles of good practice in SoTL. Teaching and Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 1(1), 121-125. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/teaching_and_learning_inquiry__the_issotl_journal/v001/1.1.felten.html

Huber, Mary Taylor and Sherwyn P. Morreale, eds. Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Exploring Common Ground. Menlo Park, CA: Carnegie Foundation, 2002.

Hutchings, P. (2010). The scholarship of teaching and learning: From idea to integration. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2010(123), 63-72. http://fresnostate.edu/academics/csalt/documents/Hutchings2010.pdf

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.

I can’t make bricks without clay: A Sherlock Holmesian approach to Research and EBLIP

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by Marjorie Mitchell
Librarian, Learning and Research Services
UBC Okanagan Library

Sherlock Holmes was invoked in the inaugural post of Brain-Work, the C-EBLIP blog, and I would like to revisit Conan-Doyle for the inspiration of this post. So, being a curious librarian, I searched “Sherlock Holmes and research” and came across the heading “What user researchers can learn from Sherlock Holmes.” The author, Dr. Philip Hodgson, took quotes from a variety of the Sherlock Holmes novels and laid out a five-step research process for investigators working in the user-experience field. As I read Dr. Hodgson’s article, it struck me there was a strong kinship between the user-experience community and the library community that extends beyond the electronic world. I also believe Hodgson’s steps provide a reasonable starting point for novice evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP) researchers to follow.

Step 1 – According to Hodgson, the first step is understanding the problem, or formulating the question. I would adapt it even further and suggest being curious is the very first step. If we’re not curious, we can’t identify what we want to know, or the question we hope to answer. Perhaps a mindset of being open to the discomfort of not knowing motivates researchers to embark on the adventure of inquiry. Once my curiosity has been aroused, I move to formulating a question. Personally, my question remains somewhat fluid as I begin my research because there are times I really don’t have enough information to formulate an answerable question at the beginning of my research.

Step 2 – Collecting the facts, or as I prefer to call it, gathering the evidence, follows. This is one of the juicy, tingly, exciting parts of research. Once I have a question, I think about what information will answer the question. Sometimes simply reading the literature will give me enough of an answer. At other times, I have to go further. Even just thinking about methods can send a shiver of excitement through me. Administering surveys, or conducting interviews, or running the reports from the ILS in hopes it will illuminate some arcane or novel library user behavior are all ways of collecting juicy evidence; it is exciting to see initial results come in and begin to decipher what the results are actually saying. Sometimes the results are too skimpy, or inconclusive, and the evidence gathering net needs to be cast again in a different spot for better results.

Step 3 – Hodgson suggests the next step should be developing a hypothesis to explain the facts you have gathered. This is one step, as much or more than the others, that requires our brain-work. Here we bring our former knowledge to bear on the results and how they relate to the question. It is a time for acute critical thinking as we take the results of our evidence gathering and determine their meaning(s). Several possible meaning may arise at this stage. Hodgson implies it is important to remain open to the multiple meanings and work to understand the evidence gathered in preparation for the next step.

Step 4 – In this step, Hodgson is especially Holmsian. He suggests it is now time to eliminate the weaker hypotheses in order to come closer to a solution. The focus on user experience research is especially strong here. Specific, actionable solutions are being sought to the question identified in the first step. Here he recommends evaluating your evidence to eliminate the weaker evidence in favor of the stronger. He is also cognizant of the need to have solutions that will be affordable and able to be implemented in a given situation. While the whole of this step may not apply to all research, much of it will.

Step 5 – Implementation or action now have their turn. Again, Hodgson is speaking directly to the user experience audience here. However, implementation or action based on research may lead to a decision to not implement or act upon a suggestion. The strength lies in the process around reaching this decision. Questions were asked; evidence was gathered; analysis took place; judgment was applied. As Hodgson pointed out, this is a much better process than proceeding by intuition.

Finally, I would like to add a Step 6 to Hodgson’s list. In order to really know whether the action implemented had the desired effect, or an unintended effect, it is important to evaluate the results of the action or change. In the effort to publish results of research, timeliness is an issue. It is not often possible to have the luxury of the amount of time it would take to be able to measure an effect. However, even in those cases, I am interested in what type of evaluation might take place at a later date. Sometimes researchers will address their future evaluation plans, sometimes they don’t. Even if they aren’t being shared, I hope they are being considered.

This is a simple and elegant plan for research. In its simplicity, it glosses over many of the messy complications that arise when conducting research. That said, I hope this post encourages librarians to follow their curiosity down the path of research.

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.