Should library and information professionals be researchers?

Short answer: yes.

Slightly longer answer: yes, because research will help us learn more to do our jobs better, and improve our services, by basing decisions on evidence. I work in an academic library, and am constantly advising and assisting students to back up their ideas with evidence - so I feel like I should put my money where my mouth is. And as a bonus, conducting research gives me a very useful insight into the needs of the researchers I support as part of my 'day job'.

Doing research also helps demonstrate our value as a profession to the wider community, as Jonathan Eldredge explains in his article about revitalising the profession through Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP):

"The EBLIP process enables library and information practitioners to enhance their professional status by displaying a value in serving users and larger society, expertise in the subjects related to decisions made, and critical appraisal of the best evidence available for making these transparent decisions. EBLIP thereby offers our profession an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and value to society." (Eldredge 2014)

Why is it so hard?

Short answer: time.

Slightly longer answer: finding the time is a key problem according to Jane Secker. Research is often not seen (or supported) as a 'core' part of our jobs, so it can become just 'one more thing' for busy library and information professionals to do.

How can I get started?

Short answer: if you're in Sydney, go to the ALIA LARK group meetup this Thursday 1 May, to kickstart your library research project.
Slightly longer answer: Jane Secker and Emma Coonan have provided some tips for doing research and fitting it in with the 'day job', as outlined on Emma's blog:

1. Find your thinking space (hint: this may involve coffee/fresh air). Where’s yours?
2. Modify your attitude to time – your research may well become your hobby! When’s your best thinking time?
3. Build a partnership: working with someone else is highly motivating, boosts your confidence, and means you can divide up the work. Who could you buddy up with?
4. Look out for funding opportunities: keep an eye on networks, JISCmail lists, and other resources and contacts. Where might you start looking?
5. Find your niche. What do you do that no-one else is doing? What do you love about your research field?
6. Develop your online identity, for greater recognition and to take part in a wider conversation. What platform(s) will you use to do this?
7. Present your ideas early: share and develop your existing resources, slides or ideas. You can present your work through so many different channels: blogs, Twitter, Slideshare, Mendeley, JORUM … What platform(s) will you use to do this?
8. Think about whether you want ‘academic’ publication in addition to the channels you’re already using to publish your ideas (see point 7). If you do: listen to your students’ questions and conversations about how to present their work and where to publish. Learning from them not only helps us offer better support, it will also make us better researchers.

So, what are you waiting for?

Now is a particularly good time for Australian-based LIS people to get started on those research ideas we've been thinking about, with ALIA Information Online's call for proposals now open. What better opportunity to answer a question about our practice and share it with others in the profession?

What do you think about librarians also being researchers? Please share your comments below.

-Amy Croft
ALIA Sydney Co-Convenor

Research, frogs and free thinkers

For the last day of the June Blog, here is my plain and bold statement: Librarians need to do research. It is necessary for us and good for the rest of the world. And here are six reasons why.

3 reasons why practice-based research is good for librarians

1. To save our skin. At a recent teacher-librarians’ conference, Di Laycock argued for the importance of research in school libraries and showed us a picture of a frog. If you throw a frog in hot water, she said, it will jump out immediately. However, if you gradually increase temperature while the frog is in water, the adaptable animal will boil alive. In a demanding information world, librarians are a bit like frogs. In order to save our skins, we need to monitor our environment regularly and systematically to be able to act accordingly.

2. To evolve through evidence based practice. In the complicated and sometimes dangerously hot information environment, we can’t afford to rely only on our experience and impressions. We need rigorously gathered evidence to inform our constantly changing practice. Gathering reliable evidence takes time but it is still faster than guess work. It is a bit like asking locals for directions – you stop the car, but get to your destination faster or make an informed decision about how to continue your trip. (I acknowledge that asking for directions is an impossibly difficult thought for some people.)

3. To broaden our career options and strengthen reputation. We already apply research skills in a number of careers outside our main domains. An ability to do primary research may open some new options such as participation as equal partners on research teams, particularly cross-disciplinary ones. Numerous possibilities will open as the demand for innovation and evidence-based practice in many professions increases. At the same time, benefits for our individual and collective professional reputation will be substantial.

3 reasons why librarians’ research is good for the world

1. To keep saving the free thinking world. In our information world domineered by a few big players and swamped by many smaller ones who are trying to get their piece of profitable pie, who is going to defend the right to free information? Librarians and Friends, of course. Knowing about information trends first hand and using that knowledge to be the best we can is something we owe to nothing less than Democracy and Free Thought. Librarians existed well before googles of the modern world, kept the record of civilisations dead and alive, and survived as one of the last civic places. At the time of tremendous changes, we are not going to trust you-know-who to tell us about information trends, are we?

2. To contribute insights from a unique perspective. By serving everyone every day, we have unique insights into the information world. We have been great curators of knowledge records, but now we have a special position to become great ethnographers of the fast-changing world of information and knowledge. We have unparalleled access to potential data about information needs and behaviours on a daily basis - and we have a reputation and tradition to be trusted curators and interpreters of that information. Our perspective is valuable.

3. To enhance our academic field. Academia traditionally saw itself as self-sufficient and all-knowing, but it increasingly recognises the value of connection with practice. This connection is particularly important in the library and information studies which, like it or not, is predominantly an applied discipline. Some important lessons can be learnt from other applied fields. For example, there are good reasons why most academics in faculties of medicine are practicing clinicians and why they have a well-developed system of university hospitals. The sooner our field recognises advantages of different types of research and practice, the sooner it will benefit from a stronger reputation, better career paths, an improved position in negotiating research grants, and increased enrolments in postgraduate courses.

If you agree with the 6 reasons in answer to ‘why research’, the next question is ‘how’. A beginning of a big answer may be just around the corner. On 10 July, the ALIA Research Committee is organising the workshop Research for practitioners: in a nutshell at the State Library of NSW. Due date for registrations has been extended. Check it out! http://www.alia.org.au/training/brochures/2012/ALIA.Training.Research.Comm.In.a.Nutshell.2012.pdf

Suzana Sukovic

Head of the Learning Resource Centre at St.Vincent’s College, Potts Point

Research Associate, The University of Sydney