Developing Research Excellence and Methods

My name is Virginia Wilson and I am a librarian at the University Library, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada. Are you a practicing UK or Canadian librarian who is also conducting research? If so, I invite you to participate in a research study entitled Practitioner-Researchers: Exploring the World of Librarians Who Conduct Research. I’m looking for practicing librarians currently working in any library sector (special, school, public, academic) with demonstrable research output (conference presentation(s), paper(s) in a journal, internal report(s), internal presentation(s), etc.). The purpose of this research is to identify key issues, to explore the challenges, benefits, and possible risks of conducting research in a practice setting, and to investigate what it means to be a librarian practitioner-researcher. Participation will involve taking part in a 45 to 90 minute interview on site at your location. The time frame for the interviews is from September to December 2012.

This project will contribute to the body of knowledge in Library and Information Science (LIS) and be helpful in several ways: its publication would be a valuable inclusion into reading lists at LIS schools in order to expose students to the wide variety of research and research possibilities that are available to them as practitioners; it would inform library leaders and managers of an additional role that librarians might take on in the practice setting that would benefit the organization; and it would be an important look into the role of the practitioner-researcher from a library perspective.

If you are interested in participating in this research project, please contact me at virginia.wilson@usask.ca . I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, whether you volunteer to participate or not. At this time I am not looking for librarians who are solely teaching at LIS schools or librarians who are solely in the role of expert searchers for projects outside of the LIS discipline.

This research project has been approved on ethical grounds by the University of Saskatchewan Research Ethics Board on May 17, 2012.

DREaM Conference Review 9^th July, 2012

As a first year Ph.D. student at Loughborough University, I was excited about joining the DREaM network; as well as learning some new approaches to research, I was looking forward to hearing about what other research is going on within the sector, since Ph.D. can be focused and sometimes isolating.  My area is school libraries, and my only reservations about attending this conference was the potential for a lack of transferable information from the planned sessions and my small area of LIS research.  It was actually inspiring how much overlap there was into my sector, and I  got a great deal out of every session and had many interesting conversations with delegates from other disciplines.

Professor Hazel Hall opened by revisiting the first 4 DREaM Project conferences of the project and how they fit into the LIS Research coalition.  The main objective has been to develop a UK-wide network of LIS researchers who can build an evidence base to demonstrate the value and impact of LIS.  Now more than ever, practitioners and researchers need to illustrate the value and impact of the services they offer.  Collaboration in research is the key to keeping the DREaM alive, which is fairly true within our profession as a general rule.  The more stakeholders we include and inform, the more value they will see in the evidence we provide them. 

The opening keynote speech by Carol Tenopir illustrated a model for us to demonstrate the value of our services through the Lib-Value project, which aims to collect tested methods and instruments to measure multiple values for multiple stakeholders.  Though Dr Tenopir’s work in this project is focused on academic institutions, I was inspired by her research; school libraries, which are so undervalued in this country need tried and tested ways to prove that they contribute to the schools that they service. School librarians do tend to stick to implicit values like borrower statistics and footfall, but there needs to be more emphasis placed on researching the impact made on student academic achievement.

The One Minute Madness presentations gave the delegates an opportunity to present their own research or potential ideas in a short and interesting way.  Additionally, it sparked some lively discussions during networking times throughout the day and fostered a real sense of community, even across sectors.

Dr Louise Cooke, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University outlined her research into the DREaM cadre using social networking analysis.  This showed the progression of how participants of the project conferences became a more connected network as they participated in this conference.  It was an illustration of how well a research community can work when they are given opportunities to share ideas and encouraged to gather evidence to disseminate to the wider public.  Dr Cooke’s work demonstrates the value of networking as well as the impact that the DREaM Project had on the core participants. 

The Panel Discussion highlighted the importance of collaboration between researchers and practitioners and that more research will help to make budget decisions based on evidence.  There was a concern about the lack of value that management tends to regard research, but all practitioners were encouraged to get management on board as much as possible.  There was also a concern expressed that public libraries are underrepresented in the research community; it is important for them to provide evidence with the growing cuts to that sector. 

Congratulations to the Northwest Clinical Librarian Systematic Review and Evaluation Group, who were presented with the Library and Information Practitioner Researcher Excellence award by our closing presenter, Dr Ben Goldacre.

It was a good thing that Dr Charles Oppenheim introduced Dr Ben Goldacre; I didn’t have any idea who he was, but I am now anxious to read his work!  His talk on Research, evidence bases, decision making and policy was a fascinating look at pharmaceutical research and how it is presented; it was an interesting revelation of the bias that exists with publishers of academic research.  Dr Goldacre wants all information about trials and research to be put into a website-Alltrials-which he wants managed by an information professional, so people keen to volunteer would likely be welcomed warmly. 

Overall, the conference was really worthwhile; just meeting other people and hearing about the challenges and successes of their research was stimulating, which was the underlying theme of this conference. 

The concluding DREaM conference (Monday 9^th July at the British Library, London) was an excellent, enjoyable and thought-provoking day and I have learned a great deal from the conference keynotes, papers, panel sessions and networking and conversations with other participants. 

Professor Hazel Hall reiterated the aims of the DREaM project in her introduction – the project aimed to develop a UK-wide network of LIS researchers, to build a secure foundation for long-term research capacity, capability and quality and to embed notions of “value”, “impact” and “influence” among practitioners and researchers. 

Traditionally LIS researchers and practitioners have been good at the survey, focus group and interview data collection techniques but other methodologies and techniques have been less well-used.  DREaM has provided an accessible and comprehensive introduction to these lesser-well known methodologies. 

All sessions were extremely valuable but the ones which were most directly relevant to my practice as a health librarian were the two keynotes by Professor Carol Tenopir and Dr Ben Goldacre on “Building evidence of the value and impact of library and information services: methods, metrics and ROI” and “Research, evidence bases, decision making and policy” respectively.

The subject of Professor Carol Tenopir’s talk – articulating the benefits, value and impact of library and information services – is central to my work in the health sector and the topic as a whole is of major interest to both LIS researchers and practitioners. 

Carol made a distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of “impact” – 1) impact in terms of information as value in terms of purchase or exchange, making savings or saving time in that “time is money” 2) the “use value” of information, i.e. the valuable (or not!) consequences derived from reading and using the information.  NHS libraries have made a lot of use of the second kind of “value” (see for example the impact studies on the NHS SHA Library Leads Website at: http://www.libraryservices.nhs.uk/forlibrarystaff/impactassessment/) but it is important that they and other kinds of libraries/information services do not neglect the first kind.  

More practically, Carol’s talk highlighted 3 approaches to measuring value – 1) measurements of implied value (i.e. producing usage statistics and theorising as to the probable value of the usage “outputs” to LIS users), 2) explicit value (i.e. trying to define outcomes more specifically, including use of the critical incident technique) 3) derived values (i.e. contingent “economic” evaluation and return on investment (ROI). 

The critical incident technique highlighted in the second of these approaches is, I feel, a particularly important technique in LIS practice and research.  The critical incident technique asks information users to articulate the value of an information product or service in a specific instance (rather than provide more vague general expressions of the value and benefits derived).  This is a very practical technique which can produce potent examples of “impact” in terms of rich qualitative data which can be appealing to the organisations in which the information service is located.

As a health library practitioner, Dr Ben Goldacre’s talk was also vital and touches on many themes I encounter in my work.  Ben highlighted how the age-old problem of publication bias (the fact that health studies are more likely to be published if they produce “positive” results or results which are favourable to commercial companies) can ultimately harm patients because research findings which might affect patient care are sometimes not being made available to healthcare professionals.  More insidious practices can, and do, go on such as researchers reporting their final results by defining outcomes differently from that laid out in their protocols (i.e. statement of intention to conduct research and details of how this research will be carried out) or using a multitude of statistical tests (some of which may not be appropriate for the data) in order to manipulate a probability value at the level generally considered significant. 

Publication bias, selective reporting of studies and withholding research data can, as well as impeding health professionals’ access to important information, harm the work of the healthcare librarian. 

The concept of a clinical librarian working with health professionals has been around for 30 years.  Clinical librarians work in a variety of ways but central to the job is to facilitate access to the health evidence base for clinicians and managers.  (Sometimes this is done by the librarian producing “evidence summaries”; other clinical librarians act more as trainers/facilitators). 

There are a plethora of examples from the health literature of the benefits of clinical librarians to patient care and other clinical/professional activity in healthcare organisations.  However, in order to harness the potential of externally published research for the benefit of patients and healthcare organisations, clinical librarians are dependent on robust and transparent reporting mechanisms of this externally published research.

The continuing improvement of information architecture and the continuing articulation of the value and benefit of information/knowledge to healthcare are central to the healthcare librarians’ remit and the keynote by Dr Ben Goldacre showed how important it is that these issues are given proper consideration.

As a new professional I very much appreciate having the opportunity to attend this conference and I would like to thank the DREaM team for the travel bursary which was kindly provided to me to support my attendance.