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.

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. 

 

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.

Professor Carol Tenopir’s excellent presentation on measuring value and the impact of libraries enabled me to think about why we must measure value and how we can measure value.  Although focusing on academic libraries the content of the talk was very relevant to my research into information provision in public libraries.  Professor Carol Tenopir discussed the Lib-Value project which she was involved in and the methods used to measure value within the academic library context.  The presentation highlighted the challenges which libraries face in time of economic downturn, how we must remain accountable and be able to show the impact we make.  Professor Tenopir noted the importance of measuring value not only now, but also in the future.  Measuring value can enable us to decide which services we should keep in the future.  She explained that when measuring value we should be looking at our purpose for existing – measuring what the institution says it does, looking for what changes we can make and are making.  We should be looking at our competitors – think about what we are offering and how we can develop the services we provide.  An interesting comment by Professor Tenopir was ‘what if the library disappeared?’ which suggested the importance of reaffirming why we exist and what we actually do.   Professor Tenopir highlighted the need for collaboration across sectors.  As the library is constantly evolving and services we provide are changing and adapting to meet user needs and expectations there are important choices to make about services to keep and develop in the future. 

I enjoyed the adrenalin rush fuelled by the One minute madness sessions which provided the chance to discuss my research - ‘very’ briefly to a wider audience!  The feedback I received after the one-minute madness was very encouraging.  At lunch, the chance to discuss my research and get insightful ideas from more experienced researchers and practitioners was rewarding.    I got the chance to talk to John Dolan (CILIP) who felt that my research into Information and Communication Poverty was a great topic and suggested that I take a look at Barbara Buckley Owen’s (2010) PhD on “The development of UK government policy on citizens’ access to public sector information”.  Having previously met Yvonne Morris (CILIP) at other DReAM events it was good to chat to her again about how my research was progressing.  It was also great to meet Paul McCloskey from the Edinburgh library service who shares similar research interests into public library services as me. 

After lunch Dr Louise Cooke’s presentation on social network analysis illustrated how DReAM participants expanded both their knowledge of research methods and also their social networks with other DReAM participants.  The presentation highlighted how successful the DReAM workshops had been in building awareness of LIS Research methods and in developing a network of participants.

The panel session in the afternoon involving Jo Alcock from Birmingham City University , Dr Louise Cooke, Loughborough University, Professr Charles Oppenheim and John Dolan (CILIP) was excellent.  As with Professor Carol Tenopir’s earlier presentation, the importance of collaboration between library sectors and collaboration between academics and practitioners was emphasised.  During the panel sessions some concerns facing libraries at present such as cuts in spending on staff training were highlighted.  Dr Ben Goldacre’s concluding key note speech on the nature of published and unpublished information from drugs trials concluded an eventful day.

Unfortunately I missed the networking drinks reception afterwards as I had to rush to catch my plane back to Belfast.  The three DReAM workshops and the DReAM conference has been a very rewarding experience for me. I have met new contacts, promoted the research that I am doing and have expanded my awareness of the broader library and information landscape.   

 

The day began with Professor Hall’s introduction to the conference and the goals of the DREaM project more widely, where the notion of building a solid foundation in both qualitative and quantitative research methods around a “cadre” of core information science researchers was introduced. The deep and broad infrastructure was impressive with project events previewed, amplified, reviewed and archived through multiple digital and physical conduits.

The numbers stood out as well with 33 official contributors and 213 onsite delegates representing 12 countries from 4 continents (or 5 depending on your geo-political stance!) and an online footprint of over 80 blog posts and over 800 tweets, which is now surely an underestimation if the regular updates on the conference ‘Tweet Wall’ were anything  to go by. However, and perhaps most importantly, a research skills audit carried out between the first and third workshops of the DREaM project indicated a growth in theoretical knowledge amongst cadre members, as well as a greater appreciation of various methodological approaches and the resources required to carry these approaches out.

The main themes of the day, examining the value and impact of LIS services, were also introduced by Professor Hall and then picked up and discussed in the opening keynote speech by Professor Carol Tenopir, who examined the issues of service value and impact within the context of the LIB-VALUE project being carried out at the University of Tennessee, of which Professor Tenopir leads the reading and scholarship and journal collections specialisms. She began by discussing how the LIB-VALUE project has tackled the thorny issue of defining value through reference to models that break the term down first as an economic concept that views value variously in terms of an exchange-use value dichotomy (Machlup), second as a three-part concept with economic (private), social (public) and environmental aspects (Kingma) and third as a distinct three-part concept with implied, explicit and derived components. The trick is to then ask the correct sort of questions that allow one to probe these various aspects of value as defined in theory.

Throughout her excellent talk Professor Tenopir examined the use of tools for estimating derived value such as Return on Investment (ROI) and Contingent Valuation (CV), whilst emphasising that their utilisation does not preclude the use of qualitative elements that can help provide a contextual human element to service quantification. Professor Tenopir made one further point in particular that resonated with me; that a reading study cannot simply focus on readers but must also examine readings as well. Not all readings are carry an equal weight in the considerations of the reader you might say and the purpose of individual articles and their perceived utility will vary considerably. A simple point you might think, but one worth re-emphasising when one is tempted to reach only for the relatively simple implied values of usage statistics and download numbers.

Professor Tenopir’s talk was followed by a one minute madness session, an always concise and entertaining (for the audience at least) way to present on a variety of topics. This session was no different, and we were treated to a variety of topics ranging from research into augmented reality in special collections, to a study examining non-users’ perceptions of a public library service and an open invitation to engage in collaborative research with fellow information scientists down in sunny Australia. It was testimony to the hard work and practice that had gone into preparing for the session that many of the participants, in line with many a good action movie, finished rather impressively with that one important second to spare.

Following a lovely lunch Dr Louise Cooke introduced the audience to social network analysis and the importance of understanding networks and their development. Dr Cooke had carried out a social network analysis of the DREaM cadre network and her research highlighted how, as the project progressed, the cadre developed from a vulnerable network to a stronger one showing increases in both network density and research awareness and interaction between cadre participants.

This was followed by a panel discussion that explored some aspects of what the future holds for the DREaM project. The four participants covered topics ranging from accreditation standards, the importance of face to face meetings to the development of the DREaM cadre network, the exploration of longitudinal research that transcends political and research funding ‘short termism’ all the way through to what constitutes the LIS discipline and finding a balance between creating academic silos and encouraging interdisciplinary research.

Dr Ben Goldacre was then called upon to present the LIS Research Practitioner award to the North West Clinical Librarian Systematic Review and Evaluation Group.  Dr Goldacre, well known author of Bad Science and all round geek aficionado, gave a passionate talk delving into issues such as academic publication bias, the situation concerning drug companies withholding vital information about their products and how one would go about teaching a group of primary school children to conduct a systematic reviews using a jar of balls.

Some of the main points that Dr Goldacre made concerned the nature of published and unpublished information from drugs trials, the fact that this potentially conflicting information was to be found scattered all over the place and that trials registers have been a bit rubbish in sorting the situation out. His idea is to create Alltrials, essentially a website that pulls in data on trials from every source that can be found, puts that information side by side so that if there are inconsistencies then you can say “hey, that’s a bit weird isn’t it?” But there is still quite a bit of work to go, so if you want to help him or have any ideas then let him know, his email is ben@badscience.net.

Having dropped in on the final DREaM event I found it to be an excellent opportunity to meet new people as well as meet up with some (comparatively) old faces and learn a lot from those presenting on the day. After saying my goodbyes it was back on the train to Glasgow, however I seem to have overshot my office and find myself now in a warm, sunny and remote corner of Ardnamurchan in the Scottish highlands. So I think I will finish up there, turn off my laptop and enjoy the views.

 

 

 

 

Welcome and introduction: ‘DREaM past, present and future’

Professor Hazel Hall reviewed the events and the impact of DREaM since the events took place. Different training sessions and workshops were carried out throughout the duration of the project and were all very well received. It was interesting to learn that the 30 participants who attended the three linked workshops found a growth in their theoretical knowledge with an increase in their research capability and capacity after attended the sessions. This has been manifested in their growth of confident and research knowledge such as the learning and application of the new data collection techniques which has in turn raised the research standards. There was no doubt that the Cadre group has developed a foundation for future collaborations and widened the network and research relationships. Nevertheless where do we go from here to maintain a sustainable network so that all the hard work does not come to waste is certainly a question for all LIS professionals to mull over.

 

Opening keynote: ‘Building evidence of the value and impact of library and information services: methods, metrics and ROI’

Professor Carol Tenopir delivered an insightful speech on values measurement by looking at the LIS practice and LIS research as a combined and the different methods to measure values for analysis. The reason for research (i.e. research projects) and practice (i.e. academic libraries) to come together was because of change and the pace of change. The challenge such as the worldwide economic downturn has opened up opportunities for LIS professionals to demonstrate as well as choosing the best way to demonstrate values. She used the example of the Lib-Value Project to illustrate and define value in the library and information context. The discussion included: the definition of value (value and use value); Bruce Kingma’s (Syracuse University) economic, social and environmental library values; the measurement of implied, explicit and derived values; the four types of questions from the scholarly reading studies – demographic, recollection, critical incident and comments. Although the use of data as evidence to build a case or to make decision can be very powerful, Professor Tenopir stressed the importance of exercising caution when measuring value as the data could sometimes be misleading and portray an unsustainable trend depending on the methods of measurement. Another interesting point raised was the monetary value of ROI, which was both ‘controversial’ and ‘tricky’ for libraries as described by Professor Tenopir. Values such as the improvement in ranking and reputation are not quantifiable, just as success (or prestige) cannot be measured, it therefore becomes difficult for librarians to measure such variables, demonstrate their values and present them to the organisation. The last point about the embedded librarian vs the library has also given me food for thought. 

 

One minute madness

It was remarkable to see how passionate colleagues were about their different topics of interest. My attention was particularly drawn to Miggie Pickton’s presentation about the promotion of practitioner research at Northampton University, as I was impressed of how supportive they were in encouraging their staff in doing research. If only this kind of good management practice could be more widespread and adopted by all UK HEIs libraries, the LIS research landscape would surely be different.

 

Invited paper: ‘Facets of DREaM: an analysis of network development to support UK LIS research and researchers’

Dr Louise Cooke presented the Social Network Analysis as a technique focusing on the relationships between entities. It was believed that by analysing the network composition and the position of an actor within the network, we could gain a better understanding of the world around us. It was fascinating to see the graphics presentation of the data analysed using the Ucinet software to calculate the network statistics and the use of Netdraw to visualise the results. The indication of the analysis has shown that the DREaM project was a success and has achieved its key aim of ‘developing a UK wide network of LIS researchers’. The fact that the analysis was primarily based on quantitative metrics meant that qualitative indicators were needed to help us understand the network better. This point has agreed with the emerging trend and popularity of qualitative research methodology used in LIS for explaining and understanding the perspective of real life phenomenon experienced by people.

 

Panel session: ‘… and so the DREaM goes on: means of sustaining the UK network of LIS researchers’

Coincidentally, one of the common themes from the four speakers was collaboration and integration. The financial challenge, new social media and public policy have opened up opportunities for the LIS profession to re-examine our strategies and to look at new research methods from other disciplines. By collaborating and forming partnerships, it has allowed the facilitation of a broad agenda for multidisciplinary research.  Professional associations such as CILIP can help fostering high quality research and building the learning and research culture.  Dissemination of research is an equally important issue where the lack of proper support and knowledge of disseminating the research outputs can hamper the development of the evidence base of LIS.  

 

Closing keynote: ‘Bad Science’

In his closing keynote speech, Ben Goldacre satirically presented the misrepresentation of science around the world. It has opened our eyes to some of the fluke findings being selectively reported and published in journals, and how ‘evidence’ were being presented with the intention to mislead. Truthful data informs decision making whereas wrongful data induces a heavy price. It has made information professionals to think carefully about research ethics and the true meaning behind evidence. Although the topic was a solemn one, Ben Goldacre’s humourous presentation style has made me felt as if I was attending in the Comedy Store down the road at Piccadilly! (in the nicest possible way) It was a very informative and enjoyable session and has rounded the day off nicely.

 

Next week I’ll be participating in a panel discussion at the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) closing conference on the topic of the future of LIS research (tweets on #lis_dream5 if you’re interested in following). I have my own views on this (some of which are in the interview questions I was asked to respond to), but at the conference I’ll be mainly representing the views of the LIS DREaM cadre(i.e. those of us who have attended the LIS DREaM workshops). I’d like to understand other’s views too so if you are part of the LIS DREaM cadre or if you have an interest in LIS research I’d really appreciate it if you could complete this brief survey (all questions optional so you can just complete those you feel are relevant to you): http://bit.ly/MIEp6J

Thanks very much for your help and hope to see some of you at the conference.

See the blog posting - RiLIES2 project poll: findings

The post is an update on the progress with the RiLIES2 project which

highlights the pressing need for a centrally-funded community-maintained directory of LIS research resources, held in a known location, with (crucially) a long-term commitment to maintenance.

We would like to thank individual practitioners for publicising and taking part in the poll.

The three speakers covered the following topics:

Horizon scanning – Dr Harry Woodroof:

The first session, on Horizon Scanning, was an interesting overview of how to predict future trends using information that's freely available on the Internet. Horizon Scanning has become a key part of Governmental evidence gathering, which aims to move us beyond a reliance upon existing knowledge on which to base future policy. Harry presented two different techniques, as practiced by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Horizon Scanning Centre respectively.

One of the most interesting points about Harry's talk was the way in which it harnesses the knowledge available on the Internet in a positive way. It's fascinating to hear that the Internet is providing a tool that many researchers are exploiting in imaginative and academically rigorous ways. Barring instances where commercially or politically sensitive information isn't available online, both the techniques relied entirely upon the interrogation of publicly available information.

Techniques from psychology – repertory grids – Dr Phil Turner, Edinburgh Napier University

I found Phil Turner's talk interesting for a different reason; his engaging overview of the theoretical background that led to the development of repertory grids: known as Personal Construct Theory, it emerged from a theory of psychology that concentrates on the concept of humans as scientists. It argues that each person creates their own theoretical framework in order to understand the world around them, and that we are also the effective embodiment of this framework. Repertory grids tap into this individual construct by asking participants to classify a number of carefully chosen objects by similarity and difference.

Phil also explained his own work with this technique, where he looked at individual attachments to objects in order to see whether people were more or less attached to digital objects, such as phones and laptops, than physical ones. I'd love to see further work to see whether the conclusions he found still hold true about born-digital objects such as MP3 files when compared to physical media!

Introduction to data mining – Kevin Swingler, Stirling University

Kevin's overview of data mining gave an excellent and clear overview of an extremely complicated process: using large-scale datasets to allow computers to 'learn' from existing trends in order to predict future behaviour, classify objects or cluster objects by similarity. While it's something that I wouldn't feel comfortable using in my own work, due to its considerable complexity, I did take away an overview of its possibilities and limitations as a methodology. Kevin also underlined a number of points that researchers working with any form of data should be aware of: data preparation is absolutely key to any research task, and his suggestions for cleaning, processing and assessing data for suitability are extremely pertinent to all data researchers. As the saying goes, "rubbish in, rubbish out."

Impact snakes and ladders: workshop exercise on links between research and its impact on practice,

We finished the day with some group work, considering ways to increase the impact of LIS research upon practice. For me, the importance of collaboration stood out across all the group discussions: not only between researchers and practitioners, but also within the profession itself. Hopefully some of the contacts and knowledge gained through this series of workshops will help with this process!

While this was the last workshop, there's still one more opportunity to be involved at the DREaM Conference at the British Library on the 9th July. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to attend, but I'll definitely be following online if not!

Finally, I wanted to say thank you to all the organisers for their hard work in making such a thought-provoking and informative series of workshops for us. The whole series was consistently engaging and well organised, and I hope that everybody involved got as much from them as I did.

(a) well used and/or

(b) respected.

The poll is aimed at LIS professionals who are based in the UK, but if you live in another country, we would still be interested in your answers.

Please follow this link to take part<http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/878039/RiLIES-2-Initial-Poll>. The poll will remain open until the end of April.

Thanks

We are currently testing a community site with a group of beta testers and using this to publish case studies from libraries using mobile technologies in innovative ways. We plan to continue to collect both case studies and guest blog posts throughout the course of the project.

We've also organised an information sharing event to be held in Birmingham in May - we initially opened 50 places but this sold out in less than 24 hrs! We currently have a large waitlist and unfortunately won't be able to offer places to everyone for this event but it's good to know that there is demand for such events and we are now hoping to see if we can organise more events. 

I'll post more updates as the project progresses.

DREaM community members might be interested in applying for this award - innovative researchers would definitely count as 'outstanding' :)

Hazel Hall was an excellent winner of the SLA Europe IP Award last year!

See http://www.sla-europe.org/awards/sla-europe-conference-award/ for more details and how to apply.

 

Are you an outstanding information professional with more than 5 years’ experience? Then SLA Europe wants to send you to the 2012 SLA Conference in Chicago!

 

Deadline extended to 16 March 2012

 

Co-sponsored by the SLA Leadership and Management Division, and kindly supported by Dow Jones, the SLA Europe Conference Award is a chance for an outstanding information professional to attend the 2012 SLA Conference and Info-Expo, 15-18 July, in Chicago, Illinois.

 

The successful applicant will receive an expenses-paid trip to the conference, and will have the opportunity after the conference to get involved with the work of SLA Europe and the Leadership and Management Division (LMD).

 

This fantastic opportunity is open to all information professionals living or working in Europe, who have more than five years’ experience in the field, and have not won an SLA Europe Early Careers Conference Award (ECCA) within the last five years. Applicants do not need to be SLA members. The deadline for applications is 16 March 2012.

 

What do we mean by ‘outstanding?’ Someone who goes beyond the everyday demands of their job to provide innovative, creative, or high-level support for their users.  Do you organise extra-curricula events to raise the profile of your service and make sure users get the best from you? Have you developed a new service or way of working that’s had a positive impact on your users? Are you a prolific and instructive writer, teacher, or trainer? Do you make a difference? If so, we want to hear from you!

Hearing people's stories have becoming increasingly popular and used as case studies and or examples of good practice. 

Different historical approaches included: intellectual history; social history, cultural history, institutional history and history of practice/labour. In relation to history and information science he identified 'Information History' apparently coined by Alistair Black. I will need to check that with Dr John Crawford an ex colleague of mine who is interested in this area and knows Alistair as well as Toni Weller who was mentioned. Information history includes history of libraries, books, reading, publishing; Information Disciplines; Information Society.

The workshop task to create a group of 4 or 5 people and identify a member of the group who is actively engaged in a research project that could make use of the historical approaches was useful as it made participants think of practical applications from the presentation.

For the full details see / hear Tom Haigh's presentation

 

She recently posted this:

How to make Google behave

Excellent new powerpoint from Karen Blakeman, as presented at a seminar for UKeig seminar yesterday (08/02/2012), with lots of up-to-date information and tips. http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/how-to-make-google-behave

 

I would recommend having a look at it. Search engines do not remain the same and there were a lot of things I discovered which was useful and which I acted upon. 

It is interesting from a professional point of view but concerning from a personal point of view how much information can be gained about you from the web in particular social media. In preparation for the workshop and Mike's presentation workshop, participants had some homework to do. To join YouTube and leave comments on a video, replying to each others comments. Part of the analysis was based on self declared age and gender information from YouTube.

However one of the problems with this is the reliability of people self declaring their date of birth, the system then uses this to calculate the persons age. I decided to check out the privacy settings and ticked the box to say not to display this information. This was not because I didn't want people to see my age but to see what if anything was displayed within the analysis. The result was that no age was displayed for me but one participants age showed as 111!  See the analysis chart along with a summary,  PowerPoint slides a and video of Mike's presentation.

Returning to reliability, this is not unique to this research method as all forms of data are subject to reliability whether it is in survey's, interviews etc.   

The other concern people have about giving their real date of birth is related to the information being used in financial security checks. 

The presentation was a good overview of webometrics:

• what it is - gathering, processing and analysing large scale data from the web
• what it can offer researchers - a method to extract useful patterns
• webometric analyst software.

 

LIS DREaM Workshop 2: British Library

The second in the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Methods and Excellence) workshop series was held at the British Library conference centre in London. Anybody who talked to me is probably aware I was delighted by this, as the lengthy sleeper train journey was replaced by strolling out of my flat at 9am. If we ignore my journey-related opinions though, this second workshop proved to be a stimulating day, and this post will briefly outline my thoughts on the speakers.

There are some great resources on the DREaM website that relate to each session, and loads of discussion on Twitter under the  #lis_dream3 hashtag – I’ve provided links below, and you can find interviews, summaries and videos of each presentation there. Well worth checking out if any of the topics grab your attention.

Professor Peter Beresford: User Involvement in Research: Making Sense of a Radical New Development.

Peter introduced us to user involvement in research. His background as a health service user, campaigner, and academic researcher meant that he was able to give an extremely considered overview of an area of research that is full of ethical and methodological difficulties. In particular, I found the idea that users may actually be “all consulted out” particularly relevant to my own research, which relies on user input through interviews, surveys and focus groups. If research is so strongly user-centred, then surely it’s essential that service users are able to see their input reflected in outcomes and policy.

It’s also well worth checking out We Are Not Stupid, from the Shaping Our Lives network, for a great example of research instigated, undertaken and published by users. I really believe that users want to be involved in improving services, and this is a great example of how user-led research can act as a democratising force.

Dr. Thomas Haigh: Techniques from History

History, in the view of Thomas, is the study of things that change over time, and their presentation in a narrative form. He outlined the emergence of historical work in the information sector, and in particular the changing landscape of library and information studies in higher education. I guess it would be fair to say that the theories that I’ve been developing for my own work are historically informed, rather than historical, and accordingly I took away two important points. Firstly, the idea that we must try to understand what people in history thought they were doing, rather than place their actions into modern modes of understanding. Secondly, the need concentrate on a particular historical approach, in order to make a manageable research topic.

Professor Mike Thelwall: Introduction to Webometrics

I was already familiar with Mike’s work, having attended a talk on the Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources last year. As he explained, some of these metrics can be extremely useful in mining information from publicly available web resources, and work extremely well in conjunction with qualitative methods. His comments on sentiment analysis of social network communications, though, were extremely interesting. Since the launch of Google Ngrams I’ve been thinking a lot about the quantitative analysis of large literary datasets, and was fascinated to see one emerging strategy for allowing systems to ascertain meaning in large datasets. Indeed, this may help to address some of the concerns that have been expressed about quantitative literary analysis.

Professor Nick Moore: Making the Bullets for Others to Fire

Nick’s talk about his involvement in high-level policy research made for an interesting end to the day. He presented an extremely honest account of his time with the Policy Studies Institute, and provided a great deal of useful advice for early career researchers such as myself – don’t be too generalist, don’t ignore criticism, and don’t get too far ahead if you want policy-makers to listen!

Nick also gave one piece of advice that any researcher should keep in mind: “express your research in one clear, unambiguous sentence.” It chimes with discussions that we’ve been having in the UCL Department of Information Studies that culminated in the creation of the #tweetyourthesis hashtag, which saw research students from around the world summing up their research in less than 140 characters. For anybody who’s interested, our attempts are here on the UCL DIS blog, and there’s been plenty of discussion about both the benefits and potential downsides of sharing your research in such an abbreviated manner. Me? I’m all for it: since starting my PhD I’ve kept a document on my hard drive that sums up my research in one sentence. It’s proven invaluable, and gives me a way to refocus my own thinking when I begin to lose track of myself. I’d recommend anybody starting their research to do the same!

 

Overall, then, it was an extremely useful and thought-provoking day. One last comment on the transport issue – my flight and hotel are already booked for Edinburgh in April, and combined they cost as much as coming by train. Lesson learnt there!

The first speaker / presenter was Peter Beresford’s presentation on user involvement in research This was thought provoking in a professional and personal basis.  He came across as someone who talked from professional and personal experience as a user of mental health services.  He didn't use PowerPoint as he tries not to and only uses it when he feels it is relevant which is refreshing. He explained that user involvement is parallel to Action Research and that Action Research is concerned with action and research and that the one relates to and entails the other in some sort of dynamic relationship. Some of the things he mentioned included:

• the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) research which focuses on the needs of patients and the public.
• user involvement - how it challenges how we think and do things and the concerns it raises
• collaboration and partnership
• user control - the user initiates and controls.

I think research should be as he says

"concerned with changing lives not just data gathering"

His presentation reminded me of the paper I had recently read about 'Information literacy, intellectual impairment and the social agenda' by Anna Williamson in which she talks about her daughter. 

'Her inability to read is not disability, disability is created by people not communicating with her in a way she can understand'

'You have a right to access and use information regardless of your (professionally evaluated) capacity to utilise information. It is OK to use books and libraries even if you can not read.'