Every year our regional licensing consortium, SCELC, hosts a colloquium and a vendor day. This year the Dean of the Library and I coordinated with them to add a new themed event: Research Day. Tomorrow is the inaugural event and much of it will be live-streamed: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scelc. Here’s a link to the schedule of events, which includes education sessions as well as plenty of peer-talk time: http://scelc.org/research-day/schedule.
We’ve designed the day to be an educational and networking event, with a focus exclusively on research. Here’s what we know about training in research methods in librarianship: In 2001 O’Connor and Park noted, “Only half of the 24 top-rated programs required MLS students to take research methods.” (a) In February 2010 61% of the 49 American Library Association (ALA)-accredited LIS degree programs with online information about degree requirements listed research methods as a required course in the curriculum. (b) By the time librarians are working professionals they have either never had a course in research design or the time lag has caused that coursework to be ineffective. This Research Day is a small step at beginning to turn that around. The goal of Research Day is to help librarians move forward with their research ideas and projects. The morning sessions are designed to improve one’s research skills, with presentations on quantitative methods, qualitative methods, choosing an appropriate methodology, analyzing data and results, and writing a research grant proposal. The afternoon provides an opportunity for librarians to report on their own research, through oral presentations or poster sessions, and to identify potential research partners or a network of support.
We have bigger plans for this that are under wraps for now but are excited to begin actively engaging on this topic with the 122 librarians who have signed up to attend the free day-long event. Check in with us via streaming (9:00am–12:15pm, then 2:30pm–4:30pm PST) or watch this space for updates about how the event turned out.
(a) Daniel O. O’Connor and Soyeon Park, “Crisis in LIS Research Capacity,” Library & Information Science Research 23 (2001): 105.
(b) Lili Luo, “Fusing Research into Practice: The Role of Research Methods Education,” Library & Information Science Research 33 (2011): 191-201.
