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Looking
back, I didn’t even have a solid understanding of what “research” meant, how it
worked, or why it is important for practice. Our field is not alone in an often
perceived divide between research and practice. Between academics and
practitioners. In my postdoctoral fellowship, I work within education where
there are similar discussions about this division. Now that I spend the
majority of my day researching, writing, and reading about LIS and related
fields, I have an improved perspective on the impact of research on practice and
practice on research. I’ve also taught MLIS and professional development
courses where I’ve introduced research principles, approaches, and examples in
practice. For instance, the following two paragraph could be one example.
In
an IMLS-funded study I’ve been contributing for the past year and a half, we’ve
worked with school and public librarians to develop an understanding of what
supports they need to provide STEM-oriented Making in their libraries. We began
by observing librarian practices as they went about everyday responsibilities
in their libraries and then used what we learned to develop professional
training materials, potential library design hypotheses, and a framework for library
teen program development.
What
we observed in the library, supported by our understanding of LIS, education,
and learning science scholarly literature, aided us in developing early
findings and possible directions for additional research. Later formal
interviews with the librarians participating in our study helped clarify the
needs, constraints, and opportunities within their daily jobs that may not have
been as clear during observations. A mixture of research methods, librarian
supplied materials (such as program flyers and school newsletters), and
participation in library program development added to even more data to analyze
and make sense of for sharing.
With an example of research supported practice in
mind, I want to return to talking about the divide between research and
practice. Others have explored the communication challenges between LIS
researchers and librarians, describing librarians as indifferent to conducting
or participating in research, unknowledgeable about conducting scholarly
research, and focused instead on the day-to-day activities of library work
(something I completely understand as a former public librarian). The piece I
read suggests that researchers make more of an effort to publish in
practitioner publications. This makes sense on the surface, but usually the
tenure push is for publishing in traditional peer reviewed journals.
It is part of the culture and norms of academia that
hinders communication between LIS researchers and those in the field. But the question I have is whether or not
librarians will actually read articles in trade publications or see the value. Thinking
back to my librarian life, I had little time or energy to read about research
or discussion seemingly unconnected to my work. This post will not end with an
answer but instead, encouragement more continued conversation.
There
are no easy answers here. I think about this a lot, but even I struggle
sometimes communicating to librarians the research I do and how it relates to
real world librarianship. This should be an easier conversation because we
both, researchers and practitioners, benefit from sharing discoveries,
practices, and understandings.
Abigail
Phillips, PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Instructional
Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. Her research
interests include digital youth, cyberbullying, empathy, libraries,
librarianship, information ethics, and making. She can be found by email: abigail.phillips@usu.edu,
Twitter: @abigailleigh, or website: abigailleighphillips.com
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