Good luck with this project – I think it will be really useful to have a single resource that points to all appropriate LIS research.

Re. Library Day In The Life wiki. I think it works well because it’s only updated twice a year by individuals and everyone takes on the responsibility of doing the work and keeping it up to date. This means that they go into the wiki 4 times a year in general (twice a year to say they’re taking part and twice a year to link to their write-up). Therefore it’s not like a great deal of effort goes into keeping it up to date – of course, I’m not sure how much admin is involved. The fact that the full write-up doesn’t get added to the wiki (just a link) also cuts down on the amount of effort needed. With regard to having a similar LIS research wiki, I wonder if as well as adding a link, a brief summary of the research would be needed to accompany the link?

However, one of the drawbacks of the Library Day In The Life wiki system is that I can’t see a way to search for entries around a specific topic/subject eg. If I search for “Health” it will retrieve any pages that contain the word “health”, but it doesn’t just pull out those individual entries mjade by individuals. I think any system you use to create the LIS Research link site would be of greater use if it had the capability to search in a way that does pull out individual research projects like this.

Maybe another option would be a blog that has individual entries for each LIS research project and that could be searched upon.

Also, maybe this blog could automatically pull in links to posts from individual blogs based on the use of an agreed tag eg “lisresearch”. This again would cut down on the need for any duplication of effort to get relevant links into the LIS Research blog. The UK Library blogs wiki http://uklibraryblogs.pbworks.com/w/page/7262285/FrontPage is a good resource for identifying any relevant UK based blogs and is still being updated regularly. I think this idea could be achievable using something like Yahoo pipes or/and ifttt.com, as long as people used the right tag. Obviously not all blog posts will be tagged in this way, but at least it would cut down on some of the effort.

I really like the idea of pulling in the informal research that crops up on LIS discussion group lists and other places. Maybe the best way to collate these discussions would be via the blog again with individual blog posts that summarise the discussion and link directly to it.

I realise you won’t be able to pull in all relevant LIS research blog posts, as you need to know everyone who is blogging in this area, so there will be a need for manual entry too.
Maybe you could investigate using a blogging platform that allows multiple authors to contribute, so that the admin/workload could be shared. Maybe WordPress would be an appropriate platform.

I hope this helps.

It seems that the most successful community based resources like this are wikis that allow people to join and add their own information, but also clearly state that you don’t need to be a member of any organisation/group to get involved. The Library Day In The Life wiki (http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/w/page/16941198/FrontPage) seems to be a good example of a successfully maintained wiki. Maybe its success is down to the fact that librarians/library staff are asked to contribute only twice a year if they want to – it has a flurry of activity for a period around January and July and is relatively quiet for the rest of the year. However, it serves its purpose, as the information is collated quickly and is available for everyone to see all year round. If a resource for research was developed (or an existing resource was adapted to achieve the same thing) could it be maintained in a similar way – actively sending out a call & a number of reminders to all librarians or information professionals via the main communication channels/networks (all relevant email/JISC lists; Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook; etc) to populate details of any research they are currently undertaking or have recently undertaken since the last call to update the wiki? Basically “blitzing it” a couple of times a year.

There was an SOS sent out on Twitter yesterday from Canada:

Michael Steeleworthy ‏ @steeleworthy
Hey #Librarians outside of Canada! Do you know that the Cdn Gov’t has tanked our nat’l library and archives?It’s a big professional concern.

After some brief networking:

Federal libraries, archives shutting down
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/05/02/ottawa-libraries-archives-closing-budget-cuts.html

I am sure research would reveal a correlation between a nation’s above average achievers (what do they achieve? what difference does it make?) and the availability of library resources – moving towards an understanding of the difference that libraries make to society.

Libraries are not at fault, I think it is understood that library science is a relatively young science. I am however going to finish along the same lines as my opening sentence, society has undergone a stepwise change, and bang in the middle of the field of the libraries (information and communications technologies, not to mention cultural otherwise). It is plain simple textbook management technique that an organisation switches into R & D mode under these circumstances.

(Tuppence ha’penny worth as one of your paraprofessional staff

Thanks again for the event and providing the additional materials so promptly.