David Stewart

The Library and Information Science Research Coalition is delighted to congratulate David Stewart on his award of Fellowship of CILIP.

David is the Strategic Health Authorities Library Leads representative on the LIS Research Coalition’s Board. He is also the founder of the HEALER network which brings together those interested in health library services research. David is currently Director of Health Libraries North West. Previous posts include Director of Information Services at the Royal Society of Medicine, and Deputy Director of Health Libraries at Oxford University.

Christine Irving

We are pleased to introduce readers of the LIS Research Coalition blog to Christine Irving. Christine has joined Hazel Hall’s team in Edinburgh to help with the forthcoming three linked DREaM project workshops.

Christine has written a few words of introduction:

I’m delighted to be involved in assisting with the organising of the workshops. They are a great opportunity for LIS professionals to develop their research skills and join the LIS research community .

As a person who always likes to ask questions, seek out information and share knowledge, my LIS research skills were developed through an Information Management degree at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. This then led to LIS research project work and a subsequent career. I am currently working freelance and am about to start writing a book about information literacy in the workplace, public libraries and lifelong learning. This is based upon my research work as Researcher/Project Officer on the Scottish Information Literacy Project.

I am a member of several CILIP special interest groups. These include the Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) of which I am the current secretary. I am also part of the events team which organises and delivers a range of research workshops. LIRG fully supports the work of the LIS Research Coalition and it’s great to strengthen that connection with my involvement with the DREaM project.

I look forward to working with the DREaM project, to seeing the workshops take place and to meeting all the workshop participants.

Christine can be contacted at her LIS Research Coalition e-mail address: christine.irving@lisresearch.org

The article also previews the sixth Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP6) conference which takes place at the University of Salford, 27-30 June 2011. The LIS Research Coalition is one of the sponsors of EBLIP6.

The Coalition has organised a panel session on publishing entitled “Meet the editors” as part of the conference programme on Thursday 30 June, and funded four places for UK delegates at the event. Professor Hazel Hall is delivering a keynote presentation at the conference, and chairing one of the sessions. On the Tuesday the Research in Librarianship Impact Evaluation Study (RiLIES) project team will be in Salford to run the third of the RiLIES project focus groups with librarians working in medicine and healthcare.

If you are unable to attend sixth Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP6) conference in person, you can follow it remotely by tracking the conference Twitter hashtag #eblip6. There is also the option of remote registration with access to streaming and recorded video (for a fee), the details of which are given on the conference FAQ page.

By the end of the annual Online conference and exhibition each year a couple of themes emerge as dominant. Last year, for example, in the LIS Research Coalition’s review of the Online 2009, we reported that social media and the semantic web had been the key areas of interest. At Online 2010 conversations centered on a range of themes including linked data, the social web, the value and impact of information professionals, and mobile and cloud computing. However, at the forefront of many minds was the UK weather as it deteriorated over the course of the week. In the future we may well be remembering this event as “the one when it snowed”.

Online 2010 exhibition hall at London Olympia

Presenters Angela Ashenden, Helen Clegg and Gordon Vala-Webb

Twitter

Those who follow @LISResearch on Twitter will have watched our tweeting from sessions where Hazel was a member of the audience. If you would like to see the full archive of conference tweets, it is available from the Online10 Twapperkeeper set up by Karen Blakeman.

A session tweet on the tweet wall

Paper highlights

Of the sessions that Hazel attended she particularly enjoyed the discussion of “Web squared” as the successor to Web 2.0, illustrated neatly by Dion Hinchcliffe in the opening keynote paper. Here Dion used a table to compare Web squared’s characteristics with those of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

Conference chair Stephen Dale and keynote speaker Dion Hinchcliffe

Bonnie Cheuk’s efforts with social media to protect staff from information overload generated by the “e-mail high five” were entertaining and illustrated the challenges of culture change when implementing social media in the work place. There were three strong presentations from Euan Semple, Lee Bryant and Brian Kelly in the Social media and leadership session on the Tuesday morning, with Euan’s focus on how to move people away from po-faced attitudes to social media, and Lee’s discussion of how information professionals should have a stronger involvement in an area where corporate communications staff often have a hold. Librarians working in higher education are advised to review the video of Brian Kelly’s presentation on the value of cloud services, accessible from his UK Web Focus site. The conference sessions also gave access to many case studies from which librarians and information scientists could learn about good (and sometimes less than optimal) practice in information services delivery.

Ake Nygren spoke about social media and public libraries

The two papers that followed in the gallery area of the exhibition hall by Annie Mauger of CILIP and Anne Caputo of SLA were also based on the output of research projects. We were particularly pleased when Annie restated in her presentation CILIP’s recognition of the importance of evidence-based research to library and information science.

Congratulations

Hazel was pleased to join in celebrations of success at Online 2010. On the Tuesday afternoon, and just before he was due to take the stage, it was announced that Phil Bradley had been elected Vice President of CILIP for 2011.

Phil Bradley (photo credit Dave Pattern)

Later in the afternoon she attended the presentation of the award of Information World Review Information Professional of the Year 2010. Unfortunately the recipient Dave Pattern had been unable to make the journey to London due to the snow, so Karen Blakeman accepted the award on his behalf. For further information on Dave’s well-deserved success, please see the blog post by Brian Kelly. On the Thursday lunchtime we were also pleased to see Stephanie Kenna receive her honorary fellowship of CILIP.

Other reviews

This review of Online 2010 can only reflect the perspective of one participant and, as such, it is limited. For a fuller picture it is worth checking the reviews of others who have reported in detail on individual sessions, as well as the conference as a whole. The blogs postings from the Conference Circuit by Donald T Hawkins provide a good overview starting with Welcome to Live from London – Online Information 2010, as do the posts by Val Skelton and Kat Allen at InfoToday.eu. Val’s summary of What we learnt at Online Information 2010 is particularly interesting. Individuals who have blogged their own experiences of the conference include Mareike Guy and Onlineability. Nancy Davis Kho’s review for VIP focuses on the exhibition, and FreePint’s photos from Online are worth browsing. There are also links to blog postings and photographs from the conference and exhibition on the SLA Europe web site. We look forward to seeing further reviews of the conference in the print media in early 2011.

Stephanie Kenna

Stephanie began her career in librarianship when she joined the British Library (BL) in 1975. She performed a variety of roles before joining the Research and Development Department in 1988. Here she developed and managed the humanities and preservation research programmes, and established, as well as served as secretary to, The National Manuscripts Conservation Trust. In addition she was responsible for BL grants for Cataloguing and Preservation.

In recognition of that distinguished contribution Stephanie Kenna is presented for Honorary Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

Hazel Hall is chairing two sessions at the conference: (1) Tuesday track 2 16:00-17:30 Winning hearts and minds! Breaking through social media barriers; (2) Thursday track 2 09:30-11:00 Adding value to library and information services using social media.

We will be tweeting from the event, using the hash tag #online10, so even if you can’t be there in person, you can follow the proceedings remotely.

Bob McKee (photo credit: CILIP)

Without Bob, the Coalition would not have come into existence. He was in at the beginning, as one of the key speakers (and much more than that) at a workshop organised back in 2006 to celebrate the life of Brian Perry, the former Director of the British Library’s Research and Development Department. Bob was a keen participant in the discussions that led to the conclusion that there was a need for an organisation to stimulate, facilitate and co-ordinate strategic library and information science research.

To get from that conclusion to the setting up of the Coalition took a long time. There were all kinds of discussions about what kind of body was needed, who should sponsor it, what it should do, and how it should be financed. Bob was quietly determined that CILIP should play a key role, and when we were nearly at an impasse over the key question of which organisation should provide the absolutely essential financial and other back-office services, Bob agreed that CILIP would take on that role. His support was unstinting, and we could not have done without him.

So we at the Coalition have a special reason for thanking Bob for his help and support, among all the many other things he did to promote and champion the cause of libraries. We shall miss him.

The report singles out libraries as an area of public service facing funding challenges, with library usage declining and the cost per unit for lending a book becoming more expensive than the wholesale price of buying the book. The authors suggest that an appropriate solution would be to follow a North American model, whereby libraries are staffed by community volunteers. The report claims that such a move could save large amounts of money on “over-skilled paid staff”.

Needless to say there has already been a significant reaction to this section of the report. Former poet laureate and current chair of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Sir Andrew Motion, calls the plans “foolhardy, outlandish and potentially catastrophic” in a response for the Guardian. He goes on to stress that: “Good libraries, like good anythings, need expert people working within them. Maybe there is a role for some aspect of volunteering but all the central stuff must be done by people who are qualified to do it…”

CILIP has also been quick to outline the benefits of public libraries managed by professional staff at their web site and has launched a campaign asking for clear, compelling “one-minute messages” to promote the library and information community’s activities. School librarian Nicola McNee has responded to this call using Twitter and the #CILIP1 hashtag to challenge others to outline what they do and why we need skilled professionals working in our libraries. The response to her call has been analysed by Brian Kelly on the UKOLN Cultural Heritage blog.

Radio 4′s The World This Weekend probed the issue in detail and usefully highlighted the importance of looking at the end result intended by having a library in the community, with libraries described as being the “National Health Service of the mind”. You can hear the debate here.

Whilst the report forms part of the run up to a public consultation it seems to have support from the new government. Once again we are reminded that it is only with a robust evidence base that claims such as those made by KPMG might be refuted. The LIS Research Coalition was established last year to facilitate and strategic and coordinated approach to LIS research. One obvious way of developing the evidence base is for LIS stakeholders from across all sectors – and particularly those involved in practitioner research – is to work with the LIS Research Coalition. At the end of this month there is a great opportunity for us to gather together to achieve this at the forthcoming LIS Research Coalition conference on Monday 28th June at the British Library Conference Centre. Here we will be able to discuss the issues in more detail and set the future agenda for adding to – and exploiting – an evidence base the demonstrates the value and impact of LIS. The deadline for signing up to attend the conference is Friday 18th June, so you will need to be quick to secure one of the remaining places.

Miggie is Research Support Specialist at the University of Northampton. She has been a great supporter of the LIS Research Coalition in the first year of its implementation. Miggie has served on the programme committee for the conference which takes place later in the month on Monday 28th June at the British Library, and is the one behind the organisation of the one minute madness session at this event.

Over to Miggie…

We all enjoyed a fun-filled day on practitioner research in York last Thursday, participating in the ‘Librarians as researchers’ event hosted by UC&R Yorkshire and Humberside. In the morning Jean McNiff of York St John University put us all through our paces as action researchers (yes, we actually did a piece of action research there and then) and then Sheila Corrall from the University of Sheffield’s i-School presented a set of convincing arguments for embarking on a higher degree in LIS. Professional doctorates appeal – a structured programme with lots of relevance to the day job – but, as yet, there not many professional doctorates available for LIS professionals in the UK.

Slightly awed by this exalted company, I was there banging the drum for practitioner research. But why would practitioners want to do research? The group came up with lots of reasons….

Research is good for the individual:

• It is interesting – an opportunity to explore something in more depth, learn something new, satisfy your curiosity
• It encourages you to challenge yourself, to move out of that comfort zone, develop new skills, become reflective, stretch yourself
• It adds variety to the job – research involves a change from routine, an opportunity to do something different, work with new people
• It involves making a personal connection with work
• It increases job satisfaction
• It enables you to do your job better
• It supports professional development
• It enhances personal profile and improves career prospects

Research is good for the service and the organisation:

• It provides evidence of value and demonstrates impact
• It underpins strategic improvement and other decision-making… and on the way research can help to solve problems and improve service
• It leads to greater engagement with service users through:
  • Understanding their perspective
  • Showing that you’re interested in their needs
  • Doing what they do (promote the library as ‘academic’ department and the librarian as credible researcher)
• It increases staff motivation and dynamism
• It enhances organisational reputation and achieve recognition (within and beyond the institution)
• It brings financial benefit – by generating income or discovering ways to reduce costs

Research is good for the profession:

• It provokes conversation and debate (and not just within LIS – with other disciplines too)
• It creates and disseminates new knowledge and good practice – furthering professional excellence (as CILIP would have us do)
• It provokes positive change
• It develops an engaged and vibrant professional community
• It enhances the profession’s reputation and profile
• It defines our professional future

And with all that is going for practitioner research, we’d better get on with it, taking advantage of continuing the conversation at other professional events that provide research support and opportunities to consider its context in LIS practice, such as the LIS Research Coalition conference at the end of this month.