LIS DREaM Workshop 1: Edinburgh

I was fortunate enough to be granted an AHRC-funded travel bursary to attend three workshops as part of the DREaM Project (Developing Research Excellence and Methods). The first workshop was held in Edinburgh on 25th October. It was a really interesting and informative day, and in terms of timing the whole programme works perfectly for me – I will be starting my PhD in January so haven’t yet developed a methodology.The DREaM project aims to encourage researchers to make better use of well-established social science research approaches, thereby improving the quality of LIS research in the UK and adding variety to the range of research methodologies used by LIS researchers. I’m very much hoping that my research into the role of public libraries in supporting and encouraging democratic engagement will be a meaningful and valuable contribution to LIS research which can be applied in practice.

All three workshops will follow the same format with different content:

1. a broad research approach;
2. a specific quantitative research technique;
3. a specific qualitative research technique;
4. a research “practicality” (e.g. ethics, improving research impact, influencing policy).

Workshop 1 looked at ethnography, social network analysis, discourse analysis, research ethics and legal issues. All the sessions were led by interesting, enthusiastic and incredibly knowledgeable researchers and even if I don’t apply the methods we explored, I certainly feel like I’ve gained valuable knowledge about the range of approaches that can be used to produce high-quality research.

Session notes and all the slides and videos used have been put up on the DREaM website, so I won’t duplicate content, but highly recommend them as useful resources.

Thank you to Professor Hazel Hall, Professor Charles Oppenheim and everyone involved in the DREaM project for the opportunity to take part in the workshops and for making the day such a success. I can’t wait for the next one.

Piled Higher and Deeper

I wasn’t sure when would be the right time to write about this, because it’s still half a year away, but it was all confirmed yesterday and I’m just too excited not to share…

I am incredibly fortunate to have been offered two PhD scholarships; at The University of Sheffield’s Information School and The University of Strathclyde’s Department of Computer and Information Science.

For those new to my blog and me (hello!) I completed an MA in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield in September 2010. I wrote a PhD proposal for a project based on my Masters research into public libraries and democratic engagement in December/January and applied to Sheffield in the hopes they’d have a scholarship available. It turned out that AHRC funding wasn’t available for the School in the coming year (which we found out about afterwards) but I did manage to secure Faculty funding, for a half scholarship. Before that, when it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to get anything at all, though, I started looking around for alternative places to apply, and Strathclyde became an option. I applied and was offered a place, and was then offered an ESRC scholarship as part of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, which is an ESRC Doctoral Training Centre. Deciding which offer to take has been incredibly difficult for a lot of reasons, but I realised that full funding in a place I’ve wanted to live for ages is just too good an opportunity to turn down, so I’m off to Glasgow in January. You can download the full proposal (including cringey bigging-up of self section) if you’re particularly interested, but here’s what I’ll be researching (subject to changes when I actually get started of course!):

Title: What is the role of public libraries in improving the democratic engagement of UK citizens?

Research Questions

1. What information about national and local democratic processes do public libraries provide? Is it enough to facilitate democratic engagement?
2. What formal schemes to promote and develop democratic engagement do public libraries participate in? How successful are these?
3. What factors influence public libraries’ involvement in formal democratic engagement schemes and related information provision, in terms of:
   a) Central government, local council and library authority policies?
   b) Staff perception of the meaning of these policies, and the associated concept of the ‘neutrality’ of public libraries?
   c) Library users’ perceptions of the role of libraries in democratic engagement?

Objectives

1. To discover extant areas of democracy-related information provision, and:
   a) Identify areas of strength;
   b) Establish areas in need of improvement.
2. To determine which of the formal schemes available are used by public libraries and assess the impact they have on democratic engagement.
3. To explore the barriers to libraries’ involvement with democratic engagement activities and suggest ways these could be overcome in order to strengthen the role of public libraries in improving democratic engagement.

Outcomes

• A novel contribution to the framework for greater citizen engagement through a focus on the role of public library and information services;
• The suggestion of amendments in policy which would reduce barriers to libraries’ involvement in supporting democratic engagement;
• The recommendation of ways library services could develop schemes and justifiably integrate democratic engagement into library service strategies;
• The encouragement of library services to explore their role in democratic engagement, thereby adding value and enhancing libraries’ position within local councils.

I thought it might be useful to give some pointers in case anyone else is thinking about applying for a PhD (for example, this fantastic opportunity at Sheffield) so here are some tips and useful links:

1. Everyone who’s supported me throughout the process, including current PhD students and researchers, has said: Only apply for a ready-made PhD if you’re really interested in the topic, and if you’re going to write your own proposal, make sure it’s something you love. Otherwise, researching it for three years will destroy you. I’m inclined to believe them.
2. Be prepared to justify why your chosen topic is really important and why you’re the right person to research it. You’ll be in stiff competition with people who want to research topics similar to you and a lot of completely unrelated competition too, if you’re going for a University scholarship or research council funding, so you need to be able to explain the value of your research and your skills. Plus, research in the Arts and Humanities (all research, really) is going to have to defend itself even more over the next few years. If you’ve got doubts about the relevance of your topic or your dedication to it, think twice about applying.
3. Follow the guidelines for the application process. Different institutions want different levels of detail. For example, I had to massively reduce the length and detail of my original Sheffield proposal to meet the preferences of Strathclyde. This can (seriously) be the hardest part of the process, so make sure you’ve set aside enough time to do it.
4. Don’t be afraid to show other people your proposal as you’re writing it. I’m very fortunate to have the support of some incredible and experienced people and can’t thank them enough for reading through my drafts and making recommendations for improving/clarifying parts. Potential supervisors will want to see your proposal, and they’ll have their own recommendations. Listen to them.
5. Look into who might be able to supervise you and approach them early. I know from working in an academic department that deals with postgraduate research that it’s extremely beneficial to do your homework. Departments can’t take you on as a research student if they don’t have a member of staff with the relevant expertise or they’re on research leave etc. It’s also good for the potential supervisor to know that they might be asked to supervise – it’s up to them to accept you in the first instance, so make yourself known to them if you aren’t already!
6. Finding funding is confusing and messy and takes time. I found it really difficult to find out what kind of funding was available and where. There are two research councils that can fund LIS research: ESRC and AHRC, and then there are internal scholarships within universities. Unfortunately, databases like Find a PhD don’t necessarily show you exactly what’s available and aren’t brilliantly searchable. If there’s nothing there, don’t assume it doesn’t exist. Keep looking! Having a scout around university websites is time-consuming and sometimes difficult too, but you can uncover some opportunities that you might not have otherwise found.
7. Consider interdisciplinary research. When it looked like all hope was gone for me I started contacting departments with links to areas such as social policy and democratic engagement, and asked them about the possibility of research within their department looking specifically at libraries. They seemed keen, but ultimately there weren’t any scholarships going there. I think this is something that might have legs, though.

Useful Links:

• PhDs explained and FAQs – Find a PhD
• Applying for a PhD – Prospects
• PhD Funding: Library Sciences –  Postgraduate Studentships

I can’t wait to get started; January seems absolutely ages away! I know it’s going to be a very tough and busy few years, but I really believe in what I’m going to be studying and hope it makes a valuable contribution to LIS research and UK public libraries.

The Value of Public Libraries (and the measurement and demonstration thereof)

My campaigning colleague Ian has written about the Failure Narrative that seems to be surrounding the politics and media coverage of public libraries at the moment. He makes the excellent point that councils seem to be justifying closures, cuts and alternative models of governance by using the rhetoric that “bad stuff’s happening and it can’t be done effectively by us”. He’s also written about how the government and the media do like to focus on the negative rather than the positive, which is all part of trying to perpetuate the myth that libraries aren’t relevant anymore etc. and we shouldn’t be too bothered about them.

It got me thinking (again) about how we all know that libraries are brilliant. It’s a no-brainer. The more enlightened among us even know that libraries are about more than just books, a shiny building and longer opening hours (Phil Bradley covers that all extremely well in this post). They’re about lifelong learning, independent decision-making and cultural development of the individual and social groups. They’re about the public good, equitable access for all members of society to public domain information of all kinds and in all formats, an appropriate balance within the law between demands from information users, and the need to respect confidentiality. They’re about a fair and economically prosperous society underpinned by literacy, access to information and the transfer of knowledge.

This isn’t airy-fairy-bunkum or crazy-lefty-ideology (sorry, Mayor Davies) – this is about the fundamentals of society. Libraries are cultural, educational and civic hubs. They always have been, and they always should be. Information and information needs are changing, but information’s not going away, and nor are people! What isn’t clear, though, is how we can prove this to the bean-counters of the world (because sadly, they’re not going away either).

An awful lot of qualitative data has been pouring into the Voices for the Library inbox for several months now. We’ve been presenting it in different ways – stories, guest blog posts, a Mashup challenge, a Wordle about “what libraries mean to you“…

We’ve even had some offers of support from academic departments keen to do something with all the information we’ve been gathering. Hopefully there’ll be time at some point soon to take them up on the offer!

The link between public libraries and academia is very important and shouldn’t be undermined. The issues faced in public librarianship are Big and Serious, no matter how many times people say that you don’t need experts, specialists or professionals to run a library service well, it’s not going to become true. My friend Liz Chapman wrote a fantastic piece about the need for Masters qualifications for VFTL, and David McMenemy wrote an excellent post for us about it, in which he said:

“Too many of several generations of professional librarians have been apathetic about the collective responsibility we all have to advocate the mission of public libraries. Taking our eye off the ball in this has been an unforgiveable dereliction of our duty to society. For many professionals educated since the early 1980s they have no way of thinking outside of a consumerist box which accentuated the basest of motives for public services.”

This may or may not be the case; I’ve not been around long enough to know. What I do know, though, is that we’ve got a big problem and we’ve got to do something about it. I’m very happy to say with confidence that there are an awful lot of brilliant librarians out there, working with CILIP and other organisations to provide fantastic library services.  I know, because I talk to them and read about it every day. The Edge Conference was (again) an excellent insight into how libraries are engaging with communities and technology. CILIP are working their bums off to advocate for public libraries, engage in meaningful discussion about the future of the profession, and tell ignorant Mayors off when they’re being stupid (*cough* BoJo and Pete *cough*). The LISNPN Crew have launched an advocacy competition, which is offering a free place at the Umbrella Conference and the CILIP New Professionals Conference. Librarians are Getting Stuff Done!

On that topic – in a couple of weeks I will be taking part in a workshop entitled Measuring the Value of Public Libraries: The fallacy of footfall and issues as measures of the value of public  libraries. I’m really looking forward to it, and I hope that it will be a step away from the simplistic and inaccurate measurement of footfall (the number of people who walk through the doors, and occasionally the people who click on the council’s ‘library’ website) and issue statistics (book/cd/dvd lending), and towards more effective systems of measurement.

The event has been organised by Professor Edward Halpin, Associate Dean of Research, Partnerships and Consultancy at Leeds Metropolitan University. He said:

“The event is designed as a starting point for debate and an opportunity to construct meaningful measurement tools for valuing our public libraries, which at this time of great change is both pertinent and important to us all.”

As well as newbies like me, participants include: Annie Mauger, Chief Executive of CILIP; Dr. Adam Cooper, Department of Culture Media and Sport, Head of Research, and Programme Manager for CASE; Carolynn Rankin, Researcher and Senior Lecturer, Leeds Metropolitan University; Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council. It’s a really diverse mix of people with different expertise. Hopefully the outcomes will be something that we can use to satisfy the aforementioned bean-counters!