Just as it looked like maybe, just maybe, the snow was gone…
I’m off to Edge 2010 in Edinburgh tomorrow, which I’m very excited about, but I have a feeling it’s not going to be an easy trip up there – severe weather warnings and bad snow are forecast! If I get there and back alive I’ll blog about it, it’s going to be really interesting.
It’s dissertation preparation time, which I’ve been looking forward to at the same time as being a bit scared of for a while. It’s my first research project, really, and with all that new territory has to come a certain amount of trepidation, I suppose. I’ve known what I want to research for a while – how public libraries are, to put it simply, very important, and play a valuable role in community engagement and, as a result, democratic engagement. Which is fascinating, to me. Researching it and then demonstrating the findings, however…well, it’s a bit of a minefield. Of course there has to be a whole heap of qualitative research, but translating that into something that will say something important loudly and clearly in a language that the people I’d (in dreamland) like to read it, is difficult. It’s widely known that it’s difficult, I’m not saying anything new here.
So, I’ve been banging my head against a wall for a couple of weeks, trying to work out just what methods to use and how to use them well. I think I’m getting there. I want to do something a bit different, based on recommendations in the literature by people who know their stuff, avoiding reinventing the methodological wheel.
Hopefully, this book will come in handy: Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science by Barbara M. Wildemuth. If it doesn’t, I just wasted £43! (I know, I know, bad librarian, buying a book, but it was published last year and isn’t easily available. Plus, it’s had such good reviews that I have a feeling it’s a keeper.)
Oh yes, (hopefully) this blog now comes with added RSS feed. I have to be honest, I’m not an expert at blogs and haven’t actually got my head around RSS feeds yet. If I’ve done it wrong, please let me know.
