Selecting Research Collections for Digitization: Applying the Harvard Model

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The Advantages of Practice, or We Work in Libraries: That\u27s Why Our Research is Most Likely to Be Relevant

This editorial responds to an article in the previous issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship (November 2016), in which the editor-in-chief wrote about the difficulties of librarians conducting research, focusing on the constraints of practice. The current author contends that librarians are best suited to address research questions that arise from practice. Practice is an advantage, not a disadvantage, for library and information science research. Despite the challenges of balancing research and practice, librarians write the majority of research articles published in the leading library and information science research journals,including The Journal of Academic Librarianship

Academic Librarian Research: A Survey of Attitudes, Involvement, and Perceived Capabilities

This article reports on the development and results of a recent survey of academic librarians about their attitudes, involvement, and perceived capabilities using and engaging in primary research. The purpose of the survey was to inform the development of a continuing education program in research design. It updates earlier studies of academic librarian research; with the introduction of a confidence scale, it also contributes new insights regarding how prepared librarians believe themselves to be with regard to conducting research. The authors found that confidence in one’s ability to perform the discrete steps in the research process is a statistically significant predictor of a librarian conducting research and disseminating the results. The analysis of the responses to the confidence scale and other survey questions suggests several paths for future research about academic librarians and their research agendas

A Model Research Methods Training Program: Implications for the Curriculum

The majority of academic librarians in the US are employed by their insti-tutions either on tenure track, similar to teaching faculty, or they have some form of status that requires them to conduct and share the results of research to receive annual salary increases, achieve tenure or continuing employment, and/or gain promotion or enhanced ranking. Research published during the past two decades, however, confirms that most academic librarians enter the profession perceiving themselves to be unprepared for conducting research. To address deficiencies and alleviate anxieties surrounding research, the authors created a continuing educa-tion program for novice academic librarian researchers, the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). The program was based on Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy and was designed to instill participants with confidence in their ability to conduct research through mastery experience, verbal encouragement, and vicarious learning. IRDL proved to be an effective way for librarians to gain knowledge about research methods, receive timely feedback on research projects through mentoring and peer support, and become part of a research community. The majority entered the program feeling tentative about their roles as research-ers and emerged as more confident researchers. Master’s students would benefit from revisions to the LIS curriculum that would better prepare them for becoming librarian-researcher

Measuring the research readiness of academic and research librarians : A project report of the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL)

The purpose of the conference paper is to investigate the effectiveness of IRDL with regard to two project goals: 1) Provide instruction in areas needed to complete the research design for a project identified by each Institute scholar; and 2) instill confidence in Institute scholars about the research process by providing clear instruction on how to perform all of the steps in a research project. The hypotheses are: 1) Institute scholars will have achieved mastery of all institute content. 2) Institute scholars will have achieved a high level of confidence in their ability to perform all steps in the research process. 3) Mastery will correlate with confidence

The Evolution of the Personal Networks of Novice Librarian Researchers

This article describes for the first time the composition and structure of the personal networks of novice librarian researchers. We used social network analysis to observe if participating in the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL) affected the development of the librarians’ personal networks and how the networks changed over the course of one year. Four times during the year, we used EgoWeb 2.0, open-source software for social network analysis, to gather the data used in the study. We found that the size of the research networks of the participants dramatically increased after the IRDL summer workshop and continued to evolve over the yearlong program

Mentoring Academic Librarians for Research Success

This chapter describes the design and implementation of a formal research mentoring program within a continuing education program for academic librarians. The chapter explores ways in which this type of mentoring might be applied in a single-institution or a cross-institutional mentoring program. Formal one-on-one research-mentoring is one component of the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL, https://library.lmu.edu/irdl), a research development program for novice researchers who are academic librarians from all disciplines. The short-term goal of the IRDL mentoring program is to increase the probability that each IRDL scholar will complete their research project in one year. However, the benefits of formal research mentoring extend beyond the one-year experience of IRDL. Mentoring can develop the research confidence needed to build sustainable success as a librarian-researcher. In the first section of the chapter, the authors discuss the scholarly literature on research mentoring, the rationale for including research mentoring in the development of IRDL, the process of recruiting mentors and pairing them with scholars, and the administration of the program. In the second section, the authors discuss the evaluation of the program, tips for fostering a positive relationship between mentor and scholar, and recommendations for the design of a successful research mentoring program. The authors have appended the agreement that establishes expectations for scholars and their mentors at the outset of their relationship and the monthly writing prompts that facilitate communication between scholars and mentors and foster reflective practice. The authors believe that IRDL provides a unique opportunity to address some of the problems with mentoring that have been reported in the library literature. Their experiences can be applied in other settings, providing improved research mentoring and increased research success among academic librarians

Complex and Varied: Factors Related to the Research Productivity of Academic Librarians in the United States

Academic librarians face multiple barriers in conducting the research that is expected in their work, yet they still manage to successfully complete it. This study aimed to identify the factors that contribute to their success. Through an online survey sent via email to a random sample of academic librarians in the United States, we gathered and analyzed quantitative data about education and experience, demographics, success factor statements, and research productivity to determine which factors are related to increased research output. We found that three categories of factors—Individual Attributes, Peers and Community, and Institutional Structures and Supports—contribute positively to overall research output. We identified several elements that academic librarians may want to pursue to increase research productivity, with Peers and Community identified as a category for exploration. Overall, we found that academic librarians are highly motivated to conduct research, yet the factors leading to their success are complex and varied

Complex and Varied: Factors Related to the Research Productivity of Academic Librarians in the United States

Academic librarians face multiple barriers in conducting the research that is expected in their work, yet they still manage to successfully complete it. This study aimed to identify the factors that contribute to their success. Through an online survey sent via email to a random sample of academic librarians in the United States, we gathered and analyzed quantitative data about education and experience, demographics, success factor statements, and research productivity to determine which factors are related to increased research output. We found that three categories of factors—Individual Attributes, Peers and Community, and Institutional Structures and Supports—contribute positively to overall research output. We identified several elements that academic librarians may want to pursue to increase research productivity, with Peers and Community identified as a category for exploration. Overall, we found that academic librarians are highly motivated to conduct research, yet the factors leading to their success are complex and varied

Measuring the Research Readiness of Academic and Research Librarians: A Project Report of the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship

The Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL) is a continuing education program designed to help academic and research librarians improve their research skills and increase their research output. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the centerpiece of the project is a nine-day workshop on research design each summer for three years, 2014–2016. Twenty-one participants each year will leave the IRDL with increased knowledge of research skills and with a viable research proposal to be conducted during the following academic year. Project assessment is carried out each of the three years with input from an internal assessment team, the co-investigators, and an external reviewer. The four-part assessment plan includes scoring each research proposal pre- and post-IRDL workshop; social network analysis; mastery of curriculum content; and research confidence, measured by a confidence scale administered immediately before the workshop and at the end. The confidence scale is a revised and expanded version of a scale used with respondents to a survey conducted by two of the researchers in 2010