Formalized Curiosity

  This blog is authored by Dr. Lili Luo at the School of Information at San Jose State University, in hope of supporting practitioner research in library and information science. 

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Moving the blog to a new home

I started blogging on Tumblr in 2013, right after I was promoted to Associate Professor. In the past five years, I wrote a total of 55 blog posts. Hmm...not as productive as I had hoped. The blog primarily focused on topics related to research methods, which is an important area of my interests. But five years later, I find myself wanting to broaden the scope of my ramblings and be more  inclusive about my research and teaching. So, to mark the new beginning, I have decided to move the blog to a new home - lililuo.home.blog. Another reason could be that I always fall for “temporal landmarks” (see more discussion about this in Dan Pink’s  When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing) - since this is the first semester after my promotion to full professor, I feel like I have to do something refreshing to keep me going. So blog migration it is! :-)

I just posted my first post in the new blog - A few research methods resources from SAGE. Check it out!

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Recent trip to ACEID 2018 Conference

I attended the 2018 Asian Conference on Education and International Development (ACEID) last week, and it was my first time attending a conference outside of LIS. The majority of the conference participants (from over 40 countries) were from education, and their presentations covered a wide range of education related topics. My presentation was about how librarians and faculty collaborate in higher education, and it was scheduled in a session along with two other presentations focusing on higher ed. Unfortunately, not many people showed up in the audience - the concurrent sessions on K-12 issues outcompeted us. Still, I had a nice discussion with the small audience - before I presented my study, I showed them slides of librarian stereotypes and their true images (e.g. portraits of the book “This is What a Librarian Looks Like”, the New Zealand librarians cosplaying the Kardasians, and examples of the cool things that librarians made happen in the library), and the audience was quite impressed. They agreed that my presentation gave them good ideas of how to reach out to their librarians for help now that they know libraries are such an important component of the learning ecology in higher ed. 

I had much fun interacting with education researchers at the conference and learned a lot myself. There’s a even research about how PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) affects middle school girls’ academic performance in school. How interesting.

The conference took place in Kobe Japan during the beautiful cherry blossoms, and there were lines of cherry trees right outside of the conference venue, so I got to witness the fleeting and delicate beauty that has such significant cultural symbolism in Japan. It was indeed quite a sight!

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A recent research/library trip to China

Last week I went to Shanxi Province, China for a research trip.  I'm collaborating with a Chinese professor from Shanxi University to study the role of libraries in helping the public fulfill their consumer health information needs. On this research trip, we conducted focus groups and in-depth interviews to gather data on people's consumer health information seeking behavior and librarians' preparedness in providing consumer health information service. It was a fruitful trip. 

I visited three libraries - I wanted to post the photos here on Tumblr but couldn’t (maybe there were too many; hmm...maybe I should switch to a different blog platform?). So I ended up posting them on a separate webpage. We have students taking the international librarianship course in our program and maybe they will enjoy my post. :-)

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My new book - “Enhancing Library and Information Research Skills: A Guide for Academic Librarians”

My two wonderful colleagues, Kris Brancolini and Marie Kennedy, and I wrote a book together based on our experience with the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL), an IMLS-funded program that provides professional development opportunities for academic librarians to improve their research skills. The book is titled “Enhancing Library and Information Research Skills: A Guide for Academic Librarians”, in which we covered the whole spectrum of being a practitioner-researcher in the academic library setting.

It was a great experience working with Kris and Marie on this book. They both are strong advocates for academic librarians’ engagement in research and use of research evidence to inform decision making. We truly hope that this book will help academic librarians around the nation to become more aware of the value of research to academic librarianship, develop a solid understanding of the research process, and ultimately improve their confidence and competency in conducting and applying research in their professional practice.

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A community library in China

I love visiting local libraries when I travel. This summer, I came to Guiyang, China to see my aunt and uncle. They live in an area with a population of 300,000 and yet there’s only one public library in that area. The tiny community library is a 600 square-foot room containing a few shelves of magazines and books, a reading area, and two small staffed desks. Most readers there are senior citizens (the only young reader there is my daughter).

Even though the physical space is limited, the library provides a wide array of electronic resources, which are displayed on a big touch screen. The e-resources include eBooks, eJournals and videos. Each title has a QR code - people can scan it and then access it on their mobile devices. How convenient!

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IRDL 2017 and Interview as a research method

Last week I went to the beautiful campus of Loyola Marymount University for IRDL 2017. I’m glad that this wonderful research methods training program received funding to continue for another three years – more academic librarians will benefit from it and gain important skills to become more competent and confident practitioner researchers. I had great conversations with the participants this year. They were all working on interesting projects – e.g. how ARL libraries design their fundraising page on the library website, how students understand or misunderstand library jargon, how students’ interpretation of research differs from faculty’s expectation and observation of their research behavior, just to name a few. I can’t wait to read more about these great projects in journal publications.

In the past week, I taught during the day, and worked on other projects at night (yes, it’s a productive week for me!). Particularly, I took full advantage of LMU library’s subscription to SAGE Research Methods, and read a number of articles about the research method – interview. There are different ways to use interview in gathering qualitative data. Here’s a summary of them from the SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research:

Convergent interviewing - a technique that aims to collect, analyze, and interpret people's experiences, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge that converge around a set of interviews. It was created primarily to address issues in under-researched areas. It permits in-depth interviewing by promoting a cyclical research process that requires ongoing analysis as part of the overall strategy. Interviewers engage in a constant comparative reflexive process that permits detailed rich content and theoretical sampling as researchers seek to continuously test emerging interpretations from early interviews in subsequent interviews.

Cognitive interviewing – it encompasses a variety of approaches for eliciting qualitative data on how participants interpret and respond to a wide variety of situations. Cognitive interviewing increasingly is used in the evaluation of technology interfaces such as websites and tools for informatics. It is used in education to understand how students think about content and respond to test items and in marketing to understand how to evaluate products better.

Conversational interviewing - an approach used by research interviewers to generate verbal data through talking about specified topics with research participants in an informal and conversational way. Interviewers and interviewees rely on taken-for-granted assumptions about how everyday talk occurs and how speakers make meaning of one another's utterances. In emphasizing features of mundane conversation, conversational interviewers strive to facilitate a research environment in which participants feel free to participate in extended discussions of research topics in a less hierarchical environment than that convened in structured interview settings.

Narrative interview - an interview that is organized to facilitate the development of a text that can be interpreted through narrative analysis. Narrative analysis is guided by a theory of narrative, and these theories of narrative vary in the influence of the reader, the text, and the intent of the author on interpretation. For this reason, the content and structure of a narrative interview will depend both on the theory of narrative being used in the analysis and on the research question.

Interactive interviewing -  an interpretive practice for getting an in-depth and intimate understanding of people's experiences with emotionally charged and sensitive topics such as childbirth, illness, loss, and eating disorders. Emphasizing the communicative and joint sense-making that occurs in interviewing, this approach involves the sharing of personal and social experiences of both respondents and researchers, who tell (and sometimes write) their stories in the context of a developing relationship.

The critical incident technique (CIT) - originally, it refers to a set of procedures to collect direct observations of human behaviors in a way that facilitates their use in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles. Over the years, it has been increasingly applied to studying psychological states or experiences, and emphasis has shifted from direct observation by experts to retrospective self-report in interviews.

Co-constructed narratives – this refers to stories jointly constructed by relational partners about epiphanies in their lives. This approach offers a way for participants to actively construct a version of a relational event that provides insight, understanding, and an in-depth and complex reflection on what occurred. As such, this mode of doing research provides an alternative to traditional interviewing, especially when the topic under consideration is emotionally charged, personal, and sensitive.

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Creative Research Methods for LIS Research II.

In library research, an important source of data is input from the community of library users. How are users using library collections/services/facilities? How satisfied are they with their library experience? What are the inadequacies in meeting their needs? User input is critical in helping library professionals understand how successful the library is in serving the user community. Traditionally, librarians gather user input through survey, in-depth interview and focus group. To make the research process more engaging to both the researcher and library users, they may consider more creative alternatives, such as the photovoice method. Through the utilization of photographs and stories, this method allows community members to identify and represent issues of importance to them, enabling policy makers to develop a greater understanding of the issues, and formulate effective and comprehensive strategies to address them in a way that is also meaningful for the community.

Photovoice is a qualitative method often used in community-based participatory research (CBPR), where community members take photos related to a particular issue and tell their stories behind the photos in a facilitated discussion. Community members are believed to be more imaginative and observant of community issues than the most experienced photographers and photo journalists. In library and information science (LIS), photovoice is still relatively new and not widely used. Recently I wrote an article to review this method and discuss its implications for LIS research. The article is published in Library Hi Tech, titled “Photovoice: A Creative Method to Engage Library User Community”.

Since Photovoice is a CBPR method, it is often applied in action-oriented projects, where a partnership among the key stakeholders is established and all partners are equitably involved in the process with the aim of combining knowledge and action for community improvement . The key stakeholders include researchers, community members and decision makers, and they participate in the photovoice process collaboratively to explore community issues and produce an action plan to address them. However, photovoice projects are known for being time consuming as they usually extend over several weeks, which can be burdensome for some community participants and lead to high attrition rates. The cost related to photography and exhibition can be a concern too. Without community members’ sustained commitment and adequate funding, it is unlikely for the photovoice project to succeed.

Photovoice provides an engaging way for libraries to examine user needs, perceptions or behavior in order to provide better services to them. Combining visuals and narratives, this method may help capture a nuanced view of topics that are sensitive, vague or difficult to articulate verbally, and thus may generate data unexpected when using interviews or focus groups. The collaborative nature of the photovoice method allows community members take on the role of co-researchers as they participate in photovoice projects. It provides an empowering mechanism for library users to become actively engaged in issues pertinent to the user community and advocate for their concerns, needs and desires. With active user involvement, library outreach efforts are more likely to be successful.

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Methods in Information Literacy Research - ECIL 2016 Reflections

A few weeks ago I attended the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) in Prague. It was my first time attending this conference and it was a great experience. Six people (students, alum and faculty) from our Gateway PhD program were there and it was fabulous to see our program so well represented at this conference.  

The conference covered a wide variety of information literacy related topics, and what interested me most were the presentations about methods in information literacy research. Here’s a summary of them

Autoethnography: Research as Reflection, Inclusion and Empowerment (by Deitering, Anne-Marie; Schroeder, Robert; Stoddart, Richard)

The three presenters were involved in a project where a learning community of librarians developed their autoethnographies. The provided an overview of autoethnography and discussed their experience and reflections on this project. It was quite refreshing to me as because in authoethnography  the researcher is the subject of research. I found an article that provided a detailed explanation of this method – here’s the link http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol19/iss37/3/.

Using Phenomenographic Methods to Support Political Information Use (by Smith, Lauren)

There are quite a few phenomenographers in information literacy research, including some of my colleagues in our Gateway PhD program. So I know a little bit about this method. The presenter talked about her study using this method to examine how high school students are aware of, acquire, engage with and apply political information. It’s a comprehensive study and well designed. Her presentation slides can be located here.

Critical Incident Technique in Information Literacy Research in the XXI Century (by Cisek, Sabina Barbara)

The presenter shared her review and analysis of studies that used Critical Incident technique in information literacy research. This method has not been widely applied to studying information literacy related topics. It’s more popular in examining information seeking behavior.  Here’s a brief definition of this method “The critical incident technique consists of a set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behavior in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles. The critical incident technique outlines procedures for collecting observed incidents having special significance and meeting systematically defined criteria” (Flanagan, 1954). The presentation slides can be located here.

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Creative Research Methods for LIS Research I.

Recently I have been reading “Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide” by Helen Kara. It’s refreshing to read about the various approaches in arts-based research, research using technology, mixed-methods research and trans formative research. It made me think how these methods can be applied in LIS research. 

One of the methods is vignettes, which I happened to co-write a paper about with two wonderful librarians, Allison Benedetti and John Jackson. Here’s an excerpt from our paper:

“Vignettes are short stories about hypothetical characters in hypothetical circumstances, to whose situation the interviewee is invited to respond. As a methodological tool, vignettes can be used in focus group interviews, in-depth interviews, or survey interviews, where the interviewee is invited to draw upon their own experience, and provide perceptions, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and diagnostic predictions about how the fictional character in the vignette will behave. When observing or placing an individual in a particular context would not be possible for logistical or ethical reasons, vignettes are often considered. Approximating a real-world situation, vignettes allow for features of the context to be specified so that the interviewee can make normative statements about a set of social circumstances rather than provide their responses in a vacuum. 

Vignettes are often presented as a written narrative that the interviewee can read. Vignettes must carry sufficient detail to allow the interviewee to visualize the hypothetical circumstances as an actual situation. Particularly, the situational elements of a vignette need to be carefully specified and the main characters in the vignette are usually given names. Following each vignette, the researcher may ask an open-ended question or a closed question with a set of response categories from which the interviewee can choose. Probes are used when necessary for the interviewee to elaborate on their responses. 

In LIS research, vignettes have not been widely used. Given that vignettes are helpful to depersonalize sensitive topics and encourage respondents to talk more openly, they could be potentially useful for researching the attitudes and behaviors of scholars related to publishing, copyright, open access practices, and practically any area in which libraries are curious about the behaviors and habits of users. Vignettes could also be used with students to teach about or demonstrate concepts related to plagiarism and academic integrity. User experience and web design practices have long been utilizing personas or archetypes to evaluate designs and functionality of interfaces; there may be a place for vignettes to augment these practices, perhaps with remote or online usability studies.”

I would like to continue explore the use of creative methods in LIS research. Writing a blog series about this would help me document my exploration. So this post would be the first in this series. The next method I hope to explore is photovoice. A member of the 2016 IRDL cohort is considering using it. How great is that!

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IRDL 2016

The third and final Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL) took place in June. IRDL is an IMLS-funded project that seeks to create a learning opportunity and a support system for academic librarians who want to improve their research skills and increase their research output. Twenty-one librarian scholars gathered at the beautiful campus of Loyola Marymount University and went through a 9-day intensive research methods training program. This year, quite a number of librarians were working on topics involving populations that are understudied in library research. Here are a few examples:

1.      How international students use the library and how does the library contribute to their success and growth in life

2.      How Chinese international students interpret “Authority is constructed and contextual”

3.      How scholars who study materials in non-English languages but publish in English use citation management software

4.      What is the experience of librarians of color in residency programs

5.      What are the barriers for women to seek leadership positions in libraries

During the Institute, there were two hours scheduled each day for the participating librarians to consult the instructors and IRDL directors about their research projects. I enjoyed these consultations immensely. It is always pleasant to chat with people who are enthusiastic about their research. The projects about understudied populations reinforced my idea of offering a research methods course that focuses on researching special populations. Every semester there are always students in our MLIS degree program proposing to conduct research about the library and information needs/behavior of a population that is traditionally underserved or understudied in libraries. For instance, in the past semester, a student proposed a survey study to examine the library needs of people who are quadriplegic. As our libraries strive to meet the needs of diverse user populations, it would be helpful if our librarians know how to properly design studies to generate practice-informing evidence about different populations, especially the underserved or less privileged ones.

See, IRDL always gives me new ideas and refreshes my perspectives as a researcher/educator. Two weeks flew by very quickly. I appreciate the opportunity to be part of this great effort that seeks to enhance the quality of scholarship among librarians and foster a culture of research-mindedness. Marie and Kris, the two wonderful IRDL project directors, are truly insightful in making IRDL happen, and I’m sure that the IRDL participants will make them proud by raising the bar of library research.

[The photo was actually taken during the first year of IRDL in 2014 - Greg, Michael and I were the instructors. It was so nice to see Greg and Michael every year at IRDL (and Emily this year). We make a great team :-) ]

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Improving Librarians’ Research Confidence

Last week I attended the 2016 conference of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries, and presented a paper I co-authored with two wonderful colleagues from Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Marie and Kris. In this presentation, we talked about the mapping between librarians’ research confidence and the curriculum of the Institute of Research Design for Librarianship (IRDL), a federally funded program that provides research methods training for librarians. For each topic covered in the training program (e.g. research question development, research design, data collection, data analysis, research dissemination), librarians’ confidence was measured before and after the program, and increase was detected across the board. This was consistent with the preliminary findings of another study we are conducting. In that study, we seek to understand the long term impact of IRDL by asking the participants to describe three incidents where they strongly felt the benefits of IRDL in their work or research. So far we have seen quite a number of narratives about how they felt more confident when working with faculty, talking to people at conferences and interpreting the published literature.

According to Bandura, mastery experiences build confidence through success and provide an individual with the ability to persevere in the face of obstacles, which is especially important in performing difficult tasks, such as conducting research in the traditionally practical library profession (lack of confidence is often cited as a barrier to librarians’ research engagement). I’m glad to see that IRDL has been able to improve librarian’s research confidence and help them become more confident and competent practitioner researchers. The third cohort of IRDL will gather in LMU for their training in less than a week, and I look forward to meeting them!

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Research-based Library Practices Summit in Doha, Qatar

Last week I had the pleasure of going to Doha, Qatar to give a workshop at the Research-based Library Practices Summit. The Summit was organized by librarians from University College London and Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and attended by librarians from multiple countries in the Gulf region. My workshop focused on providing an overview of the frequently used quantitative and qualitative research methods in library and information science such as survey, focus group interview, in-depth interview and content analysis, and explaining the process of making a methodological decision based on the research question. The objective of the workshop is for participants to gain knowledge and skills to determine which qualitative and quantitative methods are most appropriate to address their research questions. I used the following questions to help them analyze their research question and make the methodological decision:

·        Are qualitative research methods appropriate for your research question?

a.      How much previous research exists on your topic?

b.      Do you intend to capture a nuanced, in-depth view of your topic?

c.      Do you intend to describe your observations via the identification of themes/patterns?

d.      Is there existing qualitative content you can analyze, or do you have to collect original qualitative data?

e.      Which qualitative data collection method do you plan to use – focus group interview, in-depth interview or field observations?

 ·        Are quantitative research methods appropriate for your research question?

a.      Is your research question a relationship question or a causality question?

b.      Has there been extensive research conducted on your topic that the range of Reponses or variations of behavior are already known?

c.      Do you intend to quantify your observations and produce generalizable conclusions?

d.      Is there existing statistics you can analyze, or do you have to collect original quantitative data?

e.      Which quantitative data collection method do you plan to use – quantitative content analysis, quantitative observations, or survey?

Overall the workshop went pretty well. We had a lot of good discussions. I was impressed with the participants’ eagerness to conduct research to improve their practice. This kind of “research-mindedness” is exactly what we need in the profession.

During my stay in Doha, I had the opportunity to visit the state-of-the-art Qatar National Library. It’s still under construction, so we had to wear safety hat and vest on the tour. It’s an amazing building. I loved the open design and the high level of automation. There is even a restaurant in the library – a real one with a kitchen, not just a café where you can only get sandwiches. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. But here’s a picture of us in front of the building.

Here are a couple of pictures I took of a gorgeous corridor in the Education City, where the Summit was taking place. Gorgeous view, isn’t it?

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Quantitative research workshop

Quantitative research has always been a challenging topic in my teaching of research methods. Quite a number of my students are innately disinclined to deal with numbers and find statistical analysis uninteresting and even unnerving. So every time I cover quantitative research, I always start with this quote from Earl Babbie’s The Practice of Social Research:

““Empirical research is first and foremost a logical rather than a mathematical operation. Mathematics is merely a convenient and efficient language for accomplishing the logical operations inherent in quantitative data analysis. This textbook is not intended to teach you statistics or torture you with them. Rather, I want to sketch out a logical context within which you might learn and understand statistics.”

It is important that students understand statistics are just a means to an end – a tool that we can use to help us accomplish our research objective by making sense of quantitative data. In my teaching, I focus primarily on the conceptual understanding of statistics. Students are expected to master what the frequently used statistical measures are, when to use them, for what types of variables and what kinds of analytic objectives, and don’t have to worry about the computational process. They can explore that on their own – there are many tutorials on YouTube.

At this year’s SCELC Research Day, I gave a workshop on quantitative data analysis, and this “conceptual understanding” strategy seemed to have worked well. We had interesting discussions around the tables and it’s great to see how the librarians planned to use the statistics covered in the workshop in the analysis of their existing data sets. I just wish there were more time for us to do some hands on exercises. Nonetheless, it was a great experience talking about research methods with librarians, as always.

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Research methods in library assessment

I gave a workshop about research methods in library assessment at Santa Clara University Library earlier this month. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with SCU librarians. The workshop focused on two things: 1) how to develop the research question in a library assessment project; and 2) how to determine the proper research methods for conducting the assessment. Research question develop is the critical first step in any research project – Albert Einstein once said “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” In the workshop, we first talked about the progressive focusing process of formulating the research question (overall goal –> objectives –> research questions), and discussed the criteria we can use to evaluate the quality of a research question. ACRL’s 2015 January Assessment in Action Report titled “ACADEMIC LIBRARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO STUDENT SUCCESS: Documented Practices from the Field” provided some examples of research questions in library assessment, and we spent some time examining each one of them (see the picture below) – it was a great way to look closely at the process of developing research questions. Then we reviewed the major research designs (based on the analytic objective, time dimension, and degree of variable manipulation) and the frequently used qualitative and quantitative methods in library assessment. Quantitative methods seem to be more popular in assessment projects.

I’m glad to have this opportunity to chat with SCU librarians about research methods – I admire their initiative to engage in library assessment using valid and reliable research methods. This workshop made me think about, as LIS research methods instructors, what we can do to work more closely with libraries and librarians that conduct assessment. Looks like I need a lunch date with some of my fellow methods instructors and my assessment librarian friends. :-)

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A recent international research collaboration

International collaboration is always a refreshing and even enlightening experience to me. I have worked with two librarians from Tsinghua University Library in China on a couple of projects and absolutely enjoyed it. I have known them for more than 10 years so we have a very efficient and pleasant relationship. Last year when I was at IFLA, I met a librarian from Ghana and we had good conversations about library research. This spring we worked on a project together to evaluate the reference services at University of Education, Winneba (UEW) in Ghana. We decided to approach the evaluation from the user perspective, and identified the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on the RUSA Guidelines for Behavioral Performance. A user survey was conducted to measure the KPIs and to examine how users use and perceive library reference services. The findings were illuminating. For example, regarding how the reference service should be improved, some users recommended that librarians be better trained. It’s interesting that these users realized that the service inadequacies were a result of insufficient personnel training. It is also interesting to note that personal interests is the second most popular motivation for users to use the reference service, which is auspicious and shows that students and faculty trust reference librarians with their personal information needs. And yet, some of the things we take for granted such as electricity and computers/copiers, were still a concern for some library users at UEW in Ghana – they felt there weren’t enough of them to meet their needs.

Overall the study was a great learning experience for me. I’m glad that our findings will help UEW library determine the service areas where improvements are most needed and develop necessary training programs to address them. On a personal note, the study opened my eyes to how reference services work at an academic library in Ghana, and how library users are experiencing the services. It will be published in Library Review soon, so keep an eye on it if you are interested.

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2015 Institute of Research Design for Librarianship

Last week we concluded the second year of the Institute of Research Design for Librarianship (IRDL), an IMLS-funded project that seeks to create a learning opportunity and a support system for academic librarians who want to improve their research skills and increase their research output. It’s another great 9-day institute with librarian scholars from around the country. This year, the project directors made some changes based on the feedback from last year’s cohort so that the scholars could have more time to write and consult with us instructors. I truly enjoyed talking to each scholar about their research projects. I was impressed by the innovation and initiative demonstrated in their projects – for example, one scholar was interested in implementing a texting-based outreach and reference service and see if that impacts students’ library anxiety, and another scholar was thinking about creating library tutorials using Vine and see if that would be an effective way to impart information literacy skills. I can’t wait for them to complete their study and get published.

Among this year’s cohort, three were graduates from my home institution, SJSU School of Information, and two of them took classes with me – one was in my Research Methods class, and another was in my Reference and Information Services class. It’s great to see them become active researchers in this profession and engage in evidence based practices to improve their work. I’m very proud of them. This is exactly what I’m hoping to see through research methods education both in LIS degree programs and beyond (like IRDL).

The campus of Loyola Marymount University was as beautiful as ever. I feel lucky that IRDL is held at LMU library, in a spacious room with a gorgeous view. Many thanks to Marie and Kris, the two wonderful IRDL project directors, who took good care of us while we were there. Looking forward to next year already!

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Research topics from my research methods class in fall 2014

 My research methods class in fall 2015 focused on research. Students in the class were expected to develop a survey research proposal. Here’s a collection of their survey study topics. Many of them are needs assessment and program/service evaluation studies.

Does attending the “Sopa de letras” workshop series for parents cause an increase in behaviors that are considered beneficial for literacy and learning of children? 

What programs would college bound teens like to see the library incorporate into its services in order to help them with college preparation? 

Do series-based library workshops improve the job skill sets of unemployed or low-income adults? 

Why are patrons using or not using the library databases?

What kinds of professional development opportunities should the library offer to help teachers better understand the services the library could offer in relation to the Common Core State Standards?

What services (staff preparedness, physical layout), collections and programs do public libraries in the state of California offer their visually impaired patrons?

What is the effectiveness of the Mill Valley Public Library’s current marketing tactics in their efforts to market library programs and events?

At what rates do elementary school librarians and teachers use digital audio players and media for audio reinforcement over physical audio players and media, or vice versa, and why?

What about the existing library teen services/collection/spaces/programs do KDBS students think is adequate, inadequate, and needs improvement?

Does the pedagogical approach of Reading Workshop impact the range of genre selection for independent reading for upper elementary students (3rd-5th grade) from their school library?

How do musicians perceive the usability of the intrinsic qualities of digital scores?

What are the reasons for immigrant populations' non-use of the library?

Do adults have interest in attending arts classes at the Cambridge Public Library?

What genre/types of books are young adults most interested in?

Does creating a young adult space in a library enhance the overall library experience for people in this age group?

Do Spanish-speaking patrons feel their public libraries provide materials and programming that reflect their needs and interest of their communities? 

What specialized accommodations for existing services do higher education academic libraries provide for students with auditory and visual disabilities? 

Is there a relationship between academic librarians’ instructional practices and their background in and knowledge of instructional pedagogies, design, and standards?

What are the reasons of teen use or non-use of the teen section of the Monmouth Public Library website?

Does Facebook marketing contribute to library program attendance?

Why are the communities of Latino/Hispanic parents not aware that public libraries offer bilingual children’s books?

What is the awareness of grandparents raising grandchildren regarding public services in the Boise, Idaho area?

What services, collections, and programs are libraries offering to better serve patrons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)? Are library staff members receiving ASD awareness training?

What marketing practices are currently employed by public libraries to promote their digital information service?

What factors do college students consider when choosing to read a book for pleasure?

How has training in assistive resources, or lack thereof, of Maricopa County Librarians impacted their ability to assist patrons with disabilities?

Do information literacy (IL) courses provided by the public library during school visits improve teenage patrons’ ability to assess and utilize the information from the public library’s digital resources?

What information resources do teenagers use when visiting the public library? How satisfied are teens with the results they received while interacting with those information sources?

What factors influence the participation of ethnic communities during public library story times?

How satisfied are San Diego Public Library patrons with the library’s job-seeking resources?  

How efficiently are the services and information resources provided by the Chicago Public Library system satisfying the needs and concerns of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/or questioning community in Chicago, Illinois?

What diabetes resources are a necessary part of a health library collection in order to best serve the Hispanic population to manage diabetes?

What are public library staff member’s opinions and levels of satisfaction with the following aspects of the Symphony software interface: aesthetics and functionality?