Student-led research

A friend just directed me to this article: G. Hunter and D. Ward, “Students research the library: Using student-led ethnographic research to examine the changing role of campus libraries” College & Research Libraries News, vol. 72, May. 2011, pp. 264 -268.
http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/5/264.full

Great article! Great project. To follow-up on my blog entry yesterday, I wanted to add that the co-PI is an anthropology graduate student, Marcel LaFlamme. The cool thing is, he used to be a librarian, but has now gone back to graduate school for anthropology. While his research focus is not on libraries, he is a great asset to have on our projects! So, yes, include students in ethnographic research on both sides!

Science + Ethnology

I am currently in the middle of a small-scale ethnographic study to find information that will inform a discovery tool purchasing decision committee. Additionally, I just held the first team meeting of a group of librarians that will do a study of how researchers find, manage, cite, and publish their research this summer.

So, I was very lucky when I happened to read a tweet written by an anthopology graduate student last week talking about Sharon Traweek. Gosh, I wish I would have discovered her 10 years ago! Beamtimes and lifetimes: the world of high energy physicists, written in 1988, captures the world of SLAC, and their labs, and really kind of reads like history of science now. Another book, Doing Science + Culture, edited by Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek is a series of essays about how “cultural and interdisciplinary studies are changing the way we look at science and medicine.”

The discovery of these two books has me on a great literature search to discovery more ethnography of the discliplines that academic libraries support–these should be required reading in library school! Even if you are not doing a research project where you need to understand your subjects a bit more, it provides a powerful context for what your users experience in the lab and their world; this understanding can lead to better service design.

Scientists and how they do their research

A few weeks ago I went to a great conference at Rice, called Scientia. The theme was Research and Innovation in Undergraduate Science and Engineering Education.  One of the most interesting speakers was Wendy Newstetter, Director of Learning Science Research, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. She talked about her ethnographic work looking at labs, and her most recent book arrived on my desk today. Science as Psychology: Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice. This is an inside, cognitive look, at a large number of labs, and how learning and science happens in them. I am so excited about this approach, because it directly relates to the Research Flow problem the UX team will be working on over the next six months. Leah Krevit, AUL for Public Services, pondered last Fall, essentially, How does research happen? And how can the library make a tool that will include all of the things that researchers need in one place? We are calling this Research Flow, and it probably includes the initial research process, communicating with lab partners, publishing, printing, posters, discovery layers, catalog, journal articles and PDFs, citation needs, plagiarism education needs, and more.

It is exciting when the cognitive sciences, librarianship, and scientific research can all collectively work and solve problems together, especially complex problems like scientific communication and information organization.

Ethnographic work and scientists

I came across an interesting article yesterday: Exploring a New Model for Preprint Server: A Case Study of CSPO. The abstract says:

this paper describes the introduction of an open-access preprint server in China covering 43 disciplines. The system includes mandatory deposit for state-funded research and reports on the repository and its effectiveness and outlines a novel process of peer-review of preprints in the repository, which can be incorporated into the established system of promotion and tenure. This state-initiated innovation is considered to have been well incorporated into the established scientific communication system despite the sociological differences between the various disciplines served by the repository.

More about this paper in a minute.

The  first physics archive of preprint articles, arXiv, was originally developed by Paul Ginsparg, in 1991. It started out as a place to put preprints in physics, and now includes astronomy, mathematics, computer science, statistics and several other discliplines.

It first lived at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and is now hosted and operated by Cornell University.

The operation of arXiv is currently funded by Cornell University and by the National Science Foundation.

Last year, Cornell asked  institutions to make annual voluntary contributions based on the amount of downloading utilization by each institution. 

They put up a very helpful list at http://arxiv.org/help/support/2009_usage which details out the name of institutions, percentage of total institutional downloads, and number of article downloads. My institution did give a voluntary contribution, because it is the right thing to do, and they posted a nice branding message at the top right of arXiv page for local visitors that says, “We gratefully acknowledge support from Rice University.” I am proud of this, and happy that our users know that we support this great effort.

But, many of the high-use US state institutions were not able to contribute, either because of lack of funds, or because of procurement regulations.    Will Cornell move to a true subscription/controlled access model for ArXiv? What happens to those of us that DID send a check last year? Do we have to send another one?

So, back to the article: The Chinese preprint effort, CSPO, at http://www.paper.edu.cn, was set up in October 2003 by the Center for Science and Technology Development, an agency of the Ministry of Education in the Peoples’ Republic of China. According to the article, “CSPO serves as a platform for scientists to exchange their ideas and research results quickly and aims to minimize the loss caused by the time lag between research and publication. The server applies the Chinese National Standard GB/T1374-92, the Code and Classification for Disciplines, and currently accepts preprint drafts in 43 disciplines.” The system includes mandatory desposit for state-funded research and reports on the repository.

So, I am left with some questions and would love to start a study about information-seeking scientists revolving around preprint servers! Warning: I don’t have answers for these questions, at least not yet!

• Will a global preprint server be possible at some point?
• Do my physics/statistics/etc. scientists at my U.S. institution use only the arXiv, or do some of them also search in the preprint servers of other countries, like this one from China?
• China seems to be more successful in rolling in support for publication in a preprint server into the promotion & tenure system-why is that?
• Does the U.S. have a mandate to make sure that our scientific preprint servers continue to exist and thrive? (Ok, I say yes to this one.)

 

 

 

 

Ethnographic Study in Libraries

Lisa Spiro and I have worked for the last couple of months on an ethnographic study of a new building at Rice, the BioScience Research Collaborative, or BRC. Libraries have been closing branch libraries for years, but this month, Fondren Library opened fondren@brc. Ethnographic study, ala Nancy Foster, allows librarians to get out into the field, and actually find out what users are doing and thinking. Fantastic approach! There was a bit of paperwork to do–we had to file for IRB approval at our institution. Not entirely necessary, but since we thought we might publish something about this at some point, it is a good way to cover your bases.

We identified a number of researchers, postdocs, staff and graduate students in the BRC that we wanted to interview. I kept a spreadsheet in Googledocs, with their information, links to their c.v. and date for their interview.

We had a script of questions that we asked and we were able to understand their work in their new environment much more clearly than we had previously. In some instances we recorded with an mp3 recorder, and in some instances, we just took notes. The process was entirely dependant on what the interviewees would agree to do.

So, the bottom line? We completed a report and submitted it last week to the executive team of our library. In it, we give an overview of life in the BRC, and recommendations of services that the library could offer to them. Were we surprised by some of what came out of the study? Absolutely! They  requested some services that we had no idea would come up, and some of them very easy to accomplish, what we call low-hanging apples here at Fondren.

Ethnographic study is gaining in popularity in the library context. For me, as a user experience librarian, it is an invaluable process to gain insight, not only for understanding the current experiences that our users are having, but  to start to see the future a bit, and design experiences that will be fantastic for the users tomorrow, and next year.