Library and Information Science Research in the Twenty‐first Century: A Guide for Practising Librarians and Students

Citation

Bawden, D. (2011), "Library and Information Science Research in the Twenty‐first Century: A Guide for Practising Librarians and Students", Library Review, Vol. 60 No. 2, pp. 161-163. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531111113104

The topic of this book is important; why and how library/information research should be conducted. The author is well qualified to write it: a practitioner with a research degree and a record of publication, and an adjunct faculty position at a library school. A shame, then, that the book is, in many ways, something of a disappointment.

I confess to having been put off a bit at the start: Chapter 1, page 1, line 1 in fact. A section headed Brief history of librarianship begins “Most accounts of the development of the profession of librarianship in the USA suggest 1876 as the year in which the profession emerged”. Well, no doubt they do, but to most of us, a history of librarianship is not just about the USA since the late nineteenth century.

Chapter 2 has just as dismally parochial a beginning. A chapter headed “The significance of research in the library and information profession” begins “Both the study of library science and the practice of librarianship in the USA are relatively young fields of endeavour.” Again, this is probably true, but it gives a very poor impression of the author's spatial and temporal perspectives.

In fairness, the book's content is not as restricted as these quotations might imply, and Lawal does discuss the European situation, in particular, to some extent. Nonetheless, they exemplify the main weakness of the book; a very limited and partial treatment of topics which deserve a more thorough and balanced treatment.

Chapter 1 deals mainly with library/information education and the need for research training within it. They give a clear account of some developments in the USA, with short, and somewhat misleading, accounts of the UK and European situation. The selection of literature cited is rather limited and idiosyncratic, unfortunately a rather general feature of this book. There is a an extensive literature on the development of LIS education, including several good reviews, but these are not mentioned here, nor, perhaps more seriously, are those papers which have specifically addressed the role of research in the LIS curriculum (Južnič and Urbana 2003; Morris 2006).

Chapter 2 addresses the significance of research for library and information practitioners. This raises some relevant issues about relative lack of research support for the practice of librarianship, in particular, but fails, to my mind, to capture the essence of the problem, and also the potential for practitioner research. The literature cited is almost all from the USA; the debate begun many years ago by Blick (1983) is not covered, and the extensive discussion of the influence of new generations of library users does not mention the seminal CIBER studies of the “Google Generation” (Gunter et al., 2009).

Chapters 3 and 4 give overviews of the research process and of research design, respectively. These are generally quite clear and readable, though their briefness means they can only be an introduction, and significant issues have to be omitted. For example, it is stated that the main qualitative methods for library/information research are interviews, focus groups, observation, and historical study. This is no doubt correct, in terms of the number of studies carried out over time, but it does mean that there is no mention of several increasingly important qualitative methods, e.g. ethnography, grounded theory, and discourse analysis. These omissions mean that this book cannot be an alternative to more detailed library/information research methods texts, such as Oates (2006) or Pickard (2007).

Chapters 5 and 6 deal with data collection and data analysis, respectively, and are the strongest and most worthwhile sections of the book. They present clearly some issues which are often skated over, or obfuscated, in other texts.

Chapter 7 deals with collaboration and suffers from the same problems as Chapter 2, in failing to show the potential of researcher/practitioner collaboration; the rather “dry” presentation here, largely devoid of relevant examples, does not help. This chapter also has some examples of unhelpfully sweeping generalisations which are present throughout the book. It states, for example, that blogs are written by a single author; usually they are, but there are some very relevant counter‐examples, such as the “team” and “guest” blogs of the Research Information Network.

Chapter 8 focuses on the preparation and publishing of research reports. Its advice is generally sensible and relevant, although its brevity again means that this book could not be recommended for this topic as against specialised “how to write” texts, or even against the more detailed chapters in texts such as Oates or Pickard. There are also some unfortunate aspects to this chapter, due either to misunderstanding or unfortunate phrasing. It is implied that open access journals are not peer‐reviewed and a soft touch for new authors; this may be true for some, but by no means all. It is also suggested that if the verdict on a submitted article is “resubmit after minor revisions”, then “you may do so, or send it to a similar journal”. This is factually correct, but anyone who routinely followed this advice would end up with a very short publications list and a bad reputation with journal editors.

I am sorry to have to criticise this book, as it deals with an important topic and includes some clear explanatory material. However, apart from the specific problems noted above, it falls between being a detailed guide to research methods and an evangelistic text for the importance of research in librarianship. The publisher should encourage a second, and much revised, edition, focused on the latter mission.