Qualitative research

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (1999), "Qualitative research", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 6, pp. 55-55. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.6.55.16

There is some very fine stuff here. However many books appear on qualitative research and how it is applied in the information sector, more actual examples and applications are needed. The papers here show a sound general awareness of key writers, ideas and rationales for qualitative research and move on to sound and convincing applications. Each time it is used, qualitative research seems to have to justify its validity and reliability, particularly when ethnographic research is used. An interesting study of “small world” factors (such as social norms, types, and information behaviour) shows historiographic and methodological sensitivity in an application to public libraries, while another reviews the hybrid quantitative/qualitative character of research methods teaching in library schools. Each approach, and hybrids in between, presupposes and draws on paradigmatic knowledge and process, and a good introductory paper by Horn of Long Island University reminds readers of the ever‐changing complexity of the field ‐‐ from Bateson and Bourdieu to Denxin and Dilthey, Gadamer and Glaser to Habermas and Horkheimer, Lincoln and Guba to Schutz and von Manen. Metacognitively, a good paper considers qualitative research in terms of how authors and editors understand each other when it is written and published.

One particularly interesting feature of the collection lies in examples of applied research. All have substantial literature contexts so readers will find them useful as mentors into their own specialisms. Day′s work on transformational discourse illuminates ideology and organisational change in the academic library, highlighting the recognised connection between rhetoric and organisational culture and meaning, and emphasising the pragmatic point that people often work in organisations where meaning is manufactured and bears a dialectical relationship to raw experience. There are two good papers on narrative (drawing on Foucault, with his continuingly important case that meaning and power work together to deceive) and metaphor (cognitive anthropology applied to an electronic text centre!). A fine organisational analysis extends work by Turkle and Geertz and others into areas like communication, sociogram construction and Myers‐Briggs analysis, in examining a university computer centre, not entirely new as an application but highly readable with valid insights. There is also a rather obvious study of non‐verbal communication in reference encounters but, as a paper, it is excellent as a model for student papers.

Library Trends has a recognised reputation and comes from a world‐class stable. This issue is of value in its own right and shows how qualitative research continues to flourish and how new (and older!) applications continue to interest academic and practitioner researchers alike. Inevitably uneven, and very much a work to add to a collection which already has the standard works in the field, it is nevertheless a worthwhile purchase, above all for an academic library.