Library Research Round Table Annual Conference Events

New Minds, New Approaches

Saturday, July 11, 8:00AM - 10:00AM, MCP W-175b/c

This session will feature three library and information science graduate students discussing their library-related research projects.  An LRRT sub-committee selected the winning projects based on the quality and originality of the research and on the relevance of the research to librarianship.

Research to Understand Users: Issues & Approaches

Saturday, July 11, 10:30AM - 12:00PM, MCP W-470b

Presenters:
Patricia Rempel, PhD - Librarian, Coutts Education Library, University of Alberta. “Insights from the Under-Served in Rural Washington.” This study examined perceived usages of community public access computers by Spanish-speakers in rural Washington through interviews with information professionals. Findings identified the social network as the main information source, and core interests as sense-making and self-directed learning.

Lynn Westbrook, PhD – Assistant Professor, University of Texas and Maria Gonzalez, PhD – Assistant Professor, Wayne State University. “Silent Crises: Understanding the Information Landscape in an Online Community of Individuals in Crisis.” This study builds on the growing body of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) information research to provide an analysis of a full year’s postings in an online community of IPV survivors.  The study identifies information needs, cognitive barriers, affective barriers, resources, and information preferences in the context of crisis-stages as experienced by people who make use of an online community for support.

Barbara Fister - Academic Librarian and Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College and Julie Gilbert - Academic Librarian and Assistant Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College. “Reading Matters:  Examining the Role of Recreational Reading in Academic Libraries.” Can reading for pleasure contribute to students’ education and to habits of life-long learning? Using a multifaceted approach, we explore the hypotheses that undergraduates have a higher regard for books and the pleasures of reading than popular accounts might suggest, that colleges unknowingly erect barriers to voluntary reading.

Four Star Research

Sunday, July 12, 10:30AM - 12:00PM, MCP W-470a

Presenters:
Matthew Richard Griffis - PhD candidate, University of Western Ontario. “Once in a Lifetime: Explaining the Social Forces Shaping a Central Library Building.” This study examines the planning of the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library to identify the social and political forces that influenced that library building’s final shape. A theoretical model will be proposed for use with other central library buildings.

Heather Hill, PhD – Assistant Professor, University of Western Ontario. “Examining the power relationships in public library management outsourcing.” Little research surrounds the phenomenon of public library management outsourcing. The discourse informing this phenomenon is located within the contracting documents which form a chain of ideas from RFP to proposal to contract. Study analysis consists of textual analysis, discourse practice, and social practice. The contracting process is a discursive event – there is a dialog - that defines the public library in a certain way and elaborates on the relationships between those involved.

Linda, Most – PhD candidate, Florida State University. “The Rural Public Library as Place: The People’s Place for Community, Reading and Information.” This presentation explores rural public libraries as places where adults go for reasons ranging from the obvious -- making use of the library’s resources and services or seeking to fulfill an information or reading need -- to less easily identified reasons like using the library as a place to make social or business contacts, to build or reinforce community ties, or to explore personal identity. 

The Chair’s Forum: Children, Teens, and Libraries: Research from the Field

Monday, July 13, 10:30AM - 12:00PM,  MCP W-194b

Moderator & LRRT Chair: Denise E. Agosto, PhD – Associate Professor, Drexel University.

Presenters:
Kate McDowell, PhD - Assistant Professor, University of Illinois. “The History of Youth Services Librarianship.” The records left by children's librarians provide surprising evidence, such as: 1) How women librarians' unusually early use of survey research helped to create the earliest library services for youth from 1882 to 1898; 2) How children's librarians handled the topic of evolution in recommending children's science books from 1882-1922; and 3) What librarians' writings reveal about understanding the lived experiences of children as readers during the explosion of children's literature publishing from 1890-1930.

Valerie M. Nesset, PhD – Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo. “The information-seeking behavior of grade-three students: Informing information literacy instruction.” This talk will focus on the barriers faced by young students when searching for and using information both in print and on the Web.  Suggestions regarding the design of information literacy instruction to address these barriers will be proposed. 

Joyce Valenza, PhD - Librarian and Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College and Julie Gilbert - Academic Librarian and Assistant Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College. “The Online Social Networking Habits of High School Seniors.” Our kids are networked, but what are they up to when they go online?  How have their connections shifted over their years of connectedness?  That is, besides the more obvious social purposes, how do teens use the communication tools available to them?  And what does all of this mean for the libraries that serve and teach them?