Emily Crist, Sean Leahy and Alan Carbery win the 2018 Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant

For Immediate Release
Tue, 04/17/2018

Contact:

Kathy Rosa

Program Officer

Office of Research & Evaluation

American Library Association

(312) 280-4273

krosa@ala.org

CHICAGO —The winners of the 2018 American Library Association (ALA Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant are Emily Crist, Sean Leahy, and Alan Carbery for the project entitled “Ecological Momentary Assessment of Student Research Behaviors.”

The $3,000 grant supports innovative research that could lead to an improvement in library services to any specific group of people. The award was donated by Eric R. Baber, Newton, Kansas, in honor of his father, who was library director at Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University) for 27 years. Baber died in January 1991, leaving ALA an endowment to support the award in perpetuity.

The proposal, Ecological Momentary Assessment of Student Research Behaviors, takes an innovative approach to examining student research habits and behaviors with the goal of obtaining more accurate data on how students engage in the research process. By using a daily diary data collection method to collect data on student research behaviors across the course of a research assignment, this research has the potential to add new knowledge to the literature on student research habits and behaviors. This research will benefit both librarians and instructors as they work with students at all age levels, as well as present an innovative way to collect data using a time-sensitive technique.