University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Researching Practice/Practicing Research: The Public Library in Partnership with Academia

Latham, Joyce M.; Lenstra, Noah

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/110201

Description

Title
Researching Practice/Practicing Research: The Public Library in Partnership with Academia
Author(s)
  • Latham, Joyce M.
  • Lenstra, Noah
Issue Date
2021
Keyword(s)
  • librarianship, public librarian
  • research
Abstract
In 2012, Canadian public librarian Pam Ryan wrote about “the grim reality of low public librarian research and publication rates” (5). Woods and Booth (2013) provide some quantitative backing to this claim: among all types of practitioner research in librarianship, public librarian research is the least common. Only 0.6 percent of articles in their sample came from public librarians, behind 5.4 percent from school librarians. Adkins (2019) notes this problem emerges from multiple sources, including the fact that “the publication venues for research on public librarianship are relatively few, and the people writing in this area are relatively small in number” (211). It may also be “due in part to the municipal and fragmented nature of the public library. As most public libraries are products of their communities, they each have a unique story about their beginnings and their challenges” (230). Regardless of the reasons why, public librarians compose only 14 percent of the authors in her dataset of prolific voices in the public library literature, meaning that the voices of public librarians are underrepresented even within the small research literature on public libraries.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 69 (4). Spring 2021
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110201
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2020.0043
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2021 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 69 (4) Spring 2021: Researching Practice / Practicing Research: The Public Library in Partnership with Academia. PRIMARY
Library Trends 69 (4) Spring 2021: Researching Practice / Practicing Research: The Public Library in Partnership with Academia. Edited by Joyce M. Latham and Noah Lenstra.