Thursday, 17 April 2014

New Scoping Review on LIS Practitioners and Research

                                          Image source: Chris Guy, used under this Creative Commons Licence
                                                        https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Last year Andrew Booth and I were the happy recipients of the LIRG Research Scan Award; I blogged about this here. I am pleased to report that the research has been published as an article in the Library and Information Research Journal.

Our review focused on the recent literature concerning LIS practitioners and their relationship with research. We characterised practitioners’ relationship with research in three ways: as consumers of research, conducting their own research and working in collaboration with academics. In order to create a richer picture of this relationship we included more informal types of evidence, identified through sources such as newsletters, discussion lists and conference websites.

The review addressed the key questions from the award brief:

•      What kind of research is relevant to LIS practitioners?
•      What do practitioners understand by “research” and how do they use it?
•      What are the barriers and facilitators to using research in practice?

We were also able to address the additional questions:

•      What kind of research do practitioners undertake?
•      What is the status of practitioner / academic collaboration in research?

The research scan provided only a snapshot of current activity on the research / practice nexus, but implications at a practitioner, organisational and strategic level are presented.

The full paper is available here

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