Students will use evidence to inform library and information practices.

Because I’ve already secured employment managing a public library, I had a unique perspective and opportunity as I worked my way through the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Alabama. One of our key learning outcomes involves not just evidence-based work, but the application of it, and I had multiple chances afforded me to implement what I was learning as I was learning it. One heavier lift in my time at SLIS was learning how to research and write at the graduate level, and multiple classes, especially Research Methods (LS 502) gave me the opportunity to dive much deeper into current scholarship than my time would have normally allowed. I found three key research papers written over the past few years that highlight examples of how my academic endeavors informed my current work in libraries.

Few classes were more designed for my current occupation than Dr. Yates’ course on Management Theory & Practice (LS 508) and having the opportunity to write a literature review called Finding Courage in Public Library Fundraising and Advocacy while having just received a massive matching grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce was a dream come true. Even more intriguing was to discover how similar the difficulties of fundraising during the Great Recession of 2008 mirrored the challenges I was facing in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Happenstance even later found me working directly with the author of one of my research sources, which is the most concrete example of evidence-informed library practice of which I’ve ever heard. In another example, one of the major reasons I decided to take Dr. Bonnici’s course on Cybersecurity (LS 590) was because I had been observing a lot of discussion in my weekly Tech Help sessions with patrons regarding hacking and international digital espionage pre-pandemic, and I felt I needed more knowledge than basic research could provide. My paper on Chinese intellectual property theft was a capstone to an information-packed course on the current issues and trends in cybersecurity and a tremendous way to deeply research a topic that I knew would be discussed by my patrons with frequency in the coming months.

But it was Dr. Burgess’ Research Methods (LS 502) course that really helped me understand the value of research and how I could apply it to my professional life. Instead of a series of different papers, Dr. Burgess systematically built assignments to guide us from start to finish on a full (fictional), graduate-level research project. Instead of choosing a topic that was merely interesting or easy, I chose to lean upon my current elected position as a school board director to further my understanding of the subject that most directly corresponded with my experience in public libraries: the Accelerated Reader Program (AR). My school district, like many in the US, use AR as the primary means to measure and improve literacy among students. As a public librarian, I’ve always struggled to rationalize my stated goal of teaching children to love reading with this often forceful and metric-based approach to literacy, and Dr. Burgess’ course finally gave me the ability to think through what an assessment of AR might look like. I was surprised to find a dearth of legitimate scholarship in this area, and while my fictional research project to compare adult readers with and without experience in grade school AR might still have a lot of work to convert from the classroom to reality, the paper I’ve chosen here was a great way for me to provide a firm literature review on the subject while also assessing the need for further study. I must admit that this class was the first that helped me legitimately understand the value of research writing in public library work, and I look forward to continuing to pursue opportunities to add to professional scholarship in the future.

Overall, my time at SLIS was filled with opportunities to plumb the depths of research in libraries, and I’m so grateful that in my case informed practice was not simply for a theoretical future employment opportunity. I know that my hard work learning how to write at the graduate level has served not just my personal growth but also my current employer, my co-workers and peers, and the communities I serve.