Library Research Service

This post will delve into trauma-informed practices for research and everyday interactions for library workers. With that in mind, the key concepts from this piece are shared first, to preface the material and ensure you are aware of the content that will be covered up front.  

• Trauma is defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) as “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional,...

Did last month’s post inspire you to incorporate a focus group into your project? Are you too busy at this moment? We understand! However, you never know when conducting a focus group may just turn into the best possible way to collect community input before moving forward with a big project, and we want to make sure that when that time comes you are fully prepared to host a focus group full of meaningful discussions from participants. So let’s dig in! Laying the Groundwork Our last post shared some ideas on how to create a safe space for a focus group, but...

Ready to polish up your people skills? This month we are taking a step back from analysis and turning to data collection again. In previous posts we touched on different data collection methods, and in May we discussed the process of coding qualitative data. Understanding the basics of qualitative analysis opens up a world of possibilities for evaluation, and it definitely helps to know what you are taking on before beginning qualitative research since coding is an extensive process. With this background on coding qualitative data hopefully you feel more equipped to begin collecting it. Today we will focus our...

Welcome back! I am excited to dive back into content analysis with you. It is no secret that content analysis can be far from a walk in the park and is possibly more comparable to following a treasure map across a remote island. Therefore, I will fill this post with a review of what we have already discussed, the final steps for analysis, obstacles to be aware of along the way, and a few helpful hints.  Returning to Coding We left off last week on coding, where short labels are applied to qualitative data which represent meaning within this data. Returning...

Hello data enthusiasts! Let’s return to our exploration of qualitative analysis. Last time we uncovered a few ways qualitative analysis can expand research findings by looking beyond number data for better insight on human experiences. Now I want to explore strategies for putting qualitative analysis into practice. Concentrating on Content Analysis As we discussed last time, qualitative analysis is flexible and adaptive to different types of data. As you may have already guessed, this means there are multiple methods for qualitative analysis depending on the kind of research you are conducting, the form of your data and the questions you are asking....

Happy Earth Day! The theme for this Earth Day is “Invest in Our Planet,” and so it is a fantastic time to reflect on our library’s role within the community, how it supports American Library Association’s (ALA) core value of sustainability, and the importance of investing our resources, time and energy towards sustainable practices. As the climate crisis develops, I have been thinking a lot about what I can do to have the most far-reaching impact on this global issue (with very real local effects already plain to see here in Colorado). The answer is quite simple: talk about it!...