… or that’s what I like to think as I embark upon another year teaching my ten week Research Methods module to our students taking the MA Information Studies degree. I always love the first sessions – the beginning of an opportunity to get on my soapbox and be a research methods nerd for the next couple of months or so! This morning we began with some discussion about What is research? and Why do we do it? – followed in the afternoon by an overview from me of the LIS Research Landscape. Here we covered the ‘good old days’ of the BLRIC, Library and Information Commission, (whose reports are still to be found on the UKOLN site – remember Prospects: a strategy for action anyone?), and the current funding landscape. Drawing on research reports such as CIRT’s The LIS research landscape: a review and prognosis, we also attempted to get an overview of the types of research that have characterised our area over the last twenty years. Pictured is our ‘map’ based on an exercise the students did, extracting themes from 3 sources: the 2008 RAE submissions; webpages of a number of LIS research centres; the last 4 issues of the following 4 journals: Library Review, Journal of Documentation, Library and Information Research and Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. Alongside the continued focus on all things ‘e’ (though called rather quaintly, things like ‘Telematics for Libraries’ by the EU in the 1990s), it was interesting to note that value and impact assessment and evaluation have long been around as key areas (Impact and Value was one of the themes identified by the LIC’s 1997 Prospects document). It was nice this year to be able to report that there is now – after a long gap – a body that is responsible for co-ordinating LIS research, the LIS Research Coalition, and that the June conference it is organising is on Evidence, Value and Impact.
