Asking Anthropological Questions
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A workshop for academic librarians on using qualitative methods for user assessment and research in the library. Part 1 focuses on asking and refining holistic research questions.
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Asking Anthropological Questions
- 1. Asking Anthropological Questions QUALITATIVE METHODS IN THE LIBRARY, PART 1 JANUARY 2017 CELIA EMMELHAINZ – ANTHROPOLOGY LIBRARIAN – UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
- 2. Outline 1. Introductions 2. Assessment vs. research 3. Stages of qualitative research 4. Types of anthropological questions 5. Focusing a good research question
- 4. Assessment •Mixed methods •Evaluation of a single library •Focused on impact of instruction or user experience Research •Extending knowledge in the field •Focused on uncovering something new •Conceptual contribution
- 5. Image: Saad Aqeel & R Campbell, contextualresearch.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/the-ethnographic-research-cycle.png
- 6. Stages of qualitative research: Develop an anthropological question Lit review and conversations for focus Choose a method Choose a sampling strategy Collect data ethically Analyze data by coding for themes Share results and apply in your communities Isaacs (2014) “An Overview of Qualitative Research Methodology for Public Health Researchers,” p. 318-21
- 7. “With so much focus on method, one might be forgiven for wondering… why conduct research in academic librarianship? …before we consider ‘how did you answer the question,’ we should attend to ‘was the question worth asking?’” – Emily Drabinski & Scott Walter, C&RL 2016 “ “
- 8. Choosing questions worth asking: * Impact on your work * New insights * Actionable changes * Under-researched / value to profession * Fascinating to you!
- 9. Worksheet, part 1: List any topics or questions you’re curious about (five minutes)
- 11. The Holistic Question What is the context for this practice or idea, what does it lead to, and of what is it a part? Example: What expectations in the social research department affect how PhD students approach a literature review?
- 12. The Interpretive Question What do people mean by [X], and how do they use this perception to describe, interpret, explain, defend, or change their world? * What do librarians and administrators mean by the “value” of a library? * What are library donors looking for when they want to “leave a legacy”?
- 13. The Comparative Question Do other libraries, patron groups, or librarians in other contexts also do this? * Do international vs. American postdocs use our resources in the same way? * Do adjuncts and permanent faculty engage with our instruction differently? What is the impact on students?
- 14. The Temporal Question How is this practice, role, or idea changing? * How have vendor-librarian negotiations changed in the context of consortial spending? * What strategies do vendors use to negotiate with libraries?
- 15. The Biocultural Question How do human biology, culture & physical environments interact here? * How does the presence of plants or therapy animals affect physical library usage? * How do disabled Cal students interact with the library’s physical and digital spaces?
- 16. The Sociostructural Question How do policies affect relationships and personal choices? How do people organize, or how is power distributed? * How does the success or failure of collective bargaining affect librarian career strategies? * What strategies do library leaders engage to gain budget increases from administration at R1 universities?
- 17. The Reflexive Question How does my culture, training, or personality influence what I choose to research, or learn from respondents? * How do librarians decide which tasks to prioritize? Do their / my values change as their taskload increases? * Have my own values changed in light of this research?
- 18. The Dialogic Question What do the people I’m observing think? Are they part of shaping the study? * How do ethnic studies majors approach consultations with librarians? How do first generation students look for information online? (Hire students to co-design and lead a project with you) Thomas Mathle, Accordion Players on Buchanan, Glasgow, on Flickr
- 19. Exercise 2: Revise your question / topic to fit one or more of these categories (five minutes)
- 20. Bringing it back into focus 1. Get a conversation partner 2. Check your ideas against the literature 3. Be able to state your core concept 4. Focus on concepts, not specific data points 5. Know your concept when you see it 6. Know why you’re doing this and what it contributes Thomas Mathle, Accordion Players on Buchanan, Glasgow, on Flickr
- 21. Exercise 3: Choose a partner; share your best idea and have them ask questions. Switch. (five minutes)
- 22. How do you know your concept when you see it? Broad • “Experiences of nontraditional women in libraries” • “Student worker motivation” Focused • “Factors that build student confidence in locating archival materials” • “Transmission of beliefs about “real” vs “practice” work among student library employees”
- 23. Exercise, part 4: Try listing one core concept, and how you’ll know it when you see it.
- 24. Will your results be robust? Go beyond description or evaluation of a single program to suggest something new. Examples of robust questions: How does …. function to do ….? How do …. people perceive ….? What factors affect …? What strategies do …. use to do …? How do …. respond to ….? What is the relationship between … and …? How do … differ in the context of …? Under what conditions do ….? By what mechanisms do …?
- 25. Can this question surprise you? Chicken Surprise, by Apionid, on Flickr
- 26. What does this contribute to the profession? Building Boats, by World bank, on Flickr
- 27. Review: question to ask yourself Am I aiming for assessment, or original research? Do I have a holistic, interpretive, comparative, temporal, biocultural, structural, or dialogic question? Have I mined the literature and brainstormed with others? Can I define a concept so I’ll know it when I see it? Do I know why I’m asking this and what value it brings? Is it interesting? Can it surprise me—and others?
Notas do Editor
- 17 people
- I’ve done ethnographic fieldwork in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, interviewed faculty and students for MLS project, ran surveys and done observation in libraries. Participation: name and once sentence describing research you’ve worked on or want to do. [7 minutes] Wayfinding: Which signs and layout effectively guide students through our library? Collections analysis: What do dissertations cite, and are these in our libraries? Department needs: What themes come up in annual program reviews? Curricular needs: Where are we teaching and where are we not? Experience: What are the experiences andof SLEs and staff in our libraries? Spatial usage: Why do students in public health study more in lib than anthropology?
- These are all good. But in this workshop, I’m going to distinguish between assessment (evaluating and improving our work processes, user experiences, and outcomes), description (that is what I see), and research (relational, causal, or theoretical findings based on data). All are valuable, but here we’ll talk about ways to tie assessment to larger research questions.
- We’re going over the ones in red today, and others in next sessions
- “With so much focus on method, one might be forgiven for wondering what drives research in our field in the first place. Why conduct research in academic librarianship?... Before we consider “how did you answer the question,” we should attend to “was the question worth asking?’” – Emily Drabinski & Scott Walter, C&RL editorial, 2016
- My argument would be that thinking anthropologically helps us to ask questions worth asking, for these reasons: 1) More impact. Our research is going to have more impact if our well-designed studies explore libraries in a new light, and lead to actionable changes. 2) Under-researched: Libraries often survey or lead focus groups to cover the same questions other libraries have studied: what do faculty and students need? What are current trends in spatial usage? What affects staff morale? But a good lit search can answer many of these questions. I recommend reading widely on your area, then using your questions to help librarians understand new areas they may not have considered. This may mean researching in a broader context, or looking more closely at the relationships between groups of people, spaces, or concepts. Gold standard: a team of anthropologists, librarians, and students from Ball State did fieldwork in Romania to look at information culture, who controls information, how libraries fit into the region’s information economy, who sets the narratives on cultural heritage, etc. When they found that town elites sought to control information and local narratives, they could see why the library’s funding and integration were marginalized. Why I like it: New area. Looking broadly at information, and tying the library into a broader context—gives a better idea of why the library is marginalized than simply interviewing users. 3. More interesting! I’m a big fan of doing assessment or research projects that get at something you find fascinating. Story: I went with my advisor to interview Kazakhs in Mongolia on citizenship, but found the work boring and frustrating. We were in a jeep jostling down a dirt road after village interviews, when I got excited while explaining the quirks of missionary beliefs and culture. She said, ‘why don’t you study that?’—and that’s what got me into researching the ethical decision-making process of secret missionaries, who pretend to teach English to get into a country.
- [Image: accordion]. I like to move between small ideas, to large scope, and back to a focused question. We can do this on paper, by mind mapping. Another idea is to use the five whys to get at larger issues or context: Exercise: Five whys: 1) Many of our recent monographs aren’t circulating. Why? [Group answer. Not visible, people don’t come in the library, overpriced, not useful.] 2) They aren’t useful or they’re too esoteric. Why? 3) We’re buying things on autoship. Why? 4) We have limited time for collection development. Why? 5) We’re trying to do lots of shiny new initiatives. Why? 6) We’re trying to prove the library’s value and relevance. Why? 7) We fear a budget crisis and we need money. Why is that? 8) Donors and campus don’t like to fund ongoing expenses and rising costs. Why? 9) Those in power don’t see higher ed or libraries as essential anymore. Why? 10) Changing beliefs about information as a public or a private good… So we’ve gone from ‘people aren’t reading that $150 Routledge book on sheep herding in a Kazakh village,’ to larger ideas like ‘librarians change their values in response to financial pressures, and funders have changing beliefs about education and libraries.’
- [Image: accordion]. I like to move between small ideas, to large scope, and back to a focused question. We can do this on paper, by mind mapping. Another idea is to use the five whys to get at larger issues or context: Exercise: Five whys: 1) Many of our recent monographs aren’t circulating. Why? [Group answer. Not visible, people don’t come in the library, overpriced, not useful.] 2) They aren’t useful or they’re too esoteric. Why? 3) We’re buying things on autoship. Why? 4) We have limited time for collection development. Why? 5) We’re trying to do lots of shiny new initiatives. Why? 6) We’re trying to prove the library’s value and relevance. Why? 7) We fear a budget crisis and we need money. Why is that? 8) Donors and campus don’t like to fund ongoing expenses and rising costs. Why? 9) Those in power don’t see higher ed or libraries as essential anymore. Why? 10) Changing beliefs about information as a public or a private good… So we’ve gone from ‘people aren’t reading that $150 Routledge book on sheep herding in a Kazakh village,’ to larger ideas like ‘librarians change their values in response to financial pressures, and funders have changing beliefs about education and libraries.’
- Prompts: something unique about your division or user needs? Something you saw in interaction with other librarians, researchers, or workers? Curious beliefs or practices? Wider changes in libraries, universities, or the information economy? You don’t need to share these, so feel free to brainstorm now, and come back after this session for more! Coming back—ideally, you’d next do a quick lit search to see what others have discovered in this area, before refining your question.
- [“Up the Anthropologist” – harder to study deans, ULs, others in power]
- Prompts: something unique about your division or user needs? Something you saw in interaction with other librarians, researchers, or workers? Curious beliefs or practices? Wider changes in libraries, universities, or the information economy? You don’t need to share these, so feel free to brainstorm now, and come back after this session for more! Coming back—ideally, you’d next do a quick lit search to see what others have discovered in this area, before refining your question.
- Exploring questions within a broader context should make our research more interesting and useful to our library and our profession. But we’ll need to focus back down to keep it manageable: 1) Get a conversation partner From Foss, Destination Dissertation (2016, p. 28+). Get a partner to ask exploratory questions about your favorite question or topic: What are your major interests, and why? What literature interests you? What do you mean by …? What connection do you see between … and …? Why do you think … is important?
- 3 Minutes Prompts: something unique about your division or user needs? Something you saw in interaction with other librarians, researchers, or workers? Curious beliefs or practices? Wider changes in libraries, universities, or the information economy? You don’t need to share these, so feel free to brainstorm now, and come back after this session for more! Coming back—ideally, you’d next do a quick lit search to see what others have discovered in this area, before refining your question.
- 1) What’s your concept? “student worker motivation” “seating choices” “budget allocation” Jot down your concept (3) Focus on the relationships between concepts, not specific data! Transcendence of data means your research isn’t on one population, like “catalogers in EAL,” but on: “I’m looking at cataloger decision-making when confronted with rare language materials // artists’ books” JOT DOWN YOUR CONCEPT. Next, check the literature! 2) Do you know it when you see it? “Experiences of nontraditional women in libraries” could be anything: are children welcome? Is the collection confusing? Are they confident researching? Do they contact the librarian? Do they feel comfortable with other patrons? BUT “experiences of microaggressions when asking SLE’s for research help” or “cultural factors that build confidence in finding archival materials” is something you could study.
- 3 Minutes
- 6) Will your results be robust? You want to go beyond a list of outcomes to uncover essential aspects of the library world. Prompts for a good question: How does …. function to do ….? How do …. people perceive ….? What factors affect …? What strategies do …. use to do …? How do …. respond to ….? What is the relationship between … and …? How do … differ in the context of …? Under what conditions do ….? By what mechanisms do …?
- If you already know the answers, why are you asking?
- What are you adding to existing literature? What are you adding to your institution? What are you adding to your profession? Are you duplicating prior work… or extending research into new areas?
- Exploring questions within a broader context should make our research more interesting and useful to our library and our profession. But we’ll need to focus back down to keep it manageable: 1) Get a conversation partner From Foss, Destination Dissertation (2016, p. 28+). Get a partner to ask exploratory questions about your favorite question or topic: What are your major interests, and why? What literature interests you? What do you mean by …? What connection do you see between … and …? Why do you think … is important?
- Thank you, I look forward to your questions.