Digital Preservation in the Canadian Landscape

I attended this Association of Canadian Archivists Pre-conference on the current state of digital preservation in Canada. The range of 12 thirty minute presentations was broad [see link to the program].

At the end of the day, the moderator asked all the presenters to come to the front of the room and indicate in 2 minutes their message to the group. The overwhelming message was to join with others, to collaborate. No one organization can do it all, work with others and in particular work with community groups, don't reinvent the wheel. Put your content up and make it findable, in the best way you can. This was the same message from the Library of Congress, which is now archiving tweets (not all of them!), to the folks at COPPUL using LOCKSS for e-journals.

If you note any presentation that you are interested in learning more about what was said, let me know. I took comprehensive notes, too many to post here.

From Doubtful to Doable: The Problem of Formulating Good Research Problems

Dr. Alvin Schrader, Director of Research at the University of Alberta Libraries; and Professor Emeritus & former Director of SLIS, University of Alberta, described research as a structured problem solving process. Research begins with a doubt, an uncertainty, a question regarding what to believe or what to do. From there it is a process with three distinct phases:

1. Problem formulation
2. Problem investigation
3. Problem reporting
   

Each of these phases involves particular thinking/reasoning skills and all have research literature informing them.

The session focused on the problem formulation stage which Schrader described as having three stages:

1. General Problem Area
2. Specific Research Problem - the what? question
3. Key Terms - concepts, definitions, semantic triangles, relationships involving digraphing antecedent-consequent, showing direction of influence

Schrader used suggestions for research provided by the session participants as examples for working through stages #2 and #3 above.

Schrader provided a list of research problems which may arise from:

• a theory or model or policy
  
• a gap or void in understanding
  
• contradictory claims
  
• contradictory evidence
• inconclusive or weak evidence
• faulty assumptions
• overgeneralizing conclusions from limited data
• unexplained relationships
• a new relationship
• a provocative exception
• unrepresentative sample
• response bias
• a theory-action conflict or gap
• a professional practice conflict or gap
• a methodological alternative
• an alternative setting, time, population, population sub-group, or social context
• literature reviews for meta-analysis
• recommendations for further research in publications
• research agendas developed by associations

Finally, Schrader suggested that research proposals and ethics review submissions should answer two questions:

1. Are you the right person for this study?
2. Is it worth doing?

From this presentation, I would recommend the Scholarly Librarian blog as a potential source of information about doing research as a librarian. I also have a 2-page handout from Dr. Schrader with additional detail on the above. Let me know if you'd like a copy.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Zounds! Biff! Kablam! Or How I Started a Graphic Novel Collection at My Academic Library

Crystal Rose, a Public Services Library at Memorial University in Corner Brook, began with a brief history of comics and graphic novels. Her presentation was particularly interesting because she used graphics to show the history of this genre. She gave evidence that graphic novels are being used for courses in many disciplines, and in scholarly journals as the focus of academic research. She included a list of criteria being used at MUN to make selection decisions and a sense of cost and circulation statistics for this collection. Crystal provided tips for choosing titles, ways to promote the collection, as well as cataloguing challenges.