LibParlor Online Learning Personas: The Department Head

Welcome to the first post in our series providing suggestions for how to interact with LibParlor Online Learning! Each month in this series, we’ll provide a list of lessons that a particular persona would be interested in and offer advice for navigating the curriculum. Each persona will then have a starter pack for jumping into LPOL in order to help with their research journey, professional development, and mentorship.

LibParlor Online Learning Personas: The Department Head

You are an administrator, department head, or manager who supervises staff and faculty of all experience levels. As someone tasked with overseeing and advising upon the professional development of your direct reports, you are invested in finding ways to advocate for them and help them grow. This starter pack will help you provide recommendations to junior faculty along with anyone needing training on pursuing research for their professional development, performance reviews, and dossiers. 

Course 1, Lesson 1: Developing An Identity As a Researcher

Course 1, Lesson 2: Finding a Research Direction

Course 1, Lesson 3: Prioritizing Reflection and Community

The first course in the LPOL curriculum helps the learner examine their identity as a researcher. This is a great way for your direct reports to take stock of who they are, what their motivations are for their work, and how that all connects to their research. These lessons are meant to offer support regardless of whether someone is pursuing research for personal interest, for promotion and tenure, or as a way to improve the LISLibrary and Information Science An interdisciplinary field that examines how physical and digital information is organized, accessed, collected, managed, disseminated and used, particularly in library settings. field. It will provide an opportunity for deep reflection work and offer suggestions on thinking about positionalityPositionality The identity of us as a researcher as it relates to the social and political context of a research study. Our positionality is based on our past experiences and shapes how you approach the research process. and crafting a researcher identity statement to help prepare a researcher at the start of their journey. From there, the learner determines what their interests and goals are, how to build a research support community, and how to prioritize their needs as they start to form a research agendaResearch agenda An iterative document or statement that provides a roadmap to your short and long term topics and ideas you’d like to research.. Course One is meant to be a helpful first step to building a research foundation for your direct reports and mentees.

Course 2, Lesson 2: The LIS Research Process

Course 2, Lesson 3: LIS Research Methodologies & Frameworks

Course 2, Lesson 4: Exploring Methodologies That Suit Your Project

Course Two introduces the characteristics of LIS research to help your mentee choose an approach for their project idea by learning about the field’s body of literature, methodologies, and approaches to conducting research. These lessons will provide your direct reports with suggestions on how to plan out their research and align their desired outcomes to a research question and methodological approach.

Course 3, Lesson 2: Refining Your Research Approach

Course 3, Lesson 4: Seeking Feedback & Managing Expectations

These lessons in Course Three provide exercises and considerations for your mentee to start to narrow down their research question, match their question to an appropriate methodologyMethodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data., and identify strategies for how to keep their project on track. Lesson four offers opportunities to solicit and consider feedback, as well as building the capacity for flexibility when it comes to managing self-determined expectations. These lessons paired with mentoring check-ins are a great way to keep early-career and junior faculty engaged in their research development.

Course 4, Lesson 1: What and Where To Publish

Course 4, Lesson 3: Writing Skills

Now that your mentee has started to build the blocks of a research idea, these lessons in Course Four will help them identify possible venues for where to publish, which will help them determine a type of audience to write for, as well as learn about the basic elements of a research proposal and how to approach their writing process. These steps will provide a focus, a voice, and a goal to work towards.

Course 5, Lesson 1: Working With Editors and Peer Reviewers

Course 5, Lesson 2: Promoting Your Work

Course 5, Lesson 3: Measuring, Evaluating, and Articulating Impact

Course Five is a valuable introductionIntroduction The start of a research article providing background information and an overview of the research presented in the article. to the scholarly communication environment. In these lessons, your mentee will learn about peer review and the editorial process, how to self-promote as a scholar, and how research impactResearch impact A way to describe and measure the ways in which research causes some sort of positive impact on a community. Research impact can be measured through quantitative or qualitative data.   influences the scholarly field.

We hope this starter pack helps you guide your direct reports, junior faculty, and mentees as they get started with their research! Look out for the next starter pack in our series next month that will be curated for students in library school interested in getting involved in research.

Do you plan on using these in your workplace? Is there anything missing here you’d like to see us provide in the curriculum? Let us know in the comments, or email us at libparlor@gmail.com!