Welcome to the third post in our series highlighting suggestions for interacting with LibParlor Online Learning! Each post in this series will provide a list of lessons that a particular persona would be interested in and provide advice for navigating the curriculum accordingly. Each persona will then have a starter pack for jumping into LPOL in order to help with their research journey, professional development, and mentorship. Check out the other posts in this series here.
LibParlor Online Learning Personas: The Early-Career Librarian
You’ve started your first tenure-track job in an academic library – congratulations! But perhaps you’re looking at your institution’s tenure criteria and the scholarship requirements seem daunting right now. Or maybe you’ve dabbled in research before, but this is the first time you’re thinking about it in a way that aligns with your career trajectory or your job responsibilities. The LibParlor Online Learning curriculum is meant to create the foundation on which you can determine how and why you’d like to research as a librarian, how to establish a research practice, and how to engage with 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. research. While taking the whole curriculum in chronological order could be the way you choose to navigate LPOL, this starter pack will provide the lessons that will give you the basics and help prepare you to start your research, if that is more your speed.
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
Course 1 of the LPOL curriculum is meant to be extremely reflective and iterative for you to learn about what drives your interest in LIS research and how that connects to who you are as a researcher. Embarking on your personal research journey can be very overwhelming, with a lot of skills and knowledge you may not have learned elsewhere in past degree programs or careers, but the lessons in Course 1 will gently introduce some preliminary concepts of doing research before you jump into an actual research practice. This can be a really great way to start and is all self-paced to meet you where you are, especially if you don’t have protected research time built into your job. After taking Course 1, you will hopefully be able to identify what your research interests could be and where to take them, and how to build a community for when you need a place to turn to for brainstorming, feedback, and support.
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 2 introduces the characteristics of LIS research and methodologies to help you choose an approach for your project ideas by learning about the field’s body of literature, methods, and approaches to conducting research. These lessons will provide you with suggestions on how to plan out your research, how to create your own timelines that work best for you, and align your desired outcomes to a research question and methodological approach. Even if you’re not quite ready to take the steps toward selecting a research project, Course 2 can give you an overview of what this work can look like when you’re ready.
Course 3, Lesson 1: Identifying Collaborators
Course 3, Lesson 2: Refining Your Research Approach
Course 3, Lesson 4: Seeking Feedback & Managing Expectations
Finding collaborators can be challenging when you’re just starting out in your career or with your path to research. Course 3, Lesson 1 builds on the researcher community you work on in Course 1, Lesson 3 and offers recommendations on how to find and work with collaborators on research projects. Lesson 2 will help you narrow down your research interests into forming the potential for a research question that will lead your future project, as well as matching your question to the proper methodologyMethodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data. for how to pursue the answers to your question. Lesson 4 will provide strategies for keeping your project on track, seeking and incorporating outside feedback into your work, and managing your expectations.
Course 4, Lesson 1: What and Where To Publish
Course 4, Lesson 2: The LIS Literature Review
Course 4, Lesson 3: Writing Skills
Course 4, Lesson 4: Self-Management
Even if you have an extensive amount of experience in writing, Course 4 on writing and editing can be a very helpful overview of common LIS research outputs, thinking about what venues make the most sense for your research project, reviewing the state of literature on your topic, writing either alone or with your collaborators, and how to stay on track with your work to set yourself up for success while balancing other priorities in your life.
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 5 helps prepare you for the publication and review process, so that you will know what to expect after you’ve finished writing your research project. Lesson 1 will explain the peer review process, options you have to respond to reviewer and editor comments, and how to approach your work if you experience rejection or a request for resubmission. Course 2 provides an overview of scholarly communication and the different ways you can promote your work to get it out to your intended audiences.
Course 6, Lesson 1: Building Your Research Plan
Course 6, Lesson 2: How LibParlor Can Support You & How You Can Support the LIS Research Community
Whether you choose to take the whole curriculum or use this starter pack to pair together different lessons, the final course in LPOL helps you put all the pieces of a research project together to give you a map of how to eventually submit a proposal. Our deliverables workbook provides final templates for all of the curriculum activities that build towards a project so that you feel prepared to submit an idea to whichever venue with which you’ve chosen to share your research. From there, you’ll be recommended future steps and some reflection work for you to assess what you’ll need after you’ve finished the curriculum, as well as resources from LibParlor and suggestions for how to support and improve the LIS research community.
Starting a new career or a new journey with research can feel isolating, since much of this information has tended to be “hidden knowledge” that without an already established community of colleagues can be difficult to tackle on your own. But we hope LPOL and this starter pack can provide you with the resources to grow your confidence and get you to where you want to be in your research journey. If you don’t already have a group of junior faculty at your institution, consider posting in our Classifieds section if you’d like to navigate the curriculum with a cohort, and build a group of library workers to learn and discuss together! Brainstorming ideas, providing and receiving feedback, and having writing accountability partners are some wonderful benefits of forming your own early-career learning group.
Look out for the next starter pack in our series next month that will be curated for mid- and established career librarians.
Do you plan on using these? 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!
0 comments on “LibParlor Online Learning Personas: The Early-Career Librarian”