Creating a Research Agenda An iterative document or statement that provides a roadmap to your short and long term topics and ideas you’d like to research.
If you’ve taken the other lessons in Course 1, you have had a chance to develop your researcher identity, determine your research direction and goals, and consider the internal challenges you may face as you begin your research journey. With all of this information, you can now start to think about forming your own research agenda.
A research agenda is a plan to focus on a particular issue or set of ideas that interest or concern you that you could address over time and across research projects. Your research agenda can help you develop goals that can serve as a trajectory for your scholarship and guide what, when, and where you publish. This agenda isn’t set in stone and can be adjusted depending on how your professional role and responsibilities change, but it helps you connect that scholarly work you do to your goals.
In her LibParlor article “Research Agendas: You Can Go Your Own Way,” Rebecca Halpern explores how LIS An interdisciplinary field that examines how physical and digital information is organized, accessed, collected, managed, disseminated and used, particularly in library settings. researchers can often feel pressured to pursue “hot topic” issues that are currently popular with administrators. This can especially be true if you’re on the tenure-track and must navigate written (or unwritten) rules to advance. Some researchers do not work in libraries where they are necessarily supported in pursuing their own research interests. Your work and institutional responsibilities and obligations may not offer you much freedom to pursue research that directly correlates to your interests, but hopefully you can find ways to connect those interests within the scope of your work.
When forming your research agenda, think about what you are naturally curious about in the field. Focus on topics that are interesting to you but also align with the goals you set in Course 1, Lesson 2: Finding a Research Direction. Consider how your various goals work together, and how a few projects might create a broader story through your research. Speak with friends, colleagues, and mentors about your research interests — being in conversation with others can often spark new ways of thinking and can help you find other scholarly research to enhance your research agenda.
Activity
Complete the following activity in your LPOL Workbook. This activity will help you work toward a final curriculum deliverable, and it will help you develop your overall research plan.
Fill out the Creating Your Research Agenda worksheet by answering the prompts to help you start to develop your research agenda. If you took Course 1, Lesson 2: Finding a Research Direction, think about how the goals you identified relate to your answers.
Topic 3 References
Bastone, Zoe. “I Can Do This! Doing Research as a Non-Tenure Track Librarian, Part II.” The Librarian Parlor. September 10, 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/09/10/i-can-do-this-doing-research-as-a-non-tenure-track-librarian-a-librarian-parlor-series-part-ii/.
Halpern, Rebecca. “Research Agendas: You Can Go Your Own Way.” The Librarian Parlor. October 24, 2018. https://libparlor.com/2018/10/24/research-agendas-you-can-go-your-own-way/.
Creating 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.
If you’ve taken the other lessons in Course 1, you have had a chance to develop your researcher identity, determine your research direction and goals, and consider the internal challenges you may face as you begin your research journey. With all of this information, you can now start to think about forming your own research agenda.
A research agenda is a plan to focus on a particular issue or set of ideas that interest or concern you that you could address over time and across research projects. Your research agenda can help you develop goals that can serve as a trajectory for your scholarship and guide what, when, and where you publish. This agenda isn’t set in stone and can be adjusted depending on how your professional role and responsibilities change, but it helps you connect that scholarly work you do to your goals.
In her LibParlor article “Research Agendas: You Can Go Your Own Way,” Rebecca Halpern explores how 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. researchers can often feel pressured to pursue “hot topic” issues that are currently popular with administrators. This can especially be true if you’re on the tenure-track and must navigate written (or unwritten) rules to advance. Some researchers do not work in libraries where they are necessarily supported in pursuing their own research interests. Your work and institutional responsibilities and obligations may not offer you much freedom to pursue research that directly correlates to your interests, but hopefully you can find ways to connect those interests within the scope of your work.
When forming your research agenda, think about what you are naturally curious about in the field. Focus on topics that are interesting to you but also align with the goals you set in Course 1, Lesson 2: Finding a Research Direction. Consider how your various goals work together, and how a few projects might create a broader story through your research. Speak with friends, colleagues, and mentors about your research interests — being in conversation with others can often spark new ways of thinking and can help you find other scholarly research to enhance your research agenda.
Activity
Complete the following activity in your LPOL Workbook. This activity will help you work toward a final curriculum deliverable, and it will help you develop your overall research plan.
Fill out the Creating Your Research Agenda worksheet by answering the prompts to help you start to develop your research agenda. If you took Course 1, Lesson 2: Finding a Research Direction, think about how the goals you identified relate to your answers.
Topic 3 References
Bastone, Zoe. “I Can Do This! Doing Research as a Non-Tenure Track Librarian, Part II.” The Librarian Parlor. September 10, 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/09/10/i-can-do-this-doing-research-as-a-non-tenure-track-librarian-a-librarian-parlor-series-part-ii/.
Halpern, Rebecca. “Research Agendas: You Can Go Your Own Way.” The Librarian Parlor. October 24, 2018. https://libparlor.com/2018/10/24/research-agendas-you-can-go-your-own-way/.