Blog: Library Research in Practice

Having seen news articles like this one: ‘Libraries start new chapter to support vulnerable’ , I became interested in the role that public libraries can play in working with vulnerable members of our communities. If Melbourne City Libraries had employed a social worker to help library staff with this role, I thought there must be lessons that can be learned from that experience. After arranging a meeting with Leanne Mitchell at the Melbourne City Library, I was able to talk with her about the project, where it was going and what steps they had taken to evaluate the work they were doing.… Continue reading “A Social Worker in the Library – a new article tells the Melbourne story”

When I joined the School of Information studies at Charles Sturt University back in May 2019 I was intrigued to learn about the Study Visits that were run for students. These are week-long visits to an Australian city or region, with an itinerary packed with visits to interesting libraries and archives. As well as providing incredibly valuable learning opportunities for students, these visits also represent opportunities for lecturers to re-engage with practice, and see first-hand the work that information professionals are doing.… Continue reading “Are Australia’s new public libraries here for the long term?”

While we continue to research the ways in which libraries are responding to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, we might do well to also consider what the situation will be like for libraries once the virus is finally brought under control. It’s unlikely to be the same. Clearly the measures that have been put in place in most countries across the world to ‘flatten the curve’ will have a lasting economic impact, the result of which will almost inevitably see increased pressure on public spending.… Continue reading “Public libraries post-COVID”

Library cataloguers have spent a hundred plus years indexing the subjects of books and other resources, but paid relatively little attention to some other aspects, such as their genre. For example, the Library of Congress Subject Headings are pervasive in countless library catalogues, and have been since the first half of the last century, yet the Library of Congress Genre/Form Headings (LCGFT) were only established a few years ago, and are still something of a work in progress.

A series of studies I’m presently carrying out is assessing the applicability of the LCGFT by comparing them with other genre lists, and by comparing their use with that of other terms that have not yet made it into LCGFT.… Continue reading “Library resources provide experiences as well as information”

Prof Philip Hider has just written up a guest editorial for an upcoming issue of the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association featuring some of the papers presented at the Fifteenth Australasian Conference on Research Applications in Information and Library Studies (RAILS), held on 28 and 29 October last year at St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra. Philip was chair of the conference’s program committee, with the event being hosted by CSU’s School of Information Studies. The conference’s themes was ‘Towards critical information research, education and practice’, and if ever there was a time for a critical approach this is probably it, with so many competing messages being peddled by various powers around the world.… Continue reading “Special issue of the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association”

Dr Jane Garner

In late 2019, I undertook a unique study of the status of libraries in Australia’s juvenile justice facilities. The goal of the study was to discover how many libraries were in our juvenile justice facilities, how they were staffed, funded, and used by the young people living in correctional detention. As each facility houses a registered secondary college that all residents must attend, there was a particular interest in how these libraries were contributing to the education of detainees.… Continue reading “Libraries in Australian Juvenile Justice Facilities”

COVID-19 has changed a lot of our lives, study and work ways and made us depend more on IT. At the same time, COVID-19 has exposed digital divide problems. User education and development of digital literacy are important missions of worldwide libraries, no matter if they are academic, special, school or public libraries. As librarians/educators, how can we face these changes and develop digital literacy for library users, by library user education and taking advantage of easy to use IT tools such as VR, drones and digital humanities tools.… Continue reading “Developing of digital literacy with libraries and digital technologies from an international perspective”