Day Two

Yesterday was productive, I think. It's been so long since I've made real progress on the treatise that it is hard to measure productivity. I managed to resist the allure of email until my 4 p.m. goal (though I heard it singing it's siren song about 3:40). I put together a stronger outline for my first chapter on my desktop, thanks to some Post-its. I also did a little editing of my most recent intro draft, too, based on my new outline.

The problem I'm having is that the ceiling fan doesn't seem to respect my "geek cave" - I may actually need to invest in some better sticky notes! (If you haven't seen the Post-it "man cave" commercial this won't make sense)

Today's goal is to attack another chunk of the intro. In particular I plan to work on the section about how academic librarians tend to conduct research about faculty (when we conduct research at all) at the macro, "the faculty" level, rather than at a more granular discipline or departmental level. I found a number of interesting articles about library/faculty relationships yesterday (Anthony, 2010; Christiansen, Stombler, & Thaxton, 2004; Ithaka, 2010; Kempcke, 2002; Kotter, 1999). All of them used "the faculty" as the unit of analysis, though some did mention the issue of disciplinary subcultures. 

Yesterday I also dug into the recent discussion and research on academic library "return on investment." Though not specifically on ROI, one gem of a paper I came across in the process (Gibson, 2009) talked about the "nascent" state of "research and development" operations within academic libraries. I highly recommend the piece, and plan to share it with whomever we hire for the newly-created position of Assistant Director for Research and Analysis.

Pardon the sloppy citations -- need to get back to the treatise work!

Anthony, K. (2010). Reconnecting the Disconnects: Library Outreach to Faculty as Addressed in the Literature. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 17(1), 79-92. doi:10.1080/10691310903584817 

Christiansen, L., Stombler, M., & Thaxton, L. (2004). A Report on Librarian-Faculty Relations from a Sociological Perspective. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30(2), 116-121. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2004.01.003   

Ithaka : Faculty Survey 2009. (2010). Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009 

Gibson, C. (2009). Playing on “practice fields”: Creating a research and development culture in academic libraries. In Pushing the edge: Explore, engage, extend (pp. 304-316). Presented at the ACRL 14th National Conference, Seattle, WA: Association of College and Research Libraries. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/events/national/seattle/papers/304.pdf

Kempcke, K. (2002). The Art of War for Librarians: Academic Culture, Curriculum Reform, and Wisdom from Sun Tzu. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 2(4), 529-551. doi:10.1353/pla.2002.0081 

Kotter, W. (1999). Bridging the great divide: Improving relations between librarians and classroom faculty. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 25(4), 294-303.