Pages

Friday 18 November 2016

A manifesto and a spark - My recap of 'Creating a research culture in the workplace'

Chris Powis, Head of Library and Learning Services at Northampton University, came to Cambridge to deliver a session about the research culture that seems to be thriving in his workplace, providing an interesting case study and much food for thought for those of us working and researching in Cambridge libraries. His most powerful thesis to my mind was this: the reason librarians should do research is that it's one of the activities of universities. We are a service, yes, but we are also part of the academic fabric and as such we have a responsibility to take part in teaching and research. I have seen the difference it makes working with academics who think of us as colleagues in research, both to the quality of support we can give them and the quality of insight they can give us. It's a mutually beneficial relationship I feel lucky to have in my role.

At Northampton research by librarians is supported and encouraged at all levels. Chris emphasised that enthusiastic staff alone do not make a research culture, nor can you create one by managerial mandate. A true research culture derives from a collaboration between top-down and bottom-up support for research (not from some farcical aquatic ceremony - sorry, I went a little Monty Python there...). Support for research is included in the vision and plan for the library and staff who are interested in doing research have opportunities for training and resources that allow them to run with their ideas. The library has its own research ethics board, adapted from that of the University, and they report on the impact of their research annually as well as promoting published work by their staff in monumental banners in the library. All of this is serving to expand the perceived role of librarians to include research, just as it had to be actively and forcibly expanded to include teaching.

One of the most interesting practical steps they took to promote and develop a community and culture of research has been to hold library conferences that showcase NU library staff research. There are no keynote speakers - no external speakers of any kind - and so no-one's work is held above anyone else's. Most importantly, the conference is opened by the Vice Chancellor and open to academics from the university to attend. Additionally, research is often done in collaboration with academic colleagues. This level of visibility, professionalism and interdisciplinary work is a remarkable tool for changing both the perception of librarians and the quality of the research produced.

At Cambridge we do a lot of things very well with regards to library research. Our autonomy allows some wonderful small-scale, agile research projects to flourish. However, I think that lack of communication between libraries can sometimes lead people to believe that they can't do research because there's something fundamentally different about the libraries that do it, or that what they're doing already isn't research when in fact it is. I think it's worth tackling the barriers to a research culture across the University and developing a community of practice that would help cultivate top-down and bottom-up support. The session sparked a tentative discussion and it is my (not-so-secret) hope that this will provide a spark to get more of us involved with creating a research culture that fosters a rise in the quality of research and wider dissemination of what we do across all Cambridge libraries.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment