23 Research Things - Thing 11

While I don't think I'd ever really use them to put out my own content online, I am an enthusiastic consumer of YouTube and podcast content, and it's not just weightlifting tutorials and funny cat videos either. I love learning from these platforms. For example, I credit fandom podcasts such as The Tolkien Professor and Witch Please for making me a more careful, critical reader of fiction. Through 99% Invisible I've learned a lot about design and the way humans interact with the world.

The podcast I'm choosing to highlight for Thing 11, however, is Hello PhD, a fortnightly podcast "for scientists and the people who love them". I mentioned it in my previous post as a great example of communicating research and, although it doesn't focus exclusively on specific research projects, it provides great insights into the structure and culture of postgraduate science education. It takes a refreshingly critical stance toward that structure and also talks about mental and physical wellbeing in postgraduate training, mentorship, productivity, alternative routes outside of academia etc. Throw in the weekly science etymology puzzle and I'm totally hooked! The hosts are great at communicating complex issues within academia and advocates for loving what you do as a researcher. The podcast has a slight biological science bias but don't let that discourage you - the information is useful for all researchers and the people that work with (and/or love) them!

Source: http://hellophd.com/page/9/

From YouTube there are too many good educational videos out there to be able to pick the best, from the now outrageously popular TED talks to SciShow, the Gates Notes, Vox, Crash Course... the list goes on and on! I did need to pick one, though, so I thought I'd go in for some good old fashioned nepotism and share my friend Peter's YouTube channel, The Binary Tree.

Peter's great at explaining the theory behind computer science - something I admit I'm way more into than learning programming languages - in simple terms that appeal to my visual learning style. He's a great example of how accessible it is to share what you know with the world and get others excited about your area of interest.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

23 Research Things - Thing 10

I'll do my best to encapsulate my rambling and multifarious thoughts on communicating research into a single blog post. I suppose the people to whom it makes sense are already doing it, so I will do my best not to preach to the converted but instead address people who may not see the point in spending their valuable time translating their research into plain language.

Georgina and Ryan made some great points in their podcast on the topic, not least of which is that if you've devoted your time to researching something in great depth, hopefully it means you're quite excited about it. I recently asked one of my classes to chat to each other about their research topics and overheard one student ask another, "What are you geeking out on lately?" It's the same sort of language people use around a show they really love or a hobby they've gotten really into. I hope all of the researchers I work with feel that way about their work at least periodically.

To me, the "geeking out"- getting excited about an idea or a question or a problem and then pursuing it, finding it difficult to talk about anything else over dinner or out at the pub - is what it's all about. It's why I've always wanted to go into some field in education; to watch that spark ignite and help people take down the barriers to pursuing that shiny new piece of knowledge. The most influential people in my life have been educators, but first and foremost they've been great communicators who were able to share their enthusiasm, passion and curiosity. They're the Neil deGrasse Tysons and Bill Nyes of the world, but they're also the Katie Browns and Debbie Aldouses of the world. These are people who are passionate about knowledge and who are able to share that passion.

One of the chief advantages of the tools explored in previous Things is that they mean you don't have to be a brilliant public speaker or teach in a classroom to communicate your passion for your research. People like Katie Mack (AKA @astrokatie) have found the power of tools like Vine (RIP) and Twitter for sharing their research and have huge followings because they get people excited by and interested in what they're doing. The "Dance your PhD" Contest launched by Science shows how engaging, funny and accessible communicating research by video can be, while podcasts like Hello PhD provide a forum for those who prefer the spoken word.

The thing in common with all of these is that they've learned to make complex research topics accessible. The first step is letting go of the idea that your research is too complicated for other people to understand. Obviously they won't understand it at the level that you do, but I agree with Ryan that there is no concept or process that can't be explained relatively simply. I would also argue that in translating your work into a simpler, more easily communicable form, by coming up with your "elevator pitch", by trying to condense it into the length of a Tweet, or by explaining it in an animation, you change your perspective on your subject. You can actually learn more about your subject by simplifying it and communicating it.

When you communicate your research, you never know where the conversation will take you.

23 Research Things - Things 5 & 6

These days I find myself in a bit of a post-Honeymoon period with Twitter and often question what it adds to my professional life. The fact that many professionally relevant conversations and connections happen there is reason enough for me to want to remain but I think it tends to demand more than it gives. That's why I'm having a little difficulty summoning enthusiasm for Thing 5, an exploration of how Twitter can be used in research.

I teach academics about communicating and sharing your research and strongly encourage some form of non-academic dissemination, not only for increased citation rates but for practice communicating your ideas in different modes. Of course Twitter is brilliant for this for all the reasons discussed in the video for Thing 5, but it also depends on where people are comfortable and what suits their communication style. I am firmly of the opinion that Twitter should be optional, no matter what field you're in, and important work-related discussions shouldn't happen exclusively on Twitter just as business decisions shouldn't happen exclusively on the smoking terrace.

Twitter: the smoking terrace of our generation? (Does anyone else remember this episode of Friends where Rachel takes up smoking because her colleagues are making important decisions during their cigarette breaks?)

Part of the problem is the feeling one has on Twitter of shouting into the tempest. There is so much information being generated every second that it's hard to feel you're providing valuable content. For researchers the fear that what they're saying won't be of interest and won't even be noticed must be tremendous. Add to that the time spent setting it up, getting used to it and Tweeting enough to make the whole endeavor worthwhile, I certainly empathise with academics I talk to who just don't see the point. However, I do think it's important to give researchers the opportunity to reframe Twitter as an opportunity for a different kind of scholarship and connection. At its best, Twitter is highly adaptive, timely, grass-roots, creative, inclusive and accessible, which is why I'm still there.

Thing 6 deals with content creation/curation through tools like Storify. I have seen Storify used to link together tweets from a conference before but hadn't thought of it for linking longer thoughts or related items. I think Librarian Errant hit the nail on the head with their reflection on today's featured tools, writing:

I found today’s Thing a useful reframing of resources that I had not previously considered for use in a content-creation context. One of the things I’m considering doing as a result of the 23 Research Things Cambridge programme is start creating some kind of themed collections of links, in a location less ephemeral than Twitter. I had been intending to do so on my blog, perhaps making use of something like Pocket to gather the links together until I was ready to post them. However, I’m now wondering if Paper.li or Scoop.it might be better.

That's a use I wouldn't have thought of either. I do wonder how much more discoverable those resources would be. I have yet to be convinced that Twitter offers much opportunity of distinguishing the signal from the noise. However, I do think it's worth a try, even if I'm only curating resources for my fellow librarians!

Ideas for curated content (please comment if you'd find any of these particularly useful!):
- Conference poster design
- Practitioner research
- Embedded librarianship
- Productivity
- Bullet Journal

ARLG: Communicating with our users.

Yesterday marked my first CILIP event as I attended the course "Communicating with our Users" as a delegate. The speakers were Angela Cutts and Emma-Jane Batchelor (Faculty of Education), Cambridge, Jane Helgesen (UEA), and Libby Tilley filling in for a poorly Georgina Cronin (from the English Faculty Library and the Cambridge Judge Business School libraries respectively), while the delegates represented a range of libraries from places like Norwich, Cambridge, Nottingham, Hertfordshire and Hull.

As a thoughtful and caring group of librarians, the delegates had little trouble answering the prompt, "Why communicate?" Reasons cited included understanding our users, building relationships, breaking down barriers and being able to better tailor our services. Of course there are ways in which communication benefits us in terms of marketing library services, busting myths about who we are and what we do and even simply informing people that we exist. But communication is very much a two-way street with benefits for everyone if it is done effectively.

Done poorly, communication is effort down the drain. Photo by Lucy Welch.

A quick exercise listing ways in which libraries can engage in real-time vs. any-time communication revealed the vast number of ways we try to communicate with users, but equally (if not more) significant are the ways in which we unconsciously communicate. We were asked to put ourselves in our users' shoes and imagine what is communicated to our users unconsciously when they step inside our libraries. Those libraries with grand atriums devoid of books and comforts might look imposing, institutional, or more like a hotel than a library. My library is much smaller but on walking in there are no clear directional signs and staff are practically hidden behind a ridiculously tall desk that my shorter colleagues struggle to even see over the top of. I have always felt that this physical barrier forms part of a larger psychological barrier between us and our students that keeps us from communicating.

The issue of formality vs. informality was discussed quite a bit and forms another unconscious method of communication. Whether you address users in emails with "Hi, ______" or "Dear _______", whether you wear jeans and trainers to work or have a business-like dress code or wear sparkly lanyards, whether your Tweets sound funny and human or like they were generated by a computer, these things can set the tone for communication and are very dependent on the user base at your library. Emma and Angela work with many professional teachers and as such they feel more formal communication is needed, whereas Libby is on first name, "Hi, ______" terms with her predominantly undergraduate student base. And while Emma and Angela have developed the implict dress code of "dress like a teacher", Andy Priestner and his staff at the CJBS library "embrace the informal" and dress in the same sort of jeans, trainers and other comfortable clothes that their users wear. It may seem of little significance but clothing, tone and other subtle ways in which we portray ourselves communicate huge amounts. It's not only what we say but how we say it that either breaks down or puts up barriers.

The only time I wear jeans to work is on Saturdays.

This gave me a lot of food for thought. In my four years in my current job I have only ever worn jeans to work on Saturdays (as in the photo above). I'm not overly formal, given that the orange converse, my Doc Martens with a hole in the toe and my brogues, which are in an advanced state of decay, have all made regular appearances at work. But I had always wanted to be recognizable as a professional, both because I look close enough in age to the students to often be mistaken for a student rather than a professional librarian and because I felt that if I dressed formally it would help communicate to students that librarians had more to offer than just stamping books. Also, it would not feel entirely right to supervise visiting readers at the Wren Desk wearing shorts and a t-shirt while many of them wear shirts and ties for the occasion. However, I will have to give serious thought to the discussions we had yesterday and the article I posted above. As Andy said, "Clothes don’t make you professional." Would it help break down the barriers between staff and students if I wore jeans to work during the week? Do the trousers, shirts and blazers instill a sense of confidence in students that I am a responsible adult who is capable of helping them? I don't know. As all of the speakers said, communication should be tailored to the user group based on understanding and in those terms I'm only just getting to know who our users are.

The main thing is to be strategic about communication. We brainstormed words that apply to communication for each letter of the SMART objectives acronym and it turns out that librarians are rather good at coming up with synonyms:

@ARLGEastern Your SMART objectives for library communication. Thanks for all your ideas #arlgcomms pic.twitter.com/5GGITcrXkw

— Angela Cutts (@AngelEdLib) May 8, 2015

Putting thought into all of these aspects and tailoring them to your users will maximize the impact of communication meaning that your time is being well spent. Angela and Emma went on to look at specific examples of how they used multiple channels to communicate on a single aspect of the service. Their fun, engaging efforts were carefully timed, tailored to their users and were very eye-catching, but they always had a purpose behind them. Their "Will you be my borrower?" display for Valentine's Day, for example, generated crowd-sourced book recommendations. While they had fun making art-and-crafty DIY displays, the thought behind their outreach was methodical and I was impressed and inspired by how interconnected their displays, social media output and in-house events were. There was always a reason or a catch behind all the fun. It was always communicating something about the library's services but doing the double duty of helping users see the library staff as approachable and human.

I won't go into the excellent and exemplary case study presented by Jane Helgesen about communication with users during a project to redesign a space in the library. Suffice it to say that it provided me with many ideas about how we might approach a major redesign of the library if it ever comes to that. The main point I want to bring up from her talk was the importance of staff buy-in for effective communication. Faced with the difficult task of getting students excited about the library re-development (rather than irritated by the disruption to their studies), Jane ensured that everyone on the library's staff were well informed so they could give consistent, on-message information to students. Staff needed to be "clear and confident about what was going on," and their enthusiasm for the project could then spread to the library users. This was achieved through regular meetings, emails, and a shared folder that was regularly updated to keep staff in the loop and feeling empowered. It was a great example of how good communication is a holistic way of approaching libraries, not just a marketing tool to be exploited.

Communication is about understanding, give and take and being serious about not taking yourself too seriously.

You can get some different perspectives on what was discussed from the excellent live Tweeters by reading through #arlgcomms on Twitter. It was a great day, topped off with a tour of the Dawson Books warehouse, where Lucy and I, bedecked in hi-viz vests, came over all geeky about conveyor belts, industrial scale book shelves and a very satisfying machine that folds cardboard boxes. Thanks to the ARLG and the organizers of this event for a really nice day!

Lucy and I take a hi-viz selfie in the Dawson Books warehouse.