I’m on Sabbatical! Or “Why So Quiet?”

Greetings all – I realized I never posted about this. In Fall 2016, I applied for a sabbatical with the university to work on a research project contingent on my tenure and promotion decision. I received tenure and promotion in may 2017 and the sabbatical was awarded to me for Spring Semester 2018. Because of this, I do not have teaching responsibilities this semester. Here’s a bit about the project:

The aim of the project is to pursue scholarship related to the professional learning experiences of public librarians in Australia via a research partnership with the University of Southern Queensland and the Australian Library and Information Association. This will include qualitative research exploring the learning experiences of librarians. During sabbatical leave in spring 2018, I will begin to address the apparent gap in the literature noted above through the collection of at least 20 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with public librarians across Australia and a mix of regional, rural and metropolitan areas. This will occur in partnership Helen Partridge, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Scholarly Information and Learning Services) at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia and Kate Davis, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southern Queensland. The project builds upon the two year study Partridge leads aimed at establishing a framework for the education of the information professions in Australia.  The primary data collection techniques would be in-depth interviews using the method of Narrative Inquiry.

We will be launching a survey for Australian public library staff soon and I will be working on the interviews this spring. This summer, I will be visiting Australia to continue the research project and to keynote the Asia-Pacific Library & Information Conference.

More will follow but I wanted to share. Best regards to all.