Island research: LIS in Ireland

Aslib Proceedings

ISSN: 0001-253X

Article publication date: 22 May 2009

877

Citation

Cornelius, I. (2009), "Island research: LIS in Ireland", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 61 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ap.2009.27661caa.001

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Island research: LIS in Ireland

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, Volume 61, Issue 3

The UCD School of Information and Library Studies

The articles in this issue of Aslib Proceedings reflect some current research concentrations in the School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) in University College Dublin (UCD). This is the only school or department of its type in Ireland, and currently the only such school in the island of Ireland.

These articles are representative of current interests in the School, but they do not cover all research interests. The work herein most certainly does not represent the totality of LIS research in the country. There is a national body, An Comhairle Leabharlanna (www.librarycouncil.ie), that has a research library, a public library research committee and a public library research programme, develops policy initiatives, and encourages and funds research in the public library sector. Public libraries themselves, and their staffs independently, also undertake research, as do libraries and librarians in the academic and special library sectors. Ireland has libraries and collections of major international significance, and those major libraries that hold collections of major national significance for Ireland are also of interest to the international library community. Major research concerns over conservation and preservation, document representation and resource discovery, and information management command the research attention of professional librarians in Ireland as elsewhere.

We should also note the research of interest to the LIS community conducted in schools and departments of computer science and of communications. The DERI group is discussed in Mary Burke’s article, and information retrieval research in DCU (Dublin City University) under Alan Smeaton and in UCD Computing Science (www.csi.ucd.ie) and others are well known and of general LIS interest. Of similar interest to LIS will be the work in the DCU School of Communications, the Centre for Society, Information, and Media and the UCD School of Business’s work in management information systems and information resource management. UCD has several Schools with research interests in the History of the Book, and Trinity College Dublin and University College Galway also have strong interests in that area. Finally, the UCD School of History and Archives has research interests germane to LIS.

The present work

Research can be significant and noteworthy in several ways; sometimes the topics themselves command attention, sometimes the author’s name is sufficient to engender interest in new areas. Internally each piece of work might be a great example of methodological innovation or rigour, using approaches, data collection and manipulation techniques or processes that command widespread interest, or the data might be a new mine of material that excites international attention, or the quality of analysis and argument may bring the work to a wider audience and expand the natural community of interest or transform the understanding of an issue. By and large the papers in this volume are methodologically conventional, although some of the contributions show novelty in application. Although the general consequence of a conventional approach to method is that the work is at least safe, it should not be assumed that the work therefore lacks originality or daring. The data and the arguments both show the strength of what can be done. There has been comment on “Irish Exceptionalism” in the social sciences, whereby work done elsewhere is tested against Irish data and an exception to the general rule found, requiring some theoretical readjustment or amendment, or the recognition of a “small country” exception. The record seems to be changing, and Irish data now seem effective for the confirmation, reinforcement, or empowerment of general conclusions. Three of the following articles show this very strongly in testing reactions to OJAX software (Wusteman), the generation of migrant information use data (Komito and Bates), and the data on amateur genealogists (Fulton). Fulton’s article also shows another shift: Irish data now may be international data as the focus of research interest moves to include world-wide Irish communities, reflecting the Irish diaspora and the impact of immigration to Ireland in the last several years. Two of these articles (Fulton and Komito and Bates) show the geographical and community range of data relevant to Irish LIS work and practice: the Irish library world extends well beyond the physical boundaries of the island. The UCD School does have a direct concern with the changing information practices of the community it serves, and Irish LIS services must cater for the needs of those who may be only temporarily and partially members of physical Irish communities.

These are mentioned as part of the context for the UCD School of Information and Library Studies (www.ucd.ie/sils). We work with professional interests in mind, reflected in the articles on Information Seeking (Fulton) and Information Literacy (McGuinness), and the School has a reflexive concern with its own development and current educational practices, as seen in the article on the history of the School (Traxler-Brown) and on student group project work. (O’Farrell and Bates). The work by Traxler-Brown also traces the course of history in Irish Library education and shows the contingent factors that determined the fashion in which the UCD School developed to its present preoccupations and profile. The School also works with an approach to the general subject of LIS that emphasis the generic nature of LIS: there is no separation of library work and information work, or of information theory and professional development: these are all seen as interlinked. That interlinking is seen at its most active in the use of Web 2.0 applications. The need to understand developments in these technologies, discussed in Mary Burke’s article, also acts as a professional link between the particularly Irish LIS world and the current world-wide concerns of the international LIS community. The SILS contributions to the international context are reflected in the OJAX article (Wusteman) and in the more general and abstract discussion of information retrieval and meaning (Thornley). General questions of the relationship of information retrieval and LIS are discussed by Cornelius. These latter are important reflections of how the School conceives its contribution to LIS research where there are decisive resource limitations. LIS researchers everywhere can still contribute to theory development even when big research, needing large surveys or experiments, is not possible. What is possible is made clear by some of the survey work on information literacy and migrant information behaviour where SILS researchers have been able to respond to newly emergent conditions and trends and build good working pictures for other researchers to work from. The theory emerges from this work, and how it affects, adapts, or transforms LIS work and, more importantly, the building of LIS as a discipline, is a continuing interest and concern in the School. The further development of the LIS research tradition in Ireland, beyond what is recorded in the current celebration of the first 80 years of university library education in Ireland, should be able to build on what the present issue of Aslib Proceedings records.

Ian CorneliusSchool of Information and Library Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland

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