ALA Competency 6: Research
INFO 5000: Job Description Analysis - Completed September 2019
For this assignment, we were tasked with using NVivo to analyze the text of job post for a specific career path we were interested in. The final deliverable was a powerpoint that showed off our findings.
The learning goals of this assignment were for us to learn new research techniques and methods of presenting data. A side benefit was that it also gave us some insight into the state of the current job market for our chosen career. This was a very useful assignment to me because it taught me more about the qualitative data analysis process and gave experience with using NVivo to perform this research. The process of scraping the job postings and putting the information into NVivo was a little confusing at first but, after messing around with it for a bit, I got the hang of it. It was very cool to see which terms and concepts came up a lot in the postings. It was also interesting to see how the amount of experience and pay for each position did actually vary widely and there were even position that did not even require a MSLS degree or equivalent. Although, for those position, the pay was usually significantly lower than those that did require a master's degree. All in all, I believe this assignment fits into ALA core competency six because it shows that I understand how to perform qualitative research and can present research findings in a clear and concise way.
INFO 5210: Research Paper - Completed October 25, 2020
This assignment required us to conduct research on a topic chosen for us by our professor. The topic I was given was the differences between the Library Reference Model and the FRBR Family of conceptual models.
For this assignment, we were each given a topic within the library field to research. We also had to create an outline and find our sources before we could write our paper. The professor would only let us write the paper after she approved our outlines. The topic I was given was the differences between the Library Reference Model (LRM) and the FRBR family of conceptual models. We had talk about these things in the class so I was already somewhat familiar with their differences, but I had to find resources that further explained each model so I could properly compare their differences in a scholarly way. To do the research, I primarily used research databases like ProQuest as well as the UNT Library online search portal. After identifying relevant articles and research papers, I noticed how much the LRM builds on the FRBR models, and I discussed these improvements in my paper. It was quite interesting to see how the LRM consolidates and codifies a lot of the concepts from the FRBR models, while also adding some new things. I think this assignment meets the requirements of ALA core competency six because it shows that I know how to identify and present useful research and understand the central research findings and research literature of library field.