Earlier this month, one of my fellow #blogeverydayofjune pals posted about an article I wrote in this month’s inCite. The article was essentially about what research is and how new graduates can get involved and get published. I was rather gobsmacked by one of the comments, in which the commenter revealed she’d copped flak from colleagues (including being told she was ‘pretentious’) for thinking that the project she was writing up for a journal was worthwhile publishing about.
First, let’s deal with the cultural issue at hand: this is, at least in part, a case of tall poppy syndrome. I don’t understand why people feel the need to undermine other people’s confidence in this way. I just don’t get it. Here’s a message for the profession: if you’ve got new grads in your organisation who are keen and professionally active and focused on contributing to their profession, *value* it, don’t undermine it.
Now, onto the broader issue – which is something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time. Publishing is important, and not just for academics.
This profession has been harping on for a long time about Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP). I’m not going to get into the EBLIP debate here – some of us think it’s a great concept, others of us think it’s overkill, others of us think it’s not very useful at all. Suffice to say that I think anything that encourages us to take a considered, research focused approach to practice is A Good Thing, and that I think there are ways to operate within a lightweight EBLIP model that means EBLIP and innovation can exist in harmony.
When I talk about the need for practitioners to publish, I guess I’m talking about EBLIP in its most nebulous form. I know there is a lot more to EBLIP than contributing to the evidence base (which is what you do when you publish), but this one aspect of EBLIP impacts on other practitioners. (As an aside, I think it’s also one aspect of EBLIP that you can pursue without getting completely invested in the EBLIP models and frameworks, which I know some have reservations about.) Publishing is about responsible practice. It’s about contributing back to the professional literature so that your experience is documented for the benefit of the practitioners who will work in this space in the future.
Consider the last project you worked on. What if you went to the professional literature and there was simply nothing there to inform the direction you should take? How much more groundwork would you have had to do? How many extra mistakes would you have made on the project journey? If we don’t build the evidence base, then finding the evidence we need to make informed decisions is made exponentially more difficult.
We all (hopefully) undertake user needs analysis to inform decision making around service and product delivery. We all undertake environmental scans and literature searches to guide us along the way. We collect and analyse the evidence, and we need to close the evidence loop by contributing back to the evidence base from which we have drawn.
When I completed my professional qualification at QUT, there was a strong focus on EBLIP and on publishing, and on the need to improve our professional literature. Today, the course still seeks to give students an understanding of the importance of publishing. For example, in the semester just passed, students in one of my units wrote an article for an open access journal, submitted it for peer review, reviewed each others’ articles, and then resubmitted a revised article. I’m now in the process of marking those final submissions, and then we’ll be publishing the first issue of Web Content Management for Library and Information Science. It’s a great way for students to learn about open access and peer review processes, and to become familiar with publication workflows. I hope it’s also been the kind of experience that will encourage students to publish as practitioners. Throughout the process, students have been reflecting on their learning experience and critiquing their work, which has been a valuable experience for them.
Which leads me to… the importance of reflective practice, and the fact that publishing supports it.
Not only is publishing important for the profession; it’s an important tool for you as a practitioner. If we write something up for publication, we are probably more likely to undertake meaningful evaluation. It’s also a reflective process, that allows us to think about and critique our own performance, to look for areas in which we need to improve as practitioners, and to make plans to see that improvement happen. For me, the defining characteristic of professionalism is that we, as professionals, are committed to lifelong learning and continuing professional development. Reflective practice has an important role to play in the lifelong learning process, and by extension, is (or should be) a characteristic of ‘the professional’.
I know we’re all busy and the thought of writing for publication can be daunting because of time constraints (and also because we often undervalue ourselves and the contribution we can make to the profession – don’t get me started on the feminisation of this profession and the impact I think that has on our self-image!). Publishing needn’t be so daunting. You don’t have to publish in ERA ranked scholarly publications. Trade publications, blogs, news publications… All of these are places that you can report and reflect on your experiences, for both the profession’s benefit, and your own.
Publishing has nothing to do with pretension, or with making a name for yourself (though that is certainly a great by-product of publishing). It’s about being responsible, and contributing to your profession. We need robust professional literature to underpin our practice, and the only way we can have that is if practitioners invest time, energy and intellect in publishing.
Update: Gotta love serendipity. In the latest issue of EBLIP, editor Denise Koufogiannakis wrote an editorial on reflection that echoes some of what I’ve talked about here. Go read it!
Bravo, well written and well argued. I am fortunate that when I have been published or spoken, my colleagues have been amazingly supportive and more in awe of how did I find the time to do it.
Having worked on projects where it would have been sooooo helpful to read of others’ experiences, I can only encourage all librarians to consider writing about their work. Its not only good for your work – to reflect as Kate says here, but also for others who may be doing something parallel.
Help your fellow librarians to learn from your successes and failures – the profession and our users will reap the benefits.
This is a fantastic post & echoes many of my own thoughts. I have written about EBLIP but at the same time question it but at the same time, as you, feel it provides a good basis for writing, adding to the evidence base of our profession.
I think another issue in regard to writing and publishing is that people often dismiss their experiences as not good enough/ interesting enough/ unique enough to write about. It’s really difficult to be subjective about your own work and experiences – especially when you know all of the odd little happenings that lead to an outcome within a workplace. I succumb to this often and am always surprised when other people find what I do interesting and want to know more about how it is planned and comes to be within my workplace. So my first tip would be: Don’t dismiss anything you do.
Like you, my second tip would be starting small (try do a short conference presentation or a piece in Incite or start a blog) and my third tip to start by collaboratively writing with others – you learn so much when you write with others (different perspectives, different writing styles) and it gives you some accountability and motivation to do it as well.
Time to bridge the gap between facilitating research and actually doing it and documenting it for the benefit of the whole profession
Thanks for this Kate – food for thought. When I came back from VALA this year I lamented the fact to my colleagues that MPOW is doing a lot of Good Things but we never tell anyone about them in the form of conference presentations or indeed, articles.
Really enjoyed reading your post. I agree wholeheartedly. Many of the things you note about reflective practice mesh quite nicely with my recent editorial in EBLIP (the journal). Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
On the topic of whether or not the EBLIP model is useful or not, I welcome and would love to see more debate on this topic. Personally, I don’t think the model is set in stone, and it probably needs to evolve. To achieve that, we need more voices to be heard and more research to be done. In my role as Editor-in-Chief of the EBLIP journal, I welcome your blog readers to contribute to the discussion via our publication.
Denise
thanks for your comment, denise. i agree – more debate on the eblip models would be really useful, and i’d like to add my voice to that debate in the future. the question of eblip’s compatibility with innovation is an interesting one. i know you’ve written on this topic before. the current trend towards responsiveness (especially related to implementation of emerging technologies) is difficult to align with the fully fledged eblip model. i wonder if there is a place for a lightweight model?
i do wish i’d come across your latest editorial before i wrote this post – updating the post now with a link.
kate – Loving ur blog at the mome. Katy Watson.