#blogjune Day 6: I briefly chat about research evidence, as one of the three types of evidence in evidence-based library and information practice (Koufogiannakis, 2011), as well as a couple of issues of which to be mindful.
Transcript
G’day, and welcome to this video series chatting about all things evidence-based library & information practice. I’m Alisa Howlett, the Coordinator of Evidence-Based Practice at the University of Southern Queensland library.
In my last video I gave an introduction about what is evidence and so if you haven’t already, I would invite you to take a quick squiz of that before delving into this one.
What is research evidence?
In this video I’m chatting about research evidence. Research evidence is fairly straightforward to identify. There things like books, journal articles, conference papers, benchmarks and standards, systematic reviews, and a study of special librarians also found that government reports and reviews were also considered as research evidence.
A couple of issues to be mindful
Not so straightforward is appraising and applying research evidence. There are a couple of issues. One is access – not all of our library and information science professionals have access to academic journals and databases so this is a really important consideration when contributing your own scholarly work to factor this into your publishing strategy.
The second is quality and applicability and it’s about having the skills to appraise research evidence; to understand the parameters of a study, the questions that are being asked and the actual evidence that’s been presented as a result of that study. Understanding these things will help apply this evidence to your local context in a more effective way, which brings me to my top tip.
Top tip: Do a research methods course!
If you haven’t done one already, I invite you to do a research methods course to hone these skills and become a better, evidence-based practitioner. Having a good grasp of research methods and processes sounds boring and unsexy but really positions you to apply evidence-based practice more effectively and also equips you to contribute your own quality research to the evidence base as well.
So in my next couple of videos I’m going to touch upon other the two other types that Koufogiannakis (2011) recognised and these are local evidence and professional knowledge.
Until then take care. Cheers.
You can also view Day 6 video here.
Related post: How does research inform your practice?
References
Gillespie, A., Miller, F., Partridge, H., Bruce, C. & Howlett, A. (2017). What do Australian Library and Information Professionals Experience as Evidence? Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 12(1), 97-108.
Howlett, A. & Howard, Z. (2015). Exploring the use of evidence in practice by Australian special librarians. Information Research, 20(1), paper 657.
Koufogiannakis, D. (2011). Considering the place of practice-based evidence within Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP). Library & Information Research, 35(111), 41-58. Retrieved from http://www.lirgjournal.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/486/527
Koufogiannakis, D. (2012). Academic librarians’ conception and use of evidence sources in practice. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 7(4), 5-24. Retrieved from https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/18072/14468
