Topics for Library Science Research and Publication

Bhanu Prakash Yadav
Assistant Librarian/E-Library Incharge
Institute of Technology &ManagementGida,Gorakhpur
See Details: http://bhanulib.blogspot.com/

Topics for Library Science Research and Publication

I like research and I especially enjoy writing about my findings and seeing them published. In this regard, I am a compulsive over-explainer. I often receive e-mails and letters from people who have read one of my articles or who has heard a talk that I have given. Sometimes the person tells me what I left out, or explains why s/he thinks I am on the right track or not, or shares one or more examples that illustrate the point(s) in the article or talk. I enjoy hearing from people and always learn new things.Types of articles, reports, and publications to write
Analysis of a problem or situation
Annotated bibliography or literature review
Book, media, software reviews
Case studies
Description of tools, techniques, procedures, challenges
Descriptions/applications of new concepts or technology
Opinion piece to voice your thoughts, opinions, views
Original research
Review or survey article Where to find Ideas about topics to research and write
Professional organizations often post their Research Agenda on their Web site.
Read the suggestions for further research at the end of most scholarly articles
Check search engines such as Google, www.google.com, using terms such as academic, library, research, agenda.
Read Ball State University Libraries’ monthly newsletter, The Library Insider, which regularly features new technology and innovative practices in academic librarianship, www.bsu.edu/library/virtualpress/libinsider
Where to find Ideas about topics to research and writeThis listing is not exhaustive or complete. Almost all of the topics mentioned can be developed in many ways.
Accreditation and the role of the academic library in undergraduate, graduate, and other teaching programs (adult, community, distance education)
Acquisition and deployment of technology in the library environment
Adaptive equipment technology for supporting handicapped persons in the library environment
Advances in search engine technology and their impacts on libraries
Analyses and your library’s use of an analysis, e.g., cost-benefit analysis, gap analysis, customer-satisfaction analysis, needs analysis, root cause analysis, SWOT analysis, what-if analysis)
Art work display in the academic library to promote spirituality or to support liberal arts and the humanities among students/faculty
Articulation of an information policy for a campus
Bar codes and RFID tags: types, library and special collection applications, use in library asset tracking
Benchmarking as a means to achieve outcomes; your library’s use of benchmarking and the results, problems, opportunities
Academic library as an essential service on a campus during emergencies such as fire and severe weather (rain, snow, floods)
Campus community's perception of the library as a hospitable environment for reading, study, and research
Challenge of providing library services with shrinking resources; doing more with what you have to improve programs, services, and collections
Challenges and opportunities in migrating to Web-based information services
Challenges of implementing technology, including deployment, training, upgrading
Change management in the library environment for organizational renewal
Changing nature of library space requirements to meet student and collection requirements
Changing nature of circulation in numbers and ways to stimulate print and media circulation
Changing nature of reference questions in type and number
Changing role and value of union lists with the availability of electronic full-text journal databases
Changing role of the librarian from collection development specialists to specialists who develop pathfinder guides (subject, topic) to harness the Internet's unstructured free-form information
Clientele expectations as exacerbated by e-business practices: effect on library's business practices, business alliances and partnerships, vendor relationships, one-to-one relationship management with patrons
Clientele expectations: librarians generally view our customers/patrons through the prism of our collections. What are effective strategies for flipping this to see our collections through our customer's eyes?
Collaboration opportunities (or reports of such collaborations) with other educational/cultural institutions such as colleges and universities, historical societies, museums, professional or trade associations, public schools K-12, social agencies, etc.
Collection development strategies for academic programs
Common culture created/supported/enhanced by the academic library on campus
Communications plan as a tool for developing community relations to connect with faculty and administrators, e.g., how to write, how to use, how to budget for expenditures for advertising, etc.
Coping with tight budgets by eliminating the overlap between print and electronic subscriptions
Core collections for children's literature in a higher education library that supports a teacher education program of instruction
Core digital resources for small and/or medium size libraries (academic, public, special)
Core technology and/or emerging technology trends in the library environment
Cost or time study of library programs, services, and collections, including description of the methodology and outcomes at your library
Cost-drivers and the criteria for selecting cost drivers for various library activities, e.g., automation, communications, facilities and physical plant, human resources, public services, public and community relations, technical services, technology
Dealing strategies and outcomes for the difficult patron in the library environment
Developing a written library business plan that addresses business/technical goals, platform/storage technology requirements, and infrastructure topology
Developing an annual academic agenda for the library, including benchmarks and performance measures
Digitization of local collections and its impact on scholarship in the library
Difference between serving students as customers (providing them a product) and serving students as learners whose job is to learn how to use the library
Discussion of information literacy as an educational reform for utilizing technology in the curriculum
Discussion of one or more challenges and/or opportunities in some area of librarianship or information science
Effective allocations strategies for collection development among academic and non-academic units in an academic, public, or special library
Effective budgeting strategies linked to outcomes
Effective library support for distance education programs; strategies for equalizing access to library resources for on-campus students and distance education learners
Effectiveness of state and federal library grant programs (or any single program)
Efficiencies achieved through consortium/consortia affiliation
Electronic library reserves, e.g., part of the OPAC or through commercial software such as Blackboard
Electronic resources and their impact on the academic library as the social and intellectual heart of the campus
Electronic resources and their impact on the academic library: library visits, reference service, and circulation
Ethics of information
Evaluating the effectiveness of bibliographic instruction with a focus on the student and/or teacher
Fund raising and development programs for libraries
GALILEO and how its impact on its users and the library as the social and intellectual heart of the campus
Game theory’s “prisoner’s dilemma” applied to academic library problems or situations
Good faith communication as an essential component for strong employee relations
Hub library networks
Human resource requirements have changed in the academic library. Describe how staff retooling is happening, costs, opportunities, challenges since this is not a downsizing strategy; rather, it is a strategy to allow the library to be responsive to changes in its environment
Identifying the "sizzle" in the library's programs, services, and collections
Impact of demographic and cultural changes on library services
Impact of full-text databases on interlibrary loan services
Impact of library budget shifts toward electronic resource access
Implementing a new integrated information system in the library environment
Implications for the library as accreditation shifts from an emphasis on library resources to information literacy
Integrated information Systems offer advantages and disadvantages. Identify these and expand on the pros and cons of library managers supporting single management systems since one size rarely fits all needs, uses
Intellectual property and copyright. Collection development in terms of topics such as what primary and secondary resources should the library own, best book and journal titles on the topic, identification of commercial databases featuring the topic
Intellectual property and copyright. Create a summary or annotation of the best websites, or legal research guides, or colleges/universities that have a position devoted to this topic, or list of blogs, or newsletter
Intellectual property and copyright. Listing and summary or annotation of the major cases in the area of intellectual property and copyright argued in front of courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.
Intellectual property and copyright. Analysis of the library’s role in assisting in understanding intellectual property in a college or university environment
Internet-based services, products, technologies and their impact on library management, service, and utilization: challenges and/or methodology to meet patron needs as libraries migrate to a digital/virtual environment
Knowledge management and its application for developing a learning organization
Librarianship’s changing definition: In 2001, Steven L. Baker is credited with writing that librarianship is the discipline that promotes an integrated approach to preserving, identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing the significant knowledge and information assets of society. In 1964 Louis Shores wrote that librarianship is the profession dedicated to the preservation, dissemination, investigation, and interpretation of the knowledge most significant to mankind.
Libraries and life-long learning: what this means and steps to take to bring about
Library implications of the growing power of information technology to transform the means of research, teaching, and scholarly communication
Library as place and access mechanisms to repositories of collections whereas large research libraries continue to struggle with providing print-centric and digital access to information
Library in higher education as an economic engine (agricultural stimulation, company/corporate creation and development, human capital development of hundreds of thousands of people, stimulation and enhancement of the lives of people within its sphere of influence)
Library presence in spaces such as the campus portal, Facebook, iTunes, learning management systems such as Blackboard, MySpace, etc.
Library search tools in environments such as learning management systems (e.g., Blackboard) or social network infrastructure
Library services for disabled persons: facilities, equipment, funding, staffing
Library services for virtual high schools, virtual colleges and universities, home schooled students
Library services in a linguistically diverse community
Library staff as emergency responders, e.g., organizing and running resident information centers during storms and emergencies
Library’s value to society in digitalizing unique collections
Library’s value, strengths, and shortcomings in an electronic society?
Library's changing role in the information economy
Library's effective learning environment and its importance (e.g., research, socializing in the use of information resources, promotion of a common culture, safe and relatively quiet study hall, a social sphere for meeting people and being seen, etc.). Many librarians have focused on collections and information technology to the exclusion of the many other positive things that take place in an academic library)
Literacy programs in the library environment
Management and operation of information systems
Marginalization of the library (academic, public, special)
Marketing of library services, i.e., positioning the library as a destination for research, learning, and friends
Maximizing the value of (new, emerging) information technology in the library environment
Measuring the quality of library services
Mobile library services (problems, challenges, opportunities, technology) through using smart devices with small screens such as laptops, Pocket PCs, BlackBerrys, Palms, and data-enabled cell phones
Models of library service through the use of computers, networks, and the Internet
Open-access data/collections and its value for providing context to local collections
Outsourcing of services (cataloging, janitorial, reference, serial check-in, etc.)
Pareto's 80-20 rule applied to library problems and situations, and application of Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (2003) as a statistical concept applies to library collections
Position paper on a controversial topic, e.g., do we need academic libraries? or that libraries of the future were distinguished from one another only by their ownership of sole copies of locally-produced digital content not accessible elsewhere since books and journals were accessible digitally via fee databases and content publishers
Programming to attract students to the academic library (art exhibitions, book swaps, comfortable furniture, expresso bars, hosting campus meetings and conferences, lectures, poetry readings)
Providing academic library services in an environment where faculty are increasingly teaching a curriculum that draws less and less on library resources
Ranganathan’s (1931) fifth law of library science is “A library is a growing organism”; explain the meaning today as libraries become part of growing networked organisms such as OCLC
Renovating the library specifically to enrich its atmosphere to attract students
Restructuring access on Web pages to the library’s programs, services, and collections on the basis of frequency-of-use rather than library organizational structure or alphabetical arrangement
Rethinking the academic library's functions not to provide print collections but for its media center and computer labs for access to digital environment
Revenue opportunities for libraries, e.g., advertisements on computer screens
Role of consortium membership for expanding access and resources
Role of electronic text-based collections with multimedia content
Role of the homepage as “The” platform for delivering library programs, services, and collections
Role of the library as an information resource in globalization
Role of the library as an information resource in promoting human rights
Role of the library in the ubiquitous computer (information technology) environment
Search engines: how those that charge allow those that pay to rise to the top
Search engines: making the library’s Web pages (page titles, descriptions, article summaries) more friendly for indexing and retrieval by Google and Yahoo!
Significance and strategic value of written procedures and standard operating procedures (SOP) for library operations
Strategic communication’s plan for enhancing the role of the library in its parent organization
Strategic planning in the library environment
Strategic role of the library on the college/university campus
Strategies and applications for bring bibliographic instruction into the classroom using Web-based resources
Strategy for libraries to evolve as a modern technological workplaces (staff skills and training issues)
Student acceptance of print vs. electronic resources and observations regarding students being willing to wait for digital resources that may be temporarily unavailable, such as the server is down, rather than use print indexes, abstracts, or journal articles
Students in the academic library: client, customer, or patron and the difference it makes in how we refer to our users and community of student/faculty scholars
Successful outsourcing activities: what they are, why they were successfully outsourced
Survey of consortia across the country: what they do, how they are organized, who belongs
Survey of libraries for emergency or disaster plans, e.g., fire, weather (hurricane, snow, tornado), flood, etc. (Model paper is by Kalyan, S., Xue-Ming Bao, and Marta M. Deyrup. "Academic Libraries' Emergency Plans for Inclement Weather," Library Administration and Management 15(4), 223-229, 2001.)
Survey of students and faculty as part of a quality assessment program
Survey of where students turn when they have a paper to write and what type(s) of resources they use
SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis methodology and interpretation for an academic, health science, public, or special library
Three fundamental problems that libraries must solve in the next five years (identification of those problems and how to approach?)
Trends (administration, budget, collections, customer service, staffing, staff supervision and management, technology)
Use of specific electronic resources (e.g., Dow-Jones, Gale Resources, etc.) in support of an academic program
Value and ongoing usefulness of book collections in the library in face of trends toward electronic collections
Value and importance of library websites and importance to be as simple as Google to navigate
Value or significance of remote access to the library's electronic resources (academic, municipal, public libraries)
Value proposition statement for libraries: what it is and how it is best determined and articulated
Virtual reference: what it is, how to do it, examples, types of questions
Web-based bibliographic instruction
White paper on a topic
Wireless connectivity: its transformative impact on the academic library
Writing a plan (action plan for some activity, advertising plan, communications plan, gap analysis and customer service quality plan, marketing plan, strategic plan, technology plan) for an academic library
Intellectual property and copyright. Collection development and intellectual property and copyright in terms of topics such as what primary and secondary resources should the library own, best book and journal titles on the topic, identification of commercial databases featuring the topic
Intellectual property and copyright. For intellectual property and copyright, create a summary or annotation of the best websites, or legal research guides, or colleges/universities that have a position devoted to this topic, or list of blogs, or newsletter.
Intellectual property and copyright. Listing and summary of the major cases in the area of intellectual property and copyright argued in front of courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.Intellectual property and copyright. The library’s role in assisting in understanding intellectual property in a college or university environment.