Paul Jewell
With LARK symposium 2024 almost upon us it is time to start finding out more about some of our great speakers and their research. In this first post the LARK team are proud to showcase and share below two research projects that will fire up our enthusiasm for research in LIS and library practice. They highlight how librarians collaborate across disciplines to respond to some of today’s challenges such as climate change and teenagers’ wellbeing. Firstly, Clare Thorpe’s talk will provide insights into collaborating with a historian; applying new methodologies to research our communities and real world issues beyond our library walls. And, secondly, our very own Suzana Sukovic has teamed up with her colleague Tony Stojkovski to show us the possibilities for pushing the boundaries of LIS research and investigating how young people interact with media and information worlds to make decisions that impact their lives.
We’re looking forward to hearing these important talks and expanding these conversations at LARK 2024. If you’d like to join us in Brisbane please register here and/or share with your library LIS team members.
Climate change, community and digital archives: research collation and creation
Clare Thorpe, Southern Cross University Library
Librarianship can be considered both an art and a science. For most of my library career, the research methodologies I have worked with have been more closely aligned to the science side, albeit with a qualitative approach. In 2022 I was invited to partner with a historian colleague at Southern Cross University to apply for a flood recovery research grant. The grant funded us to build a digital archive of primary and secondary documents about the Richmond River catchment which our Northern Rivers campus is situated within. To fulfill the grant requirements, we were required to publish research findings, and we have had two journal articles published so far. The approach to thinking, analysing and writing research with a historian has been a creative, and more art-like experience. At the LARK Symposium, I will share the achievements and findings from this research activity, how our research ambitions have evolved and how our we have created a successful research partnership that is unlike my previous research experiences.
Is it library and information work?
Suzana Sukovic, PLC Sydney
Learning for real life: talking with young women about alcohol, vapes and drugs is the title of a presentation at the LARK Symposium. Vapes? Drugs? You may be puzzled – how is it library and information work?
Let me start from the beginning. In 2023, thanks to an ALIA Research Grant, we started a project titled Adolescents’ recreational substance use and epistemic wellbeing. It is a collaboration between Dr Tony Stojkovski, a teacher, and me, an information professional. Our goal? We want to understand how teenagers find and use information, what they think, and what they need to learn to make better choices. Students learn about drugs in their PDHPE classes, but can we do more to help young people to make good decisions and, ultimately, live a better life? It all made perfect sense to us—and to the teachers with whom we work, and who’ve been incredibly supportive. But, our colleagues in the library and information field aren’t so sure. Some understand it immediately, while others are asking, “Why are we looking into drug use?”
I love that question as it opens some great discussions. I am tempted to dive into an answer now, but I’ll wait for the symposium. We’ll have a chance to ask even better questions and unfold richer answers. In a changing world and our evolving discipline, we are still figuring out where boundaries around our field lie. So, what counts as library and information work today? I am looking forward to talking about it during and between symposium sessions. I’ve been assured that we’ll have beautiful river views from the State Library of Queensland, too.
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