This blog was originally created for an ACRL preconference: Action Research: How to easily incorporate evidence-based librarianship into your professional practice for the ALA Annual Conference 2011 in New Orleans. Parts of the blog were updated when it was used for a preconference, Action Research: Using Data to Change, Invigorate, and Inspire your Work, at the CARL Conference 2012. This blog was updated again the October of 2013 for a lightning talk entitled Small Data Assessment and Action Research presented at the lauc-b conference, Making it Count: Opportunities and Challenges for Library Assessment, held in 2013.
Stephanie Rosenblatt is an Instruction Librarian and Electronic Resources/Serials Coordinator at Cerritos College in Norwalk, CA. She was the Instruction Coordinator and Education Librarian at the Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton. As an instruction she has worked with everyone from incoming freshmen to doctoral candidates. Her research interests include examining student work product in order to understand not only what information sources her students are using but how they are using them. She can be contacted at srosenblatt@cerritos.edu
April Cunningham is the new Library Instruction Coordinator at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA. She was the Instruction Coordinator for the Saddleback College Library from 2005 to 2013. She presents and publishes on issues facing instruction librarians, including innovative pedagogy, faculty collaborations, and working conditions. Her most recent presentations reported findings from her dissertation on community college librarians’ efforts to sustain instruction programs. She also has facilitated workshops on action research, introducing librarians to procedures for generating and analyzing data, and is a facilitator for ACRL’s Assessment in Action. At Saddleback College, April guided the college’s Educational Planning and Assessment Committee in its efforts to assess Information Competency as an institutional learning outcome. She has served on the LOEX Executive Board and is currently a Director-at-Large for Community Colleges for the California state chapter of ACRL. April received an EdD in Educational Leadership from California State University, Fullerton. She can be reached at acunningham@palomar.edu
Virginia A
llison was one of the original creators of this course and this blog. She currently works as a gallery archivist at L.A. Louver in Venice, CA. She was an Associate Research Librarian for Visual Arts at The University of California, Irvine, specializing in Studio Art, Art History, Film & Media Studies and Dance. She arrived at Irvine in 2008 after serving as Assistant Librarian/Visual Resources Curator at
Watkins College of Art & Design in Nashville, TN. Virginia served as the chair of UC Irvine Libraries Image Services Team, where she helped to integrate visual literacy standards into the outreach mission of the the libraries. Her research interests are in visual literacy and data visualization.
Click here to see Virginia’s blog, Grass Roots Visual Literacy.
Resources for Evidence Based Research in Libraries
Stephanie
Action-Based Research 
Fantastic presentation of free data analysis tools. Thank you for oranizing and sharing these. The ability to use these with actual data was the icing on the cake!
Thanks so much, this has gotten me thinking about ways to address our multiple forms of data that we have sitting around and have never been analyzed. It’s given me a good context for turning “anecdotal” evidence into something that has some teeth in the academic culture.
This was a very valuable experience. I especially liked the exposure to a variety of free applications with complementary purposes. Also, the overall message was that action research is very doable and a great way to build “buy-in” for change. Great job presenters!
Very helpful! My dean now demands data, and I’ve been trying to get her to understand how coding responses from open ended questions is valid. Now I have more tools to use to present those responses in graphic form. Nice breakouts (I had a great table!).
Very informative session. A lot of information to digest, but I gained enough of an understanding to play with these tools when I have more time back at home. You all were great presenters!
This presentation was very, very good, I was not sure if I would get here in time to catch this presentation and found that I was able to catch up and get so much info that I can use in my dissertation in, coincidentally, community college leadership.
The tools to use were fantastic to learn about. Actually working in groups helped me to take a multi-perspective approach to determining how I would approach this research problem.
The slides and content were very comprehensive.
Excellent program!
[…] who help analyze data, discuss related material, and provide feedback to the lead researcher. Many of the details of their presentation are available online, and are worth […]