Historiography Research

These past two days have been spent looking for more articles and background research. My supervisor has asked me to investigate and write historiography of information seeking behaviour and information science; this will hopefully give me a bit of a historical perspective to my work. I have just spent the afternoon at the British library looking through copies of the ARIST as well as 1902 copy of the Library Journal containing an article by Charles Eliot who is often cited as one of the first to develop a system for meeting user needs. I will post more on this fascinating article later…

Looking for Information – Case, Donald

A book that I am finding very useful at the moment is:

Case, D (2002), Looking for Information : A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs and Behaviour.

This book provides a very useful overview of many key areas of information behaviour research. Personally, I find that I want ‘more meat’ from the book, nevertheless it is certainly a very handy reference and should be consulted by anyone undertaking study and research in this field.

Meeting with DoS

I had my third meeting with my Director of Studies. This was a last opportunity to meet with him before the August break. The meeting went very well; we discussed and pencilled in October 2007 for my first year confirmation viva (arrrrr!). I was also set the task to research the historiography of information seeking behaviour, so anyone with any knowledge of this subject please let me know….

British Library

Today I spent much of the time at the British Library at Boston Spa near Leeds. I was able to get hold of a number of ‘shorter’ articles, on literacy as well as a couple I have been meaning to read by Foster and Arp. I will post my thoughts on these later….

Buch und Lesen: Historical Perspectives on Literacy and Schooling.

Clifford, G., J (1984). "Buch und Lesen: Historical Perspectives on Literacy and Schooling." Review of Educational Research 54(4).

Today I read this paper, I know that I have diarised this week for reading up about research methodologies; however, I have manager to find more interesting papers to read. I ordered this paper some time ago from the British Library and so when tidying up some files I found this to read.

This is a great paper that presents a critical historical overview of literacy (not information literacy!) and its affect on society. It includes arguments made against literacy itself, and examines the literacy creep – from being classed as literate when you could mark X to sign your name through to functional literacies. There are elements of the paper when looking at the developments of literacy that fit very nicely with the development of IL as a theory. This is a must for anyone looking at information literacy as it presents a definition of literacy itself, and is firmly not written form a librarian perspective.

Researching Research!

This week I need to finally review and read about basic research methodologies. This is an area that I know I am weak. I need to start thinking about how and what my research is going to look at. So, is my methodology going to be Action Research, Grounded Theory or a case study; or something else? Any suggestions appreciated – please leave a comment.

A rainy July day

Here are two pictures taken in Roundhay Park, Leeds. A typical, very rainy Sunday in July. The boy in the picture is my son, Sam age four and half!