After the panic attack...

Ever look at something you've written, truly despise it and erase almost all of it in a fit of rage, anger and frustration??

Well, that was me at about 6 pm last night. I actually got rid of most of what I had written in my proposal, keeping only the bare bones. I have never been more frustrated with a paper since maybe my very last English paper in undergrad...and even then it was more about the subjectivity of the marking then the writing of the paper itself. I always strive to be a perfectionist in my writing and maybe that is what is frustrating me the most right now...

So last night, after I erased the majority of the research proposal in a fit of insanity and panic, I resigned to stop looking at it! I closed my computer and decided that I would not look at it until today....

well it is today...

...I'm still worried, but also in a strange way refreshed and energized. I've decided to change my proposal slightly and hope that with the new adjustments I'll be raring to go!

In my SSHRC proposal I proposed to critically examine the effectiveness of librarians in
three patient libraries in Toronto, Ontario, which are slated to lose their public
librarians.

I gave myself 5 research objectives:

(a) examine the current patient libraries;
(b) determine the importance of having a full-time librarian on staff at each hospital;
(c) explore the benefits a patient library will have on patients, their families and the
hospitals as a whole;
(d) establish the challenges that staff and patients face should the libraries be
downsized or closed;
(e) explore alternative ways the city?s main library system can continue to fund patient
libraries so that they may have a librarian on staff.

I've decided to revamp these objectives into research questions as described by Knight, p 10 to aid with the literature review:

a) What are patient libraries?
b) What are the benefits of a patient library on patients?
c) Why are librarians important to patient hospitals?
d) What are the challenges facing patient hospitals, their staff and the patients?
e) What alternatives to downsizing or closing a patient library can be implemented by the hospital, city and province?

Okay...I think I'm on the right track!

...I need a coffee!

Christie

"I have CDO: It's like OCD...only the letters are in alphabetical order
...as they should be!"

The ethics of asking for disclosure

Since we did some reading on ethics this week, I've been thinking about some of the "ethics" of the methodologies I am proposing. None of them are unethical, really, so don't misunderstand me. But I do have the suspicion that my research could be seriously hindered by the necessity that I stick to all these pesky ethics rules.  It would be easier if we could all just be sneaky information detectives. I doubt that I'll be able to "build relationships" with market researchers, as Knight suggests, who seem to keep their cards pretty close to their chest and probably won't sit me down and explain to me exactly how they go about socially sorting their customer base. As Knight talks about "disclosure and harm", I realize that it's not the typical "disclosure" problems he lists that will be a problem for me, but rather an institutional problem. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because the "disclosure" issue will definitely prevent me from getting data in the way that would be most direct.

Thank Goodness for Relevant Readings

Although initially intimidated by the number of readings for this week, it was in the end a pleasure to read them. A common trend that I have noticed in first-year courses at the iSchool is a disconnect between the expectations of students as outlined in assignments and the rather tangential ways in which the assigned readings relate to them. Not so in Research Methods, and especially in reference to last week's (see my entry on Hine and Orgad) and this week's readings. In particular, Luker's step-by step walkthrough of constructing a research project in chapter 7, and Knight's table of research methods combined with the concept of combining methods like pigments to produce particular results (Chapter 5) have direct application to assignment 4. It is refreshing to be handed a set of tools that have clear utility in completing a course's deliverables, and it is great to get a wider view of constructing a research project from both Luker and Knight at a time when we all need it.

Titles are for people who are creatively able

I actually thought the Knight material this week was a little slim, and the two articles (the artifact one and the critical discourse analysis one) were great supplements. (Is the Knight coverage of DA slim and the Luker coverage nonexistent because they privately think discourse analysis is unimportant?) I found it thoroughly amusing that discourse analysis is allegedly thought of so poorly in the social sciences (can this be true?), since it sounds much more manageable to me than field work of any kind. ("Field" work always conjures up images, in my mind, of strapping on your hiking boots for a three-week stay in the wilderness, struggling to figure out which plants can be used medicinally and which will kill you. No one here gets out alive, etc., but perhaps I am just lazy.)

Two thoughts about the readings this week: My first thought while reading Knight and then the Thomas (artifacts) article was how simply the criticisms she alleges are levelled against artifact analysis could be levelled agianst ethnography, focus groups, or any other research method we've talked about.  To this extent, I thought her assertion that research methods "only provide data that may be interpreted as reflecting [an individual's meaning-making-and-subsequent-application] processes" (685) to be an important recognition for any researcher seeking to de-legitimize discourse analysis or artifact studies.

[Insert personal anecdote: I was once part of a research study that combined interviews and focus groups. The researchers had sought out people in a "support group" setting who were dealing with a sensitive issue. Nearly every person interviewed and/or in the focus group told the researcher some combination of the "truth," what they thought the researcher wanted her to hear and what they thought presented themselves in the best light. I came away wondering what sort of research this could possibly produce, or if social science researchers were somehow trained to detect when a group of people are lying through their teeth. I was wondering if this is what Knight meant when he said that research participants might "fake good" (108). End anecdote.]

Although discourse analysis still requires the researcher to take into account the "positioning" (can't think of a better word) done by the subject/producer of the discourse/artifact/etc, the process of dealing with a "researcher" in any official way (being interviewed, being studied, etc.) is typically removed. This might eliminate some aspect of power-positioning that happens when people are faced with someone that looks/sounds/seems "authoritative." (This isn't to say the two are in any way equal, or that one can be a substitute for the other. It's just a different set of problems, I suppose.)

Second thought: Whereas "artifact study" might be a method of discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis doesn't seem like a "method" on its own. It seems that one might incorporate any number of discourse analysis "methods" to produce a critical discourse analysis? For example, it would be possible to incorporate image or artifact study or document analysis to produce a critical discourse analysis. This is probably totally obvious but by virtue of it having popped into my head it is being recorded here for all to see.

FINALLY: What are the rules around the ethics of discourse analysis? I'm thinking of the paper given to us for Assignment 3. I imagine that with a little bit of determination it would be pretty easy to find this Facebook group, presuming it still exists, and locate all of the people the authors were talking about. I don't think consent was mentioned in the article, and since the group is "public" perhaps it isn't necessary. I know this is only one particular kind of discourse analysis, but it kind of stood out to me.

Looking into the Abyss

[Apologies for the lateness of the following entry, which relates to material from week 3]

Luker's very honest examination of the difference between a research interest and a research question touches a few nerves with me (and I'm sure I'm not alone). It is difficult, especially at this early stage in the course of my studies in information, to face the gulf between keen enthusiasm coupled with a growing cache of background knowledge, and a clearly-defined set of goals that are simultaneously comprehensive and achievable. I also find it somewhat difficult to associate my particular case, which has the long-term goal of developing new digital research-tool applications, with the sort of inquiry Luker describes, which almost exclusively has as its goal the development of a theory about the ways some phenomenon that already exists in the world operates. The discrepancy made me realize that as I develop my research topic, I can benefit greatly from developing clearly-defined avenues of inquiry into how applications similar to the ones I intend to develop have either succeeded or failed, and, as an adjunct, examining the similarities and differences between pre-existing projects and my own intended one both as a means of clarifying the parameters of my project for myself and creating a "pitch" to convince others that it is a project worth developing.

Noises of frustration being made here...

I'm not sure how I ever came up with a research project in my first MA. It seemed like the idea was just always there, and maybe I'd discussed it enough along the way that it felt pretty fully-formed when I came time to write about it. Right now I'm having the opposite problem. Perhaps moving from one field (English) to another (Information? Library Science? What field am I in, anyways?) is what's holding me up, or perhaps I just lucked out the first time around. In any event, I'm now dealing with a fear that I have an interest (or interests), but they are too vague to make into a research proposal of any kind because I simply don't know enough. (I guess I should be "reviewing the literature" as Luker suggests in Chapter 5, but we've got that paper due and then a presentation next week and it all seems like it's mounting up already. How did this happen?)

It sounds like Laura and Alisha are having similar problems. Knight's assertion that all small-scale research must be "super-pragmatic" (48) has me slightly paralyzed because of the scope of the problems to be tackled. I'm working out, per Luker's exercises, what these problems (ie. what might research question) might be. At the moment I'm trying to tease out two potential topics to see which takes me further. Hopefully by next week I'll be able to write about one, but so far they are too jumbled for me to feel comfortable making public.

Is anyone else who has taken a few years off school finding the transition slightly bumpy? I feel like I've forgotten some secret way of thinking that used to be second nature.