Week 12 Eleni Pallotta

My research questions has evolved several times during the course.  My original question was a completely different one than the research question I am using now.  After meeting with Alan, we concluded that it was too simplistic of a question to use as a research question for SSHRC.  Therefore, I decided to focus my research on the Toronto Public Library (TPL) system since that is the library system I am currently working for and would like to continue working for as a librarian once I graduate.  What I found when doing some secondary research is that LGBTQ-related books for children are often rare to find in libraries and, therefore, children of LGBTQ parents and their families are underrepresented in many library collections.  I decided to see if this research was true in relation to TPL’s picture book collection.  What I found was that it was difficult to find books through general subject searches such as “gay couples,” and “LGBT families” because many LGBTQ-related pictures books do not have any subject searchable words attached to them.  It is only when I typed in exact titles of books that they came up in the online catalogue. 

When I discussed this with Alan via email, he agreed that this information could make a good research question but also said to consider interviewing staff at TPL responsible for collection development (for qualitative data).  This would be a second method of data collection on top of my quantitative data collection where I plan to use an Excel sheet to document how many books show up through subject search vs. exact title and how spread out they are across the branches.  Therefore, my current research question is: Is the Toronto Public Library system’s LGBTQ-related picture books easily accessible to communities across all 100 branches through equal distribution of materials in branches and through subject searches using their website’s online catalogue.

The two questions I am still wrestling with is: what LGBTQ-related subject search words (such as “gay couples” and "lgbt families”) should I use?  Also, how many subject search words should I use to ensure I have a big enough sample size?  I would love your opinion on this, fellow bloggers!