Week 12: the long and winding road

My research question has mostly stayed the same, but has been refined in terms of methods and theoretical approach. As a result of there not being a lot of previous research on my specific topic, I have turned to information studies for theories/methodological approaches on how to conduct my research. I have come to find that this approach has given my research a stronger foundation to base my study.

 

I have looked at scholars such as Star, using her "Ethnography of Infrastructure" to establish the information structure that exists on anti-doping in the Canadian Sport System, and Sonnenwald's method of "Information Horizon" to establish athletes' information resources. Instead of focusing on anti-doping articles, I have looked at how I can use information scholars and theories as a base for my research. Focusing on my research  as informational has helped develop it, and has made me excited to hopefully pursue this study in the near future. 

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!

Week 8 - Open Topic

A lot of the topics that I find myself interested in are related to youth or children, and after learning a bit more about the ethics protocols related to research I am interested in finding out about what ethical ways there are for working with children, since they are considered a vulnerable population. I am also very interested in exploring methods of visual data, and thus I think that examining drawings by children is an extremely interesting and valuable research tool.
My boyfriend found a book at a thrift store a few years ago that presented fascinating drawings created by children held in Nazi concentration camps. There were frank depictions of death and suffering, but also hallmarks of typical children's drawings such as flowers and rainbows. I always enjoy children's art, but these were especially fascinating because of the context they were created in.
Clearly, all the children who created the drawings were in a stressful and vulnerable situation at the time the drawings were created, and they would now also be adults or even deceased, so the value in this book is studying the art works as artifacts. Thus the question still remains about how to conduct research with children in the present.

(via: https://kurioso.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/everyone-was-hungry.jpg)

Week 11

Since I am doing an LIS and ARM double concentration, this issue has come up in many of my courses. Archivists are still trying to figure out the implications of storing so much data on the internet, and I even wrote a term paper last semester about using Facebook and Instagram as informal personal archives, and the challenges of its preservation. In the end, I had very few viable ideas for the preservation of this type of information, and there was not a whole lot of literature available to provide guidance.

Because my research for my project will be mainly through observation of online communities, this is still a big issue for me. In terms of documenting that observation, I may be taking a lot of notes, as well as screen shots. But in order to ensure that the data is made available for future use, the best solution that I can think of at this point is the print it out onto paper, and store it under the proper archival protocols. This is not, however, an especially helpful solution to the larger problem we have as a society with digital records. There is simply too much information out there to think about printing it all out and finding places to store it all. 

Week 11

Swimming (more like drowning...) in documents is an issue that I think crosses into most professions and is something that we can all understand.

It just so happens that my neurofeedback experience comes to mind this week again, as I was a key player in the documentation preservation process.  When I wasn't with clients, you could find me going through boxes of old files and inputting their contents into an excel spreadsheet.   Legally we are required to keep full client records on site for 10 years, at which point myself and other staff members would input the old file data into our computer and the files would be taken off site.

While all staff members were not required to, I would also keep a notebook of session notes for my personal reference.   Keeping a hardcopy notebook of sessions is best practice for social workers and it is something I try to keep up in my professional and academic activities.  

(Pro tip: you should all do it too.  It makes you look super professional and your memory is not as good as you think it is.)

I don't expect to produce anything as meaningful or interesting as Alexander Graham Bell, but on the off chance I do - those notebooks would be available for future generations to explore and admire. The more likely outcome will be the burning of those useless notebooks as they will contain no useful information at all.  

In my research proposal I'm looking at services and accessibility of TPL to the autistic community.  If I were actually conducting this research, I would keep a notebook of the process and I would input this data into a spreadsheet and/or other digital formats.  This would include notes on any interviews and phone calls to autism organizations in Toronto,  questionnaires/surveys (possibly even drafts), this blog and of course the data collected.  

I do think it's very important to preserve information, notes and data.  Obviously making them digital is a step in the right direction, but I don't think digital records/documents are a stable, stand alone resource.  That's because the technological future (as well as the future in general) is so uncertain. The best way to ensure preservation is to keep copies of documents and data in multiple formats and locations - including hard copies.

In my lifetime I have seen many forms of technology emerge and become obsolete (and I'm only 31). If the information contained in the documents/data is important enough, it will be updated to new formats for use with new technologies.   Additionally, I have learned that technology can be unreliable and is no substitute for actual papers and books.  Am I pessimistic Luddite?  Almost definitely, yes.  But I stand by my methods because when the power is out, my information is still accessible.

Week 11: Documentation and Experience (Althea)

I have decided to use ethnographic research as the method to study how information glut may affect the traveler's experience. Some kinds of records and data that I can foresee producing include voice recordings of interviews and webpages/social media from which my participants collect travel information from.

If I had the time and resources, I would get the interviews transcribed so that I can have hard copies of the interviews. However, voice recordings are usually deleted once the project is completed, especially since it's stipulated in the consent form we sign with participants before beginning fieldwork, so there will not be a question of how I'll have to preserve them. I know there is doubt about whether deleted files really get deleted, and studies have shown that they are still retrievable, but I believe the ethics protocol expects us to take reasonable care for such issues. I do not know if it's reasonable to expect that someone would use a software to comb through my computer for the files after I have deleted them. Besides, this is why we should always place a password lock on our computer, and if we were to keep soft-copy of research related documents on the computer, to always keep a computer by our sides (at least, that's what I'm taught to do).

Since the web pages and social media are publicly accessible, these will probably not have to be deleted. If I choose to keep and preserve them, I will probably make screenshots and put them in a folder, both on my computer and in the cloud, and print them out as hard copies to be kept safely. My ideas about the preservation of research materials are largely influenced by what I have been taught in anthropology research courses. My professor then had always emphasized that we should make hard copies if we ever want to keep anything permanently because digital objects and formats become obsolete.

However, I have also discussed the issue of digital obsolescence with a friend who firmly believes in the prowess of technology. He told me that people will be able to create technology that will allow us to convert file formats or read older file formats just like they did before, just like how we can now convert VHS into DVDs.

Week 11

What struck me about this week's blog post is the "theoretical tension here between experience, memory, and the sharing of knowledge". Too often, research places the greatest value on data - anything that is measurable and quantifiable. However, this is often done at the expense of preserving stories, and the breadth of knowledge that can be derived from them. I very strongly believe that there is invaluable knowledge that can be derived from experiences. Experiences, taken holistically, provide insight and information that no amount of quantitative data, surveys, or charts, could ever hope to provide.

While some research methods,  ethnography in particular, do leave space for stories, there is more often than not a reduction of the knowledge that is truly available. There are, as always, challenges that come from studies that produce stories as their results, and use these stories to communicate messages. A recent example that comes to mind is a study that was run by a university - the intention was to gather stories from folks who live in the surrounding neighborhood. However, only clips of long interviews were made available, and it is arguable that specific snippets were chosen to paint the university in a positive light. In this case, the stories are data that are preserved digitally, yet this does not protect them from targeted editing. This may lead to folks in 2112 receiving an inaccurate perception of what the research was actually about, and what the stories were actually trying to say. I suppose this reason, the vulnerability that collections of stories/data face when digitized, is why I still have a soft spot for also storing things in hard copy (however problematic this may be!).