Something to Talk About: Re-thinking Conversations on Research Culture in Canadian Academic Libraries.

摘要

As Canadian academic librarians have experienced an increasing presence innfaculty associations and unions, expectations of librarian scholarship andnresearch have increased as well. However, literature from the past severalndecades on academic librarianship and scholarship focuses heavily on obstaclesnfaced by librarians in their research endeavours, which suggests that thenresearch environment at many academic libraries has stalled. Though manynhave called for the development of a research culture, little has been saidnregarding how the profession might go about encouraging this development:nconversations often become mired in the contemplation of obstacles. As a way tonmove forward, we suggest building upon pre-existing strengths by adopting thenmodel of “intellectual communities” put forward by Walker et al. They describenfour qualities necessary for strong “intellectual communities”: shared purpose;ndiverse and multigenerational community; flexible and forgiving community; andnrespectful and generous community. Although these qualities are oftennembedded within our libraries, they need to be made a conscious part of ournresearch environment through reflection and conversation. Working towardnstrong research cultures requires that we focus less on obstacles and more onnreflective and productive activities that build on our strengths