Just Add Water and Watch Research Grow

Research is hard work, and it takes time.  You can’t just “add water” and voila! – a polished research paper, presentation, or website appears.  I’ve always seen it that way and can’t really imagine it any other way at this point, but I’m also one of those that enjoy the challenges of research.  Searching multiple databases, refining, and revising those searches – navigating and browsing stacks – working through boxes of letters, photographs, and memos – zipping through microfilm – combing through indexes – consulting with library staff – and that’s just the search and (hopefully) find part of research (during which sometimes we get to experience that magical serendipity), right? Then there’s the work of analyzing, synthesizing, and contributing original thought followed by the work of documenting and putting it all together to produce a final product. Fortunately for researchers, there have been a number of innovative developments for library research tools that aid in that seek and find portion.  An amazing amount of time, effort, and money has been put into discovery tools and massive digitization projects, for instance.  So, in my mind, a great deal of progress has been and continues to be made on behalf of the researcher.  But then we read posts like “The-3-Click-Dilemma: are library databases nearing the tipping point of obsolescence?” by Brian Mathews on The Ubiquitous Librarian blog. In the post, Mathews shares part of a conversation he had with a faculty member and historian who said, “Brian, I want you to know that it’s getting harder for me to get students to use the library— especially the databases— anything beyond three clicks is just too many.”  Sigh.  Sound familiar?  I’ve heard similar feedback from K12 teachers, students of all ages, and even librarians.  I have to admit that part of me (the part that loves the search and find, which feels like a glorious hunt) has a hard time understanding or sympathizing with this seeming need to have instant content, if not hand-delivered, at one’s fingertips a mere one click away.  Now, maybe I’m exaggerating and maybe that’s not something for which faculty and students are desperate.  Perhaps these needs are really just a push back for more and greater innovation in information access.  After all, it also seems perfectly reasonable to me that the faculty member (as well as the students) in this example would like her students to spend more of their time reading the content than searching for it.  I’d also like to think that I’m self-aware enough to realize that the part of me that loves the search and find is not something that’s shared by all researchers.  And why should it be? Mathews offers a couple of views that librarians could take with this dilemma.  One of those views includes librarians creating super searchers out of their users.  Well, I think this avenue could work to some extent.  I think it’s possible to provide this level of instruction to a number of researchers.  However, of course, not all researchers would be willing and realistically library staff wouldn’t be able to reach every researcher. The other view he offers leads us to ponder workarounds and emphasize creating environments for critical thinking rather than spending time on search retrieval skills.  Rather than teaching students, for instance, to become better searchers, librarians should be spending time finding and creating tools that students can use for that second step in research, analyzing, synthesizing, and sharing out.  That second view sounds good to me.  But it skips over the search and find part.  Where did the search and find go?  Despite how much easier or harder it gets for researchers to find information, unless someone is serving it up they’re still going to have to find information, right?  Maybe I’m missing something.  Well, if I’m not, then this is where I’d suggest that a third view could be one of a continuing role for librarians to work towards access and discovery tools that simplify and remove barriers to the search and find as much as possible but also continue to work with database vendors to innovate new ways of discovering the content.  This is very hard work too.  And often librarians are stuck between a vendor and a hard place.  The more collaborative opportunities we can create for ourselves with vendors the better.  They want to sell a product and we want researchers to use and enjoy the content.  I know it’s not that simple, but you’d think there would be some answers in that shared investment.  Maybe I’m making this about something else, but that’s the way I’m seeing it.  And I bet there’s a fourth view out there somewhere.  Carry on, my dedicated colleagues, in the good work that you do!