s3.amazonaws.com · Web viewThere's some guidelines on how to start a journal club, that kind of thing. And then, make sure to check with your professional organizations, any group

TranscriptionMedia File Name: 02 - May 30 - How to Use Research in Practice.mp4

Media File ID: 2694271Media Duration: 1:11:53Order Number: 1941987

Date Ordered: 2018-12-18

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- [Heather] …one and welcome to the Data-Driven Librarianship in Correctionswebinar series, sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections, an agency of the U.S.

Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons. The purpose of DDLC is to bring attention to issues and opportunities facing correctional librarians today. DDLC combines data-driven approaches to corrections with data-driven approaches to librarianship. In 2017, NIC sponsored a working group of correctional librarians to explore these issues.

Their work inspired a new generation of training and resources to respond to the complex needs of today's correctional library professionals. This webinar series is part of that effort. Today I will be your moderator. My name is Heather Stevens, and I'm a library and information science graduate at the University of Arizona, and an intern with the Virtual Student Federal Service on assignment with the National Institute of Corrections.

My fellow intern, Alyssa Knisley, a criminology graduate student at the University of Cambridge will be monitoring the chat feed today. Our instructor for this session is Virginia Wilson. Virginia is the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information practice at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

Since attaining her MLIS from the University of Alberta and her MA from the University of Toronto, Virginia's library work has included positions in a public library in a special health library within an academic institution and now, at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests include EBLIP, librarians as researchers, and the changing face of scholarly communication.

Today, Virginia will be talking with us about the ways in which correctional librarians may incorporate EBLIP into their practice and she'll walk us through the steps of EBLIP in a way that you can begin to incorporate EBLIP into your own correctional library practice. Please use the chat option in the Webex window to put forward any questions you might have at any time throughout the session.

At the conclusion there will be time for a question and answer session. Now, please join me in welcoming our instructor, Virginia Wilson. Hello, Virginia. - [Virginia] Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Just give me one second to get my stuff going here.

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Okay. I'm hoping you can both hear me and see my intro slide. There we go. Sorry, one second here. All right. Well, thank you so much for that introduction. I'm really, really pleased to be here.

I've been looking forward to this for the past six weeks or so because I do love talking about EBLIP, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, and I really do believe myself that it's a great way of working. It's a great way to feel confident that you're making good decisions. So, I've got kind of a blurry slide here. It's a quote from Christopher Hitchens, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

And to me, that talks about, if I'm trying to, say, put something forward to a higher-up, if I just go and ask for something, then they can easily just say no, but if I go and ask for something and show why I think this is a good idea, then at least we can have a conversation about it.

Okay, so a bit about me. You heard my bio, and I did talk a bit about in there, had talked a bit about my years as a librarian since 2004. I did spend the first year in the public library. My subsequent years have all been spent here at the University of Saskatchewan. I was the coordinator of a digital health library at our university that focused on practitioners out in the medical and health workforce.

And, then I've been internal to the university library the past eight years. I became interested in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice back in library school while I was a research assistant for three librarians who were practicing, and they were also conducting a research project. At the time, I didn't even realize that librarians could do that or did do that, and I really liked that idea.

So I got right into that. On a personal note, I live out in the country with my husband. This year we have 14 pigs and some various farm equipment, so that's my deal. So, a little bit of housekeeping before we launch in, as I'm a Canadian residing in Canada, you might notice some different spelling on my slides.

In particular, the word, "centre," we spell it with an R-E as opposed to an E-R. And there might be other things that you might notice. When I'm passionate about a topic and I get going about it, I tend to speed up speech wise. So please, if I start to speak too quickly, just let me know in the chat box and I will attempt to slow down because I just get going.

Also, too, if you find something humorous or interesting or something, if you can chat it at me like a "ha-ha" or a smiley face because I really wouldn't mind



the feedback. So, another thing, there could be some drilling or hammering sounds during our session. They're installing a public address system in the library and they're getting very close to my location.

I came upstairs this morning and saw a mobile workbench kind of just outside my office. The only other place I could have done this session backs-up against a washroom. So, it's either the drilling or possibly the toilet flushing. So, yeah, you know, I'm a little informal too, so. I also want to just say a little bit about data-driven, the term data-driven, and the title of this webinar series.

During the session, I'm going to be using the term evidence-based, and I do see them being essentially the same. And just as there are many types of evidence, so too are there many types of data. Sometimes my knee-jerk reaction when thinking about data is to think about numbers, and tables, and statistics. However, data does include anything that's analyzed in the process of research.

So that could be transcriptions from interviews, bird calls for research dealing with migration or soil samples from soil-science research. So, what I mean to say is, when I use the term "evidence," I am referring to many different things as well, and that will become more clear as we move along. I want to mention just briefly, about the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

It's a center internal to the University of Saskatchewan. It was established and had a grand opening, with a cake, as you can see right there, in 2013. It is funded and supported by our library at the University of Saskatchewan. And the mandate is to support our librarians as… That should be researchers…and to promote evidence-based library and information practice in our library.

Over the years, the center has kind of extended outwards, we have a blog, which I'll be talking about in a bit. We host every two years, the C-EBLIP fall symposium. So, a little one-day conference that gets people from across Canada coming actually, and then we have a list of peer-reviewed LIS journals on our website as well. It is really more for the broader library and information worker audience.

As a director, I've given workshops, presentations, keynotes about EBLIP and about librarians as researchers. And the link on the slides there that is to the center website. And I will be providing a handout after the session that will include all the resources I have on my slides and will include this URL as well.

Okay. The international EBLIP community, it's really not that formal. It's a grassroots organization that's been going for almost 20 years. We have no



formal association to belong to, but it's very robust nonetheless. The conference series goes every two years.

It's going to be held again in 2019 in Glasgow, Scotland, and it was held just last year in Philadelphia. And, we held it here at the University of Saskatchewan in 2013. And then there's the EBLIP journals, it's an open-access, Evidence- Based Library and Information Practice journal. Like I say, it's open access. It contains original research papers and something called evidence summaries, where, the author of the evidence summary takes a published research paper and essentially critically appraises it, makes it all in short form, easy to read, short to read and gives some suggestions on where that research could be applied in practice.

And so, these are very handy. And as this journal's, you know, 11 or 12 years old, there's lots of those. And so that's another resource that I'll be sharing with you as well. Okay, so, the goals of this webinar, by the end of it, you will know what evidence-based library and information practice is, and why it's a useful way of working.

I'll be referring to it as EBLIP. You'll also have an overview of the steps of EBLIP and then you'll be equipped with some resources to get you started. And hopefully you'll be so inspired by this webinar that you'll rush back to your library and think about where you can implement this way of working. As an outline, I will take you through what is EBLIP?

We'll look at the steps of EBLIP, and they're listed right here: articulate the question, find the evidence, assess the evidence, apply the evidence, do some evaluation, and then dissemination of what you found. Then I'll take you through the steps again, working through an example question that is particular to corrections libraries.

I'll do a wrap up and then there'll be time, as we mentioned earlier, for questions, and that's from you to me. I'm not going to be asking you questions, there won't be a test. Okay, so, what is evidence-based library and information practice? Back in 2002, three definitions came to light, and they're all inspired from evidence-based medicine, which is where the whole idea of EBLIP came from.

Evidence-based medicine was a way of using research evidence to inform medical practice. I did a paper in library school that I found out that many health professionals did not use research evidence to make their decisions, and I was kind of shocked. So, it made me think that, "Yes, this is an interesting and



good way of working." So back in 2002, three definitions came out, one from Canada, one from the U.S. and one from the UK.

And the one I'm showing you on your slide is from Andrew Booth from England. And all the definitions are quite similar. So, "Evidence-based librarianship," what it was called back then, "is an approach to information science that promotes the collection, interpretation and integration of valid, important and applicable user-reported, librarian-observed and research-derived evidence."

The longest sentence ever. So this last bit of the definition really kind of gets to the heart of it. "The best available evidence, moderated by user needs and preferences is applied to improve the quality of professional judgments." So essentially, EBLIP is a way of working where you approach issues, decisions, procedural changes, that kind of thing, with a certain mindset.

It's not that you don't keep doing what you're already doing, because that's just fine, it's that you go into it in a thoughtful way, keeping some important things in the front of your mind. Those things, there might be published literature about your issue that might help to inform you. Another thing is, you know lots because of your own professional expertise, so always bring that in.

And then of course, your users will likely have an opinion which needs to be listened to, because like, really any library, if it wasn't for our library patrons, what would we be doing? So, like anything new, it takes time, but I always think that practice makes better and after a while, it can just be the way you work.

Not something you have to think about or kind of lay over your work processes, just how you do it. EBLIP gives you a framework and a set of tools in order to proceed in the process. And so that's all very wordy. I do like this way of looking at it. The lovely Venn diagram in the middle, and the big circle of local context around the outside.

So we have the research evidence in one circle, the user preference or user opinion in another circle, your own professional expertise and knowledge in another and then, where they all converge that's where EBLIP happens. And I believe that if the three pieces aren't present, it's not EBLIP. You need to think of all of those three. And then, everything has to be set against the local context.

There are obviously differences between libraries. And so, whatever evidence you find needs to be looked at with that local context firmly in your mind because, you know what's going to work at your library. So that's another way



of defining EBLIP. So, why work this way? I think there's several reasons of why to work in an evidence-based way, a data-driven way, it can aid in decision making.

So rather than winging it or flipping a coin, and especially if you work by yourself in the library, there's nobody to bounce things off of perhaps. Working in an evidence-based way can help you make better work decisions. That in turn can increase your confidence. So, better work decisions, can increase your confidence in your practice, and the confidence that you're making good decisions.

It can help to cover your back. If you have the autonomy to make decisions or change procedures but you still have to report up the chain, it's good to have something in your back pocket in case questions come up. And it's also used for convincing. You can convince your higher-ups. If you're aiming for something, more funding, more books, more open hours, more assistance.

A well-planned request, including the best available evidence, can strengthen what you're asking for. Okay, so, I'm going to launch into the steps of EBLIP and I want to just tell you a caveat first, caveat. Although these steps are going to be presented in a linear fashion and indeed, they are numbered one through six, the pathway, it really is more often like the little squiggle at the right.

You will go forward and go backwards, look at the question, get some evidence, go back and look at the question again. It's not so linear. So, I think if you start down this road and feel anxiety that perhaps you're not doing the steps as seamlessly as I'm going to present them that that's going to be wrong, but it's not.

It is an iterative process and so I think that's really important to keep in mind. Okay, step one is articulate the question. And it is the most important step in this process. What is it you're wondering about? What decision are you trying to make? What are you advocating for? And if you've ever done any work on a reference desk and a patron comes up and asks you a question, you often will launch into a reference interview, because likely what the patron is initially asking for isn't what they're really looking for.

So you have to tease that out. And I think that's the same when we're working ourselves and wondering about things. So, for example, you say you want to look at the value of your library. Well, what do you mean? Value of the library to your patrons? Value of library workers to your patrons?



Value of the library or library workers to the correction system? Value of a corrections library to society? Value can come in a lot of different flavors and it's a really hot topic right now with funding and that kind of thing. So, it's important to know exactly what you want to know before you go out there into the wide world of evidence and try and find something to support you.

So, as you're formulating your question or your issue, it's good to sit down and reflect a bit. And so, here're some things to consider. Think about what you already know because you will come to the issue with a body of knowledge. You might already know that the funding is limited, or that your boss doesn't really want to find more space for the library.

And so that's the kind of thing you know. Assumptions, difficulties, obstacles, well, see above, that's just, kind of, what you know, so think about that. Also look at priorities, priorities of your library, priorities of the larger institution. Those priorities might come from various different places. Think about the urgency of your situation.

Is it a short timeline, do you have a longer timeline? What can you get done in the time you have? And then look at financial constraints because seriously, we always all have to look at financial constraints. And that is always something to consider. And then finally, the goals, your goals as a professional, the goals of the library, the goals of your institution, what are you reaching for here?

Okay, so, in terms of formulating a question, because you're going to want that question so you can go on and do some poking around and looking, there are tools that can help you make the question and help to focus your thoughts. And I'm going to show you two of them. They're certainly not mandatory in this process and you might find that your issue doesn't quite fit, but they can give a bit of structure, and like I say, get you thinking in certain ways.

So, the first one is called PICO. And that comes from evidence-based medicine, and it's useful for some types of questions, especially those about effectiveness, but it doesn't really work for others. So, PICO stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome, and then down the center column of that table, the concept.

So, some words that you'll use to kind of get at what you're looking at. And then I've got an example question root. So, as an example, what's the population? Who am I looking at here? So, let's say for this one, I'm looking at prison library workers, so essentially, you guys. So among prison library workers, what's the intervention?



Well, I know that in my corrections library, I have trouble with mental-health issues amongst my patrons. And so, I want to look at supplemental education on mental-health issues. So that's the intervention, that's what I want to do. The comparison is, do nothing and just flail around as I'm going to.

And then the outcome, "Am I going to feel more confident while I'm on the job?" And so, "among prison library workers, does supplemental education on inmate mental health issues versus no education impact feelings of confidence while on the job?" So that's what I want to look at, that's my question, and that's how I'll proceed. So, I hope that that is making sense. Also too, I want to mention, I'm not a corrections librarian, I've not been.

In terms of terminology, I want to be as sensitive as possible. And so, I'm using terms like prison and inmate and I hope that that's okay. So, I don't intend any disrespect or anything like that. Anyway. Another rubric to use to formulate your question was developed by Andrew Booth and now he is the one who I showed you the definition and he's one of the early EBLIP gurus.

He came up with a framework specifically for librarian information studies called SPICE. And it too, works better for specific types of questions, but some people do like it better because it, kind of, gets more into things. And so SPICE stands for Setting Perspective Intervention Comparison and Evaluation. So, it's quite similar to PICO.

So, the setting where the intervention will occur. So, in corrections libraries, the perspective who's the population that's going to be affected by the intervention? Let's look at this time around, your library assistants. Say you have some library assistants from the population, we'll look at them.

The intervention, well, what do I want to change up? Well, I think that I've been having meetings every two months with these library assistants. And I think that maybe they'll improve if I up these meetings to every couple of weeks. So, the planned action is to increase the meetings, the comparison, what I was doing before.

And to evaluate this, I want to know if I see improvements on their annual reviews. And that's assuming that you do all this stuff. Like I say, I don't have direct experience but I'm thinking this might work. So, the question using SPICE in corrections libraries, do inmate library assistants who have bi-weekly meetings, every two weeks with their supervisors, versus bi-monthly meetings, every two months see improvement on their annual reviews?



And so, a way to structure that question. And, when I send you a handout, I'll be providing links to PICO and to SPICE where you can know what the acronym means and what those concepts are. All right.

Step two in the process is finding the evidence. You've got your question and now you want to go look for some evidence, and it really... Like anything I believe in this process. You sat down and you thought about your question, now you need to kind of do some thinking about, "What's the best evidence for your particular issue?" Because there's lots of different kinds.

In terms of the published literature, there's qualitative evidence, quantitative, mixed methods. If you're familiar with research methods, then this kind of makes sense. If you're not, don't worry, because there's still ways to get at this stuff. You can look at different bodies of knowledge. And so you can look at the Library and Information Studies Literature.

Honestly, I'm not sure how extensive it is in terms of corrections libraries, although I did find a few things when I was looking around. But, depending on your question, you can also use literature from business, from education, from social work. Social work actually has a really broad base in evidence-based practice. Marketing, you might need to go further afield depending on the nature of your question.

And then you can look for evidence from other sources. You could look to social media, you could look to Listservs, you know, asking your question out there, talk to colleagues, talk to stakeholders, look for local data, maybe what other corrections libraries are doing. And then there might be others. So there's lots of places that you can find this data, this evidence. There is a challenge, and it's one that's really common to public libraries.

And I suspect it might be fairly common to corrections libraries. Not every library subscribes to or can subscribe to LIS journals or databases and so you might not have access. And the workaround to that is open-access journals and open-access citation databases because they are out there. And then there's open repositories where pre-prints of research articles are often posted.

There's social media, people sometimes will share research among you know, at request, and then there's news articles. They can often report on well-researched topics. And I'll provide some more resources later in the presentation on open-access stuff. Just a note about social media, I don't work for Twitter and I'm not paid by Twitter, but I do use Twitter a lot to keep up professionally.



It's pretty much all I use it for. And I find it to be an excellent tool to network, to make connections, to really find out new things fast. And so, developing a network of like-minded Twitter folk can really help you out and I'll talk a bit about that later on. I've got a screenshot here of a database from EBSCO.

It's called Library Information Science and Technology Abstracts. And so that's the middle one on that, that screenshot, and it is free. It's free from EBSCO. And if you're familiar with EBSCO, you're going, "Wow, it's free." Also free is their open dissertations and the Teacher Reference Center. And so in the resources I'll send you, I'll send you a link to this database.

And it's a citation database so it's only going to show you the abstract and the research article title but it can get you going to find information in an open way. So that's always helpful if your library just doesn't have funding to keep you going with LIS literature.

This is an example of a Twitter post. So, Andrew Arruda up here posted it, and I think he's a journalist, and the story's about a man falsely imprisoned for 10 years, uses the prison library to study law and have his conviction overturned. And, then now he's a lawyer and he helps otherturn... overturn, sorry, other false convictions.

And so, a very interesting story and one that possibly could be used to support the value of your corrections library. So that's the kind of stuff you could find on Twitter. And then, another Twitter post, this is from DC Books to Prisons, and they have a Twitter account obviously, I followed it. I followed a few of them, actually a few different prison accounts.

And so, they say they've recently delivered 600 books to a prison library in Maryland, they'll continue. And then they got this letter from a grateful inmate who works in the library. And, as you can see here, the inmate talks about being informed by the librarian of the source of the books they were putting on the shelves, and "just wanted to write and say how much they mean to the people incarcerated in this institution. You've helped transform this room into a true library!"

I don't know, that just feels really good to read. "The change has been so dramatic." They've had to make changes, and then they talk about so many young men reading, whether for leisure, personal growth, education has given him hope like sunshine on a rainy day. And so as a library clerk, he receives compliments every day and thank you for your time and generosity, that kind of thing. So, another, yes, it's an anecdotal bit of evidence but it's a bit of evidence



towards the value of your library, which could be used I think in many different situations and in many different ways.

Okay. Step three, assess the evidence. So, critical appraisal of published research or other printed evidence that you find, that's essentially what this means, assessing the evidence. For research in particular, you want to determine if the research is trustworthy and valid.

Not all the research you find out there is good research. So, as I mentioned before, if you don't have a background in research, and you know, a lot of librarians coming out of the master's of library studies or library science, they don't have a background in research. Often our schooling is course-based. We don't do major original research topics and studies.

So it can be a daunting task for sure. One thing that can really bring along skills in reading research articles, is a journal club. And I'm just, I'm assuming a range of participants here amongst you, so I'll just, I'll explain even though you possibly will know what a journal club is.

It's when several people with similar goals get together and they talk about an article that they've decided upon and read prior to the meeting. There are Twitter journal clubs where you can participate remotely via Twitter. I run a face-to-face journal club in my university library, and it's... We have so much fun and interesting discussions.

And then I'm sure there's lots of different ways to connect in this way. So then you need to decide if the evidence is applicable. And, I will talk more about applicability in the next step. And, it's difficult to determine but we'll get there. And then you want to look at which evidence holds the most weight, and that's something like this. It's most likely that a well-done research study would hold more weight to look at your issue than a story, say, in the National Enquirer, so that's pretty extreme.

But really, it's a matter of looking at what you trust. And we all know what it's like out there in the media right now. Especially if it's hard to know. So, sitting down and really thinking about it, and really just applying a level of common sense can help you out. And then, you want to look at what will work in your local context and what won't. Your own place of work is the most important place no matter what kind of evidence you find.

If you sit down and think about it and assess the article, if it's not right for you, it's not right. It might be the most perfect bit of research, but if you know it's not going to fly, it's not. So, very much like asking a question whether there're



some tools to help you out, there are tools to help you with assessing the evidence.

And one thing is, critical appraisal checklists. I provided one to the webinar organizers and they've either sent it out to you already or will be doing so after the webinar. I'm going to send... I've sent that already and like I say, I'll send another handout with some more information, resources, my contact information, that kind of thing.

So, this is just a clip of the very top of this checklist. It's about a page and a half of questions to ask when you sit down to read a research article. So, you know, looking at it, the first one, the research question, "Can you clearly identify and articulate the research question in this paper?" And when you're sitting down to read some research that should be really obvious.

They're going to say "The question we're answering or looking at is this" and that's your research question. So, there's a bunch of questions like that going on down the page. You just read, look at it, do a little check, "Yes, no, unsure." And then by the end of it, you'll have kind of an idea of whether this research is plausible, are there biases in it, that kind of thing, and give you a better sense of whether you can use it or not.

Like I say, this is just one checklist. There are many different kinds of checklists out there for appraising the evidence, some are based on discipline, some are based on the type of research being done, quantitative, qualitative, that kind of thing. So, there's some help out there and they are very useful, actually. Okay, so, step four is applying the evidence.

Now, as I mentioned in the last slide, assessing the evidence, you've got to be aware of what will and won't go in your local situation. So, you're working in a high-security setting. So some of the things you find in the literature or hear from your patrons just might not be possible, and of course, you have to be aware of that.

And then you also should think about who makes the final decision if it's not you, and then what they're bound by. So, there's levels and layers I think in your particular situation that is going to affect applicability that, where it might not affect it, say, in a public library. So, essentially applicability relates to the extent to which the results are likely to impact on practice.

So, when you do something, is it going to actually change things? Whether or not a particular research study is applicable to your situation is subjective because, as I mentioned before, what works for one person's situation might not



work for another because libraries show considerable variation with regard to environment, context, and then institutional values.

So, determining applicability is an essential step in evidence-based practice. And it's important to note that there are different levels of applicability to look for, and all can be very useful. So, I outline four on this slide. Evidence is usually one of the following. Directly applicable.

You can take what you found and you can use it as is in your situation. And, I have to admit that this one is a bit of a unicorn. It's really rare to find something that's just absolutely perfect for your question. Quite likely, it might need to be locally validated. And what that means is that you have what you need in the evidence that you have to replicate the study in your local context.

And so say somebody has done some research using a survey and they've included their survey instrument in the article. You can take that and deliver that survey to your own folks. The evidence could be adapted. You could poach parts of a research study, everything doesn't have to be relevant to your question, but one little piece might be, so you can take that.

So, you can take bits and pieces, and then the final one is improving your understanding of the situation. It's the most common. Often if we have a situation in front of us that we need to know more about, we will do some reading to try and get a better sense of it, and that's very common. If you just excuse me for one second, I'm going to mute myself and take a small sip of water. Okay.

And I'm back. So those are the different types of evidence that you're going to find when you're out there looking. So how do you decide if evidence is directly applicable? Well, there are several variables to consider. And, the first one is the user group.

So, does the group that they're looking at, say, in the study or the newspaper story or whatever else you found, does that group compare to your user group? You need to look at timeliness. Is the research current enough? So, if you're looking at technology research, for example, I mean, tech obviously changes so fast, that should be the most current stuff.

If you're looking about collections that can be somewhat older. Look at cost, is it physically feasible to apply the evidence in your current environment? Look at the politics because we all have that around us. Is there resistance to change in your work environment? Will the new concept be accepted? Will an adversarial relationship be created?



If so you might want to decide, is it worth it? That kind of thing. And then, severity? How critical is it that a solution to your situation be found and then how quickly? And those pieces and variables are going to help you decide if the evidence you found is applicable. Step five in the EBLIP process is evaluation.

And, this part often gets overlooked because it's really easy to just, you know, you've got a problem, you've found some evidence, you've solved your problem and then you're going to go on to the next problem because it's all just happens like that. But it really is beneficial to give yourself some time to sit down and think about the process from two perspectives.

One is, evaluate the results of what you did. So, the outcome of your question. So, are there still gaps? Did anything not work? What went right? Where might you improve for next time? So just looking at the process, and then the next one is evaluating yourself as performing as an evidence-based practitioner.

So, reflection on practice, how did you do? How did you feel? Did this feel like it was more trouble than it's worth? Like that kind of thing. So just being honest with yourself about how this actually worked for you. But, unless you're required by your boss, you don't have to write a formal report or anything.

Although reflection is often aided by writing in a journal, so as you move through your practice it could be helpful to keep notes in a way that works for you. You can see your progress then and that kind of thing. And I actually kind of like that idea for all kinds of practice-based things. And then, the sixth step is dissemination, getting it out there. Getting what you did out there is important for a number of reasons.

It adds to the body of knowledge in your field. About 10 years ago, looking at the body of Library and Information Studies' knowledge, it was sparse, it wasn't very good. But really, in the last decade or so, I think libraries everywhere have really taken off in terms of looking at themselves, reflecting, doing some research, getting it out there.

And so, there's a way-more robust body of knowledge out there. And so you could add to it by writing up what you did, and it might help someone else. In doing so you're sharing with your colleagues near and far. Chances are, if you're doing something then colleagues elsewhere might be looking at the same thing.

And then, be a voice for your work. You're doing important work, so get your voice out there and talk about what you're doing. And as it says on the slide here, the dissemination of research contributes to the hopefully infinite loop of



finding, using and generating LIS evidence. And so, as we just keep going with that, the body of knowledge gets bigger and bigger and working in this way becomes easier and easier.

So, how do you get stuff out there? Well, you could publish a paper. You could publish a peer-reviewed research paper, you could publish something in a non-peer reviewed outlet. If you're not sure what peer review is, then, just get something out there in a newsletter. Getting out there in a way, in an open way in particular, can ensure that others are able to use it too.

Possibly you're involved in Listserv, social media, get it out there that way. A blog post is a great way to get a bit of your practice out there, and I want to extend an offer to you. At the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice we have a blog and it's called Brain-Work.

And basically the wide topics of Brain-Work are EBLIP, research and librarianship. So, I made it the widest range of topics possible. We publish weekly, every Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. Saskatchewan time. And, we have a variety of blog writers from my institution, from across Canada, from around the world. I've got lots of different continents and different countries represented on our blog.

So, if you do something and you want to get it out there and you're not sure how, you can send it to me and we can have a discussion about getting this up on our blog and getting it out there. And then once that happens, I do a lot of promotion with Twitter and Facebook and that kind of thing so that's an invitation to you. And, if that doesn't float your boat at least take a look at the blog because it's got some interesting stuff too, and possibly evidence that would work for your situations.

You can get your information out there with conference presentations, other presentations, either internally or externally. Wikis, personal or professional websites, you could develop a workshop or a webinar, do something like I'm doing now. Or you can share with your colleagues in-person by email, that kind of thing. So just, getting it out there somehow.

So it can be useful elsewhere. Okay, so those are the steps of EBLIP. And then I've got a few final thoughts before I launch into a scenario. As mentioned before, the steps are not always and sometimes really, they shouldn't be linear. You're going to find yourself going back and forth, refining the question, looking for more evidence, deciding that the evaluation should be this or that.



It does take some practice so really, be easy on yourself and be gentle when you start working this way. Small steps are just fine. If you see those six steps of EBLIP and go, "I don't think so," well use one step. Start with one step and try it out, whatever that is. Do what you're comfortable with, do what you have time for, that's a big deal.

And I really, honestly believe that the rewards of working in this way are greater than the risks. So, it's definitely something I think you should check out. Okay? All right, so let's try a scenario. I'm going to take you through a scenario using the steps of EBLIP. And as I mentioned before, I'm neither a prison librarian or an American.

I do hope that I've got the idea of what might be important to your work. I'm going to go through the steps methodically but please remember, that I have had time to prepare. And when I was preparing, I flailed around a lot, at the start, before I really got going. I wasn't sure where to look, what I was looking for, that kind of thing. And my scenario is just that, it's something I came up with out of my own head.

I'm using funding because it seems to be an issue everywhere you go. But I'm not suggesting that you guys sound like this. So here's the scenario. It's always the same thing, funding cuts or no new funding, I have to scramble around to do the work I need to do. Now, I know in my gut that my patrons do better when they have good library material and assistance. They seem calmer, they're focused… they put typos in their slides, no.

And their brains are occupied, so why can't my boss see that? I wish there was a way that I could convince the higher-ups that a few more dollars would make a big difference. And I should mention too, I'm going to use first person in this scenario. I'm pretending that I'm the corrections librarian working through this problem.

So let's take a look at the main themes of this scenario, and I've bolded what I thought are, kind of, where I'm trying to get at. I'm trying to get at funding capsule, no new funding, so a lack of dollars. I want, I have a hypothesis that my patrons do better when they have good library materials and assistance. What do I want to do?

I want to convince people, I want to convince my bosses that a few more dollars would make a big difference. So that's kind of my outcome, making a big difference, however I define that to be. So first of all, I want to articulate the question, and I'm going to use PICO for this one. So what I've done here is, I've talked about the population.



So, corrections libraries in the United States, the intervention, adequate funding, the comparison versus no or little funding, and the outcome, impact the inmate population. Now, I could just ask if adequate funding makes an impact, but that's just a yes or no answer. I want to be able to go to my boss with some factual details on how the funding makes an impact.

So, my question is, among prison librarians in the United States, how does adequate funding versus no or little funding impact the inmate population? I also want to recognize here that the term "adequate" is really subjective. So if I were wanting to present my higher-ups with some evidence of the benefit of more funding, I would define "adequate" for my own particular context.

And so your idea of adequate funding might be different than my own. So I'd be more specific about that. So, step two is find the evidence. So, the question to ask here is, where I might find evidence to answer this question? So LIS literature would be good. Perhaps I might look heavily at the special libraries literature because I kind of regard corrections libraries as special libraries.

I want to use open resources because I don't really have access to too much else. And, I know that there's always Google and Google Scholar to get me going. And I'm the type of librarian who doesn't mind admitting I use Google and then Google Scholar, we realize, is kind of a no-brainer for me. I did a Google Scholar search.

I searched "funding" and the phrase "prison library." So I did a little Boolean search there and the two hits I'm showing on the slide here are part of the over 1,000 hits I got. And of course, a good majority of those weren't that great, but I like the first one here because it says I can get it as a PDF from McGill University in Montreal. So I'm pretty excited about that.

So, on the Google Scholar hit, the date of this paper was listed at 2017, which made me happy, it's current. But now I see that it's been adapted from a paper presented in 1999, so it's not so current. The title looked great. "The Prison Library: A Vital Link to Education Rehabilitation and Recreation," but it will inform me about my situation.

It's one of that type of evidence pieces, and I may get some tidbits if I read it, so I will. Looking at the second hit on the previous slide, it's behind a paywall. I can't get it, so I'm just going to skip it. And that really harkens back to the original definition of EBLIP is involving the best available evidence. It might not be the best out there, but it's what you can get.



So, the best available evidence. Okay, so then I went to the free EBSCO list database and I did this search that I'm showing on the slide here. So, prison library with truncation and funding and impact, and I got one hit, so just one, but it really looked good to me as you can see there.

It looks specifically at Illinois, and their eradication of funding for books and other materials for prison libraries in 2002. And then, they also talk about the impact of the library on inmate behavior. Unfortunately, this is not an open-access title. So, I searched the title of this article on Google and then just started poking around.

So, in my poking, I discovered a study from 2013, which concluded that inmates who receive some education are significantly less likely to return to prison after release, and are more likely to find employment than peers who do not receive such opportunities. Now, I believe that amongst your correction libraries and institutions, there, education kind of can be a separate department.

So there's a library and education. And so, this particularly talks about education, but let's face it, what you're doing at the library is no small part of increasing and educating and teaching and that kind of thing. So, this is helpful to my situation. And an article referring to that study talked about the positive benefits to inmates that come from reading, so that's really hitting home for me.

So, as for this title on the slide, I'm going to put in an interlibrary-loan request and I'm going to get the article that way. And, once I find it there might be some follow-up references in it that I can look at so I can, kind of, pearl grow from that article itself. Now, I talked about Twitter earlier, and if I were a prison librarian, honestly I would, and I don't work for Twitter like I say, I would get on there right now and start building up my network.

That way when these issues come up for me, I can reach out when I'm working through a problem. So, the slide I'm showing now is the first few hits. When I went to Twitter and I searched "prison library"in the people field of Twitter. So what's showing here are nine Twitter accounts that all have something to do with prison, and prison libraries. So, there's the Prison Library Support Network, which I thought was very cool, and I'm assuming some of you belong to that or are aware of that, Prison Libraries Group.

There's Sara Crowley there. She's a believer in the positive power of prison libraries. She's also a writer and an editor so she might have some good access to information, that kind of thing. By building a network of people to follow, especially if I'm working alone in my library, I can keep up on what these folks



are talking about. And I find that in the Twitter library world, there is a ton of sharing going on, including research studies and other data and evidence.

So that's what I would do as well. So, where else could I look for evidence about funding of prison libraries and its possible effects? Well, I think statistics, and if I could find some comparative stats about the funding, I could include that in the conclusion of this issue.

So, in doing more poking around on Google, I searched for prison library funding statistics. And I ran across this LibGuide on the slide here. So, a research guide from the University of Michigan on finding statistics, and they have a specific tab for statistics on prison. And, I want to mention too, that although our question is specific to U.S. prison libraries, you could also find usable evidence by looking at research done in other countries.

In my looking around I've actually found more articles from other countries than I did articles from the U.S. I haven't been exhaustive though, but I found articles from Croatia, from Nigeria, all different corrections libraries looking at this issue. Also, in the finding process, I would connect with other prison-librarian colleagues and see what they know.

And then I'd probably consider, actually, I would absolutely consider administering a short survey to my own library patrons, making sure to check and see if ethics approval is needed. I know in Canada, outside of the academic world, you don't really need any kind of ethics approval, although it possibly could be different in corrections because you're asking something of the inmates.

So, doing your own bit of research makes what you're looking for, very particular to your own local context. So, doing a survey about how the prison library affects your patrons, what do they feel? What do they think? What have they done? And then you could write up the results of this after, and then you could add to the body of work on this topic.

Okay, so step three, assessing the evidence, and I've got this shrugging fellow here because it is hard to demonstrate appraising evidence using a webinar format. If we were face-to-face or if I had, you know, better skills with Webex I'd have you do an activity using a pre-selected

[inaudible] article to see what you thought of it. I mentioned the checklist earlier for research papers. So essentially, I would sit down with a couple of papers I have, that one from interlibrary loan and that one from 1999. And I'd



go through them with the checklist. I'd also make sure to look at what's come up on Twitter with a critical eye. What is the source of the info?

Is there any bias? Is anyone going to benefit from putting out that information? And then the stats should be pretty straightforward. At this point too, I'd also compile the results of my local survey and do a bit of simple analysis. So, I'd just kind of group things together and see what's going on there. And, in terms of doing a survey, getting the results and doing a bit of analysis, there are lots of different resources out there that can help you do that if you're not familiar with that kind of thing.

And then, apply the evidence. So, in looking at the applicability of my evidence I'm going to consider the variables that I talked about before. The user group, does the user group in this study match mine? The timeliness, the cost, the politics, the severity. Now I've found some useful evidence and some of it is applicable, and I've conducted my own survey of library users which I'm really excited about.

So, I'm able to talk about the original issue among prison libraries in the U.S. how does adequate funding versus no or little funding impact the inmate population? So, how should I apply this evidence? So for me, in my original scenario, I wanted to approach my boss and talk about an increase in library funding. So, what am I going to do?

I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write an evidence-based report and then follow that up with a written request. Now, I found published evidence pertaining to my issue. I have my own professional expertise and experience to draw on and I've consulted with my users in the form of a survey, so I know how they're affected in a local context. I feel like I can make a strong case.

I will try as best I can to get some more dollars for the library. I feel confident in my request, whereas without this process, I would just be going and asking. Now I can support that request. So, then the evaluation, things to think about when you're evaluating, how did the process work? How was my report received?

Did the library receive any more funding? So, that's kind of thing I can talk about, and then how did I do as an evidence-based practitioner? Did I really focus the question or was it kind of off? Did I have to go back? Was the best evidence obtained? Well, yes. I think the best available evidence was obtained.

Was the appraisal of the evidence fruitful? Was the evidence applied in a useful manner? And I would say that if I put in my request and I got that funding, I



would say, "Yes. Yes, it was." So, reflect and think about how things went and what might be a better approach in the future, that kind of thing. And this kind of evaluation helps you become a more successful evidence-based practitioner.

And then, dissemination, because I created a report and a request for my boss, I probably don't want to just kind of share that out there. But there are pieces of my work on this issue that I can share. I can share the results of my library-user survey provided that's okay with my institution. I could share the literature review that I did of the open published literature that I could find.

I could read an opinion piece on asking for funding and how I went about it. I could do a few tweets about what I've been doing. So, it's good to get your work out there so that others can see what you've done. They can potentially use some of your work, you would definitely inspire others, whatever the question, that kind of thing.

So, in conclusion, sometimes if you're looking for evidence to help inform a specific issue, you might not find any, and that can actually be a viable outcome because that might tell you, you have to do some work, some local work like the survey. Sometimes when you use this approach, you might find more issues than you'd bargained for.

But that is also a distinct possibility and a viable outcome. The idea of EBLIP is critical thinking and assessment. It's a way of thinking that can help improve your work as a librarian and help improve the lives of your library patrons. It's a matter of looking at all there is to look at and come to some kind of understanding. Now, I've shown it as a way to get from A to B but we all know it's never that simple.

You might have to go through several letters of the alphabet before you get from A to H in a very convoluted way. But really, it's a worthwhile process. The critical thinking and reflection that EBLIP encourages I truly believe will serve you well in your work. And I'm ending with a slide here that talks about key questions an evidence-based practitioner should ask themselves.

And it's from a keynote slide from Denise Koufogiannakis, who did the opening keynote to the Seventh International Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Conference. So, what do I already know? What local evidence is available? What does the literature say? What other information do I need to gather?

How does the information I have apply to my context? Then I'm going to make a decision or I'm going to do something, I'm going to implement something.



Then, what worked, what didn't, what did I learn? And so back around again. That's some resources that I will supply to you.

I mentioned the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice journal: open access-research studies, evidence summaries. There's something called e-LIS, and it's an open repository. And so, it will include quite a few articles, research articles, pre-prints from LIS. There's the Directory of Open Access Journals. You can find a lot of library and LIS journals in this database.

We have our own thing at the Centre for Evidence Based Library Information Practice. It's a peer-reviewed LIS journal list, and there's tons on there. And, the nice thing about it is that the open-access ones are indicated with that little open access symbol that is apparently dropped in my slide, it was up there before. Then one more page, there's the Evidence Based Toolkit for Public Libraries.

I created this probably 10 years ago with a public librarian and I'm including it here because, evidence-based practice is applicable across all libraries. And so, this toolkit outlines the steps, it talks about PICO, it talks about SPICE, it's something to refer back to. And so, essentially I wanted to make one for public libraries because I really felt they were under-represented in the EBLIP world, but you could easily use this.

There's a book called BeingEvidence Based in Library and Information Practice. It's a very good book to have on hand. There's our own center, and I've included the website there, and we've got some resources on EBLIP and other things there. There's some guidelines on how to start a journal club, that kind of thing. And then, make sure to check with your professional organizations, any group or organization you belong with, see if there are resources available to you as part of the membership fee because they're often is.

Okay, just before I pass it back so we can start the formal question period, I want to note that my contact information is there, [email protected], on Twitter, I'm @VirginiaPrimary. And then I've got my phone number down there. And I want to extend this to you that, if you're keen on this and want to try some evidence-based stuff, and you want to refer back to me, I am always available to answer any questions you might have.

If you want to send me an email, or connect with me on Twitter or that kind of thing. That's because the whole EBLIP organization is a grassroots-y thing. We are also very open to sharing and learning and teaching and learning from each other and that kind of thing. Okay, so I've come to the end of my presentation. I'm just going to take a minute here and slip things back to presentation central,



and I'll mute myself as I do this, so you won't hear me swearing if I can't actually do it.

Thank you so much for joining me.

- ...so much for a wonderful presentation. And now I think we're going to go over to Alyssa with questions. - [Alyssa] Thank you Virginia for your presentation today. If any of the attendees have any specific research questions that they'd like to have help with formulating or applying EBLIP to, just switch to that box to the lower right of your screen to ask Virginia.

And in the event that we're unable to get to every question today, we'll send the response in an email to everybody in attendance. So, I've got the first question for you Virginia. "Do you have any suggestions for determining the applicability of evidence that we find to work in the correctional library setting?"

- That's, like, the hardest question. Determining applicability is, as I mentioned throughout the session, it can be difficult because you might not be familiar with some of the stuff you're reading, like, the structure of it and that kind of thing. But, honestly, I really believe in my own heart that applicability is determined if you determine it.

So, it's mostly that's, that's the local context for me. So, what's going to work in your place of work? So, yeah, applicability can be kind of tricky but I always think to myself too, that trying a few different things is okay.

So, if I don't happen to get it, what I feel completely right the first time, then I will try it again. So, I hope that kind of gets at what you're saying, asking.

- Okay, I guess our second question, "Do you have any insights or suggestions on how to train non-librarians such as peer professionals or inmate clerks in data collection?"

- Data collection, I guess it depends on what kind of data. So that would be...so all my answers are going to be a specific to your own context. So, do you have an example of what kind of data you might be wanting to collect or is it just more the teaching aspect of it?

- More the teaching aspect, I think.

- Okay. Well, I think, you know, as we do professional development as librarians, it's probably a great idea for your library assistants to do professional



development as well. And so, just even putting together a small little study session, you know, maybe finding some relevant resources on data collection.

So, you might be collecting data for, you know, how many people are coming into your library. Well, that's relatively more simple than collecting data for that survey I was talking about. And so, for that, you might want to talk about what makes a good survey question, how to ask an unbiased survey question, that kind of thing. And so, I'm also assuming too, that, librarians are very good at not wanting to reinvent the wheel.

So, there's probably resources out there that can help you set up a study session like that.

- So I guess as far as, if a correction librarian wants to do a survey, do you have any suggestions for the best tools to use for, kind of, that sort of data collection and analysis?

- Okay, so not really knowing how... What your inmate population might have access to, because there's always online surveys. But I'm thinking that perhaps the general population doesn't have access to the internet all the time, I don't know. So, in which case, I would probably just play it safe and have paper copies available of the survey so when it's time for them to come in for their turn at the library you can ask them if they would fill out a survey.

As for tools for analysis, depending on your budget and that kind of thing, there's a tool, a software tool called in NVivo, it's capital N, capital V I-V-O-. And you can put responses, you can input your data into that software and it can help you with analysis.

If you're going particularly for numbers and stats then there's another bit of software called SPSS. And it helps with the more quantitative stuff. Both of these have costs but I'm pretty sure that there are some free open-source software options to be able to help out with that as well.

- Great. A fourth question, based off of your own experience utilizing the EBLIP framework in the past, how has this implementation varied across settings?

- I think that… By settings, do you mean like across different library sectors or what do you mean by that?

- Yeah. Different types of libraries.



- Yeah. Okay. I think that the probably, that the sector that uses this way of working the most is probably the academic library sector. And, I'll be the first to admit that in this area, in academic libraries, we are very privileged because we have collections money.

In my own institution, we have an LIS collection. So, I select for all kinds of research stuff for our librarians. We have a good journal package, that kind of thing. So really, we're very privileged with that. I'm happy with the open-access movement that is really allowing stuff to be shared more broadly.

And so, people, libraries that are underfunded or less funded or have different priorities, they can also access the evidence as well. So, in terms of implementation across sectors, I don't really know. I have nothing concrete-evidence data telling me what's happening but I do know anecdotally, from people I've spoken with in different sectors, that there's variable implementation success.

It depends on the question, it depends on what you're trying to change, what you're trying to do. If you're trying to ask for something, whether that works or not. Those can all be factors that are really kind of environmental versus this process. I think that the bottom line is, when approaching work, this kind of work and thinking about it in an evidence-based way, the best thing for me is how it affects me as a practitioner.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like how it works in terms of helping to make decisions and feeling like I'm making the best decision, that kind of thing, but I really like being this way as a practitioner. Really thinking things through, being very critical, in a good way, about things, and making sure I look at everything.

So, that's kind of a ramble-y answer.

- Oh, no, that's great. Thank you. I guess our last question is a little more specific. So, "How can I get my library to start a new program if there is no [inaudible] research to draw upon? For instance, a poetry program or a reading group?"

- Okay, okay. Personally, I think you probably... oh, unless you've already looked, but I think you might be able to find resources. But say you can't and you want to try, you could look further afield in terms of outside of corrections libraries. What does public-library programming do and have they found any kind of effect on you know, say, underprivileged kids or something like that, do you know what I mean?



There might be a program designed to help somebody in that public-library setting. So, I'd definitely look to the public libraries. I would also make a case for running a pilot project. So, you know, do some research, find some data and evidence on how a pilot-project works.

So say, you take it to your boss, you want to try this poetry group for two months or three weeks or whatever, and then put some information together on what you think this will do and why you think that way. And you can probably find some supporting data that way. So that's what I would say, off the top of my head.

I'll probably go home and think about that more and go, "Oh, man. I should have said this," but if I do, I'll let you know. - [inaudible] Just let us know fi there's anything else. But yeah, that looks like those are all the questions we have time for today. So, thank you, Virginia, and all of our attendees.

If anyone has any questions after the fact, we will send an email response to everyone in attendance. So, I'm going to hand it over to Heather for a few final announcements.

- All right. Thanks, Alyssa, and thank you again, Virginia, for a wonderful presentation. To all of you attending today, we really look forward to hearing how you will apply what you've learned to your own professional practice. So, be sure to share your feedback and your triumphs with us by visiting the DDLC project page, at www.nicic.gov/data-driven- librarianship-in-corrections, again, that's www.nicic.gov/data-driven- librarianship-in-corrections.

The next session in the DDLC webinar series will be on June 6th, in which Professor Jill Hurst-Wahl from Syracuse University and her associate will be discussing how correctional libraries can assess and meet the needs of their community.

Please, be sure to register now as spaces are limited. Thank you again everyone for attending, and we look forward to seeing you again next month.

s3.amazonaws.com · Web viewThere's some guidelines on how to start a journal club, that kind of thing. And then, make sure to check with your professional organizations, any group

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