Research Topics LIBRARY and Information Science

Where to find Ideas about topics to research and write
1•Professional organizations often post their Research Agenda on their Web site.

2•Read the suggestions for further research at the end of most scholarly articles

3•Check search engines such as Google, www.google.com, using terms such as academic, library, research, agenda.

This listing is not exhaustive or complete. Almost all of the topics mentioned can be developed in many ways.

1.Academic library as an essential service on a campus during emergencies such as fire and severe weather (rain, snow, floods)

2. Accreditation and the role of the academic library in undergraduate, graduate, and other teaching programs (adult, community, distance education)

3.Acquisition and deployment of technology in the library environment

4. Adaptive equipment technology for supporting handicapped persons in the library environment

5. Administration and leadership of interlibrary loan departments, consortia, cooperatives, networks

6. Advances in search engine technology and their impacts on libraries

7. Analyses and your libraryÂ’s use of an analysis, e.g., cost-benefit analysis, gap analysis, customer-satisfaction analysis, needs analysis, root cause analysis, SWOT analysis, what-if analysis)

8. Art work display in the academic library to promote spirituality or to support liberal arts and the humanities among students/faculty

9. Articulation of an information policy for a campus

10. Bar codes and RFID tags: types, library and special collection applications, use in library asset tracking

11.Benchmarking as a means to achieve outcomes; your libraryÂ’s use of benchmarking and the results, problems, opportunities
Campus community's perception of the library as a hospitable environment for reading, study, and research

12.Challenge of providing library services with shrinking resources; doing more with what you have to improve programs, services, and collections

13.Challenges and opportunities in migrating to Web-based information services

14.Challenges of implementing technology, including deployment, training, upgrading
Change management in the library environment for organizational renewal

15. Changing nature of circulation in numbers and ways to stimulate print and media circulation

16 Changing nature of library space requirements to meet student and collection requirements

17 Changing nature of reference questions in type and number

18 Changing role and value of union lists with the availability of electronic full-text journal databases

19 Changing role of the librarian from collection development specialists to specialists who develop pathfinder guides (subject, topic) to harness the Internet's unstructured free-form information

20 Clientele expectations as exacerbated by e-business practices: effect on library's business practices, business alliances and partnerships, vendor relationships, one-to-one relationship management with patrons

21 Clientele expectations: librarians generally view our customers/patrons through the prism of our collections. What are effective strategies for flipping this to see our collections through our customer's eyes?

22 Collaboration opportunities (or reports of such collaborations) with other educational/cultural institutions such as colleges and universities, historical societies, museums, professional or trade associations, public schools K-12, social agencies, etc.

23 Collection development strategies for academic programs
Common culture created/supported/enhanced by the academic library on campus

Communications plan as a tool for developing community relations to connect with faculty and administrators, e.g., how to write, how to use, how to budget for expenditures for advertising, etc.

Consortia delivery systems for continuing education, books and journals, technical support services, training

Cooperative purchasing and shared collections between and among libraries

Coping with tight budgets by eliminating the overlap between print and electronic subscriptions

Copyright issues with interlibrary loan and electronic reserves

Core collections for children's literature in a higher education library that supports a teacher education program of instruction

Core digital resources for small and/or medium size libraries (academic, public, special)

Core technology and/or emerging technology trends in the library environment

Cost or time study of library programs, services, and collections, including description of the methodology and outcomes at your library

Cost-drivers and the criteria for selecting cost drivers for various library activities, e.g., automation, communications, facilities and physical plant, human resources, public services, public and community relations, technical services, technology

Dealing strategies and outcomes for the difficult patron in the library environment

Describing and giving examples that illustrate the difference between adequate and excellent library service(s)

Developing a written library business plan that addresses business/technical goals, platform/storage technology requirements, and infrastructure topology

Developing an annual academic agenda for the library, including benchmarks and performance measures

Difference between serving students as customers (providing them a product) and serving students as learners whose job is to learn how to use the library

Digitization of local collections and its impact on scholarship in the library

Discussion of information literacy as an educational reform for utilizing technology in the curriculum

Discussion of one or more challenges and/or opportunities in some area of librarianship or information science

Effective allocations strategies for collection development among academic and non-academic units in an academic, public, or special library

Effective budgeting strategies linked to outcomes

Effective library support for distance education programs; strategies for equalizing access to library resources for on-campus students and distance education learners

Effectiveness of state and federal library grant programs (or any single program)

Efficiencies achieved through consortium/consortia affiliation

Electronic library reserves, e.g., part of the OPAC or through commercial software such as Blackboard

Electronic resources and their impact on the academic library as the social and intellectual heart of the campus

Electronic resources and their impact on the academic library: library visits, reference service, and circulation

Ethics of information

Evaluating a library and useful performance measurements for evaluation

Evaluating the effectiveness of bibliographic instruction with a focus on the student and/or teacher

Fund raising and development programs for libraries

Game theory’s “prisoner’s dilemma” applied to academic library problems or situations

Good faith communication as an essential component for strong employee relations

Hub library networks

Human resource requirements have changed in the academic library. Describe how staff retooling is happening, costs, opportunities, challenges since this is not a downsizing strategy; rather, it is a strategy to allow the library to be responsive to changes in its environment
Identifying the "sizzle" in the library's programs, services, and collections

Impact of demographic and cultural changes on library services

Impact of full-text databases on interlibrary loan services

Impact of library budget shifts toward electronic resource access

Implementing a new integrated information system in the library environment

Implications for the library as accreditation shifts from an emphasis on library resources to information literacy

Integrated information Systems offer advantages and disadvantages.

Identify these and expand on the pros and cons of library managers supporting single management systems since one size rarely fits all needs, uses

Intellectual property and copyright. Analysis of the libraryÂ’s role in assisting in understanding intellectual property in a college or university environment

Intellectual property and copyright. Collection development and intellectual property and copyright in terms of topics such as what primary and secondary resources should the library own, best book and journal titles on the topic, identification of commercial databases featuring the topic

Intellectual property and copyright. Collection development in terms of topics such as what primary and secondary resources should the library own, best book and journal titles on the topic, identification of commercial databases featuring the topic

Intellectual property and copyright. Create a summary or annotation of the best websites, or legal research guides, or colleges/universities that have a position devoted to this topic, or list of blogs, or newsletter

Intellectual property and copyright. For intellectual property and copyright, create a summary or annotation of the best websites, or legal research guides, or colleges/universities that have a position devoted to this topic, or list of blogs, or newsletter.

Intellectual property and copyright. Listing and summary of the major cases in the area of intellectual property and copyright argued in front of courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.

Intellectual property and copyright. Listing and summary or annotation of the major cases in the area of intellectual property and copyright argued in front of courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.

Intellectual property and copyright. The libraryÂ’s role in assisting in understanding intellectual property in a college or university environment.

Interlibrary loan of specialized materials such as audiovisuals, CDs, DVDs, VHSs, items from e-subscriptions, legal materials, medical materials

Interlibrary loan service enhancement through use of technologies such as Ariel, Illiad, BlackBoard, or other open-source software

Interlibrary loan statistics used for acquisitions (books, journals, digital, audiovisual materials) or collections management (discarding materials)

Internet-based services, products, technologies and their impact on library management, service, and utilization: challenges and/or methodology to meet patron needs as libraries migrate to a digital/virtual environment

Knowledge management and its application for developing a learning organization

LibrarianshipÂ’s changing definition: In 2001, Steven L. Baker is credited with writing that librarianship is the discipline that promotes an integrated approach to preserving, identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing the significant knowledge and information assets of society. In 1964 Louis Shores wrote that librarianship is the profession dedicated to the preservation, dissemination, investigation, and interpretation of the knowledge most significant to mankind.
Libraries and life-long learning: what this means and steps to take to bring about

Library as place and access mechanisms to repositories of collections whereas large research libraries continue to struggle with providing print-centric and digital access to information

Library implications of the growing power of information technology to transform the means of research, teaching, and scholarly communication

Library in higher education as an economic engine (agricultural stimulation, company/corporate creation and development, human capital development of hundreds of thousands of people, stimulation and enhancement of the lives of people within its sphere of influence)

Library instruction and training for students and faculty who are remote to the campus

Library presence in spaces such as the campus portal, Facebook, iTunes, learning management systems such as Blackboard, MySpace, etc.

Library search tools in environments such as learning management systems (e.g., Blackboard) or social network infrastructure

Library services for disabled persons: facilities, equipment, funding, staffing

Library services for virtual high schools, virtual colleges and universities, home schooled students

Library services in a linguistically
diverse community

Library staff as emergency responders, e.g., organizing and running resident information centers during storms and emergencies

LibraryÂ’s value to society in digitalizing unique collections

LibraryÂ’s value, strengths, and shortcomings in an electronic society?

Library's changing role in the information economy

Library's effective learning environment and its importance (e.g., research, socializing in the use of information resources, promotion of a common culture, safe and relatively quiet study hall, a social sphere for meeting people and being seen, etc.). Many librarians have focused on collections and information technology to the exclusion of the many other positive things that take place in an academic library)
Literacy programs in the library environment

Management and operation of information systems

Marginalization of the library (academic, public, special)

Marketing of library services, i.e., positioning the library as a destination for research, learning, and friends

Maximizing the value of (new, emerging) information technology in the library environment

Measuring the quality of library services

Metrics for evaluating library performance and services and when to use them -- such as input and output measurements, quality assurance measurements, impact and outcome measurements – should both qualitative and quantitative components be included and how

Mobile library services (problems, challenges, opportunities, technology) through using smart devices with small screens such as laptops, Pocket PCs, BlackBerrys, Palms, and data-enabled cell phones

Models of library service through the use of computers, networks, and the Internet

Open-access data/collections and its value for providing context to local collections

Outsourcing of services (cataloging, janitorial, reference, serial check-in, etc.)

Pareto's 80-20 rule applied to library problems and situations, and application of Chris AndersonÂ’s The Long Tail (2003) as a statistical concept applies to library collections

Position paper on a controversial topic, e.g., do we need academic libraries? or that libraries of the future were distinguished from one another only by their ownership of sole copies of locally-produced digital content not accessible elsewhere since books and journals were accessible digitally via fee databases and content publishers

Programming to attract students to the academic library (art exhibitions, book swaps, comfortable furniture, expresso bars, hosting campus meetings and conferences, lectures, poetry readings)

Providing academic library services in an environment where faculty are increasingly teaching a curriculum that draws less and less on library resources

Quality assurance, efficiency studies, and best practices – how they impact the library

Ranganathan’s (1931) fifth law of library science is “A library is a growing organism”; explain the meaning today as libraries become part of growing networked organisms such as OCLC

Renovating the library specifically to enrich its atmosphere to attract students

Restructuring access on Web pages to the libraryÂ’s programs, services, and collections on the basis of frequency-of-use rather than library organizational structure or alphabetical arrangement

Rethinking the academic library's functions not to provide print collections but for its media center and computer labs for access to digital environment

Revenue opportunities for libraries, e.g., advertisements on computer screens

Role of consortium membership for expanding access and resources

Role of electronic text-based collections with multimedia content

Role of the homepage as “The” platform for delivering library programs, services, and collections

Role of the library as an information resource in globalization

Role of the library as an information resource in promoting human rights

Role of the library in the ubiquitous computer (information technology) environment

Search engines: how those that charge allow those that pay to rise to the top
Search engines: making the libraryÂ’s Web pages (page titles, descriptions, article summaries) more friendly for indexing and retrieval
by Google and Yahoo!

Shared storage facilities

Significance and strategic value of written procedures and standard operating procedures (SOP) for library operations

Strategic communicationÂ’s plan for enhancing the role of the library in its parent organization

Strategic planning in the library environment

Strategic role of the library on the college/university campus

Strategies and applications for bring bibliographic instruction into the classroom using Web-based resources

Strategy for libraries to evolve as a modern technological workplaces (staff skills and training issues)

Student acceptance of print vs. electronic resources and observations regarding students being willing to wait for digital resources that may be temporarily unavailable, such as the server is down, rather than use print indexes, abstracts, or journal articles

Students in the academic library: client, customer, or patron and the difference it makes in how we refer to our users and community of student/faculty scholars

Successful outsourcing activities: what they are, why they were successfully outsourced

Survey of consortia across the country: what they do, how they are organized, who belongs

Survey of libraries for emergency or disaster plans, e.g., fire, weather (hurricane, snow, tornado), flood, etc. (Model paper is by Kalyan, S., Xue-Ming Bao, and Marta M. Deyrup. "Academic Libraries' Emergency Plans for Inclement Weather," Library Administration and Management 15(4), 223-229, 2001.)

Survey of students and faculty as part of a quality assessment program
Survey of where students turn when they have a paper to write and what type(s) of resources they use

SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis methodology and interpretation for an academic, health science, public, or special library
Three fundamental problems that libraries must solve in the next five years (identification of those problems and how to approach?)

Trends (administration, budget, collections, customer service, staffing, staff supervision and management, technology)

Use of specific electronic resources (e.g., Dow-Jones, Gale Resources, etc.) in support of an academic program

Value and importance of library websites and importance to be as simple as Google to navigate

Value and ongoing usefulness of book collections in the library in face of trends toward electronic collections

Value or significance of remote access to the library's electronic resources (academic, municipal, public libraries)

Value proposition statement for libraries: what it is and how it is best determined and articulated

Virtual reference: what it is, how to do it, examples, types of questions
Web-based bibliographic instruction

White paper on a topic, such as outcomes assessment, future of cataloging, interlibrary loan, e-journal usage, fines for students and faculty, etc.

Wireless connectivity: its transformative impact on the academic library

Writing a plan (action plan for some activity, advertising plan, communications plan, gap analysis and customer service quality plan, marketing plan, strategic plan, technology plan) for an academic library

by Arthur W. Hafner