Published: September 13th, 2024 by Dr. Anthony Bernier

I’m generally proud of our iSchool’s approach to research methods.

Several years ago, prior to an ALA accreditation review, I investigated what other schools were doing relative to their research methods course offerings. I discovered that while most schools offered a course in research methods, only very few required such a course. Among those programs requiring a methods course, only one or two approaches were offered. Broadly speaking, while the iSchool does an excellent job in preparing students to value the importance of collecting and analyzing evidence through our methods course requirement, there is room for improvement.

Perhaps because I trained as an historian, my PhD is not in LIS, I was a bit sensitive to the methods question and felt it was important. I feel strongly that a master’s program should require exposure to how research is conducted and produced. How else, I’d argue, can we expect library and archival practitioners to ground their work in the analysis of evidence in pursuit of constant improvement? How can they serve scholars and other researchers without at least a nodding familiarity with what they need?

Other faculty disagreed. They argued that SJSU is not a research institution, that students don’t tend to like research methods (most put it off until the end of their program), and that we had enough required courses.

Anyhow, I filed my analysis with the full-time faculty for discussion at the upcoming Faculty Retreat. Today such a discussion would be vetted through our Curriculum Committee first. But the faculty was small enough back then to take up the issue as a body.

After discussion, a sufficient degree of support surfaced to institute a methods course requirement (INFO 285) – to be taken at any point after completing Course Courses (INFO 200, 202, 204). In fact, and even more encouraging, enough support surfaced to support offering a wide array of methodological approaches, not simply the one or two offered in so many other MLIS programs. Since then, students have been invited to pick from among the many offerings they feel would benefit their preparation most. We offer eight different methodological topics. I am not aware of another MLIS program offering so many choices!

I teach two different sections of our required INFO 285 methods course myself: history research methods, and a course in youth services program evaluation. Both are popular courses that frequently compel more than one section each term.

The history methods course conflicts with many students’ expectations. They assume the class is about producing “a history paper.” Rather than preparing students as amateur historians, however, the course offers students practice with many of the skills, resources, and processes historians require.

Given their mistaken expectations, one of the most difficult challenges they encounter thus begins immediately in Week 1 when they must quickly learn to establish an authoritative search syntax for their topic. I require that they begin with a professional search: establishing an authoritative syntax using formal tertiary/reference tools. While the capacity to do this should be assumed of advanced graduate students, especially those in an LIS program, few can. These skills are even more necessary now as “artificial intelligence” appears to eclipse what professional searching requires.

While I’ve urged our Core Course instructors that these skills and resources should be introduced during the Core, I have yet to be persuasive. Students thus struggle to learn these basic steps even as our advanced course moves quickly on.

My youth services course focuses on program evaluation. It challenges students to acquire and demonstrate 1) the capacity to access the degree to which library programs or services demonstrate their value to end users and/or their care givers, 2) the collection of meaningful user evaluation data, and 3) the driving of that data back into continual service improvement.

This agenda, growing increasingly important as library practices are challenged and as public institutions come increasingly under critical scrutiny, offers our students valuable skills in the competitive job market they face as well as unique opportunities to build institutional influence – even more important for those entering the professional workforce in youth services.

What I find difficult to reconcile each time I teach this course, however, is what students discover in their final projects. The project requires conducting a systematic program evaluation of one library’s offerings. Their assessments are based exclusively upon what their subject libraries document.

While I’ve taught this course for many years, the result of what students find has not changed. In a class of, say, 27 final projects, it is common to observe that perhaps one library in 27 demonstrates professional evaluation practices of its service profile.

Part of what students find difficult to surmount are the claims libraries make about the “success” of their programs. By the time they are in our MLIS program they have largely become accustomed to accepting, on face value, the claims libraries make about their impacts on youth and their care givers. This INFO 285 class challenges these assumptions directly.

It takes the entire term to inform and bolster their assessments with critical questions, analytical tools, and the confidence to see how mere claims of success do not demonstrate success. Students must reconcile that few libraries collect or use data to improve user experience.

In both of my sections of INFO 285, as likely is true for the other six methodological topics the iSchool offers, students emerge from our program not only more reflective professionals but practitioners capable and confident of demonstrably adding value to their public service institutions, services, and contributions.