Conceptions of Expertise Among Librarians through a Gender Lens

Co-PI: Dr. Deborah Hicks
Funding Agency: University of Buffalo Gender Institute
Funding Amount: $3,150
Funding Period: 2022 

Summary: This project explores librarians’ conceptions of professional expertise through interviews of librarians representing multiple intersectionalities, including gender, race, type of role (public-facing and non-public-facing roles), and managerial level. Librarianship has long wrestled with issues of professional identity and power relations. Past research has found that librarians who identify as women downplay their professional expertise when discussing public service activities. However, subsequent research did not find a similar tendency among librarians of color. The discrepancies in these studies’ findings suggests that an intersectional approach to examining how librarians understand and enact their professional expertise will expand our current understanding of librarians’ expertise, with a goal to promote currently marginalized forms of expertise among information workers. This study will lay a foundation for future research into conceptions of professional expertise among librarians and will demonstrate the value of an intersectional lens for that scholarship.

You want the truth?: The evidentiary character of digital objects

PI: Dr. Darra Hofman
Funding Agency: SJSU RSCA Seed Grant
Funding Amount: $5,000
Funding Period: 2022-2023 

Summary: This project aims to identify and map the major evidentiary paradigms applied by and to digital records and data, to support the ongoing availability and accessibility of trustworthy digital evidence. This project will support initial,e exploratory research in a much larger body of work exploring the evidentiary nature of digital data and records and the requirements for preserving and curating heterogenous, interactive data types in such a way that they can serve as trustworthy evidence for a variety of purposes and in a number of different contexts. The broader project, which extends beyond the scope of the Seed Grant, will combine doctrinal legal research, critical interpretive synthesis, survey research, case studies, and expert interviews. The Seed Grant will utilize critical interpretive synthesis and doctrinal legal research to map (through taxonomies and eventually, ontologies) the longstanding disciplinary paradigms (archives, law, and science) that determine how user communities evaluate the trustworthiness of digital objects as evidence. 

Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship

Partner: Alyce Scott
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
Funding Amount:  $249,725
Funding Period: 2022-2023

Summary: WGBH Educational Foundation (WGBH) will host a Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship for 10 students enrolled in library and information science (LIS) graduate programs to pursue digital preservation projects at public broadcasting organizations around the country, gaining hands-on experience in audiovisual preservation. WGBH will work with five partner universities: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Missouri, University of Oklahoma, San Jose State University, and Clayton State University. Each university will be paired with a local public media station to serve as a fellowship host. Fellowship placements will address the need for digitization of at-risk public media materials and increase audiovisual preservation education capacity in LIS graduate programs across the country.

Reading Nation Waterfall

PI: Dr. Anthony Chow
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $1.4 million
Funding Period: 2020-2023

Summary: The Reading Nation Waterfall project aims to increase access to literary resources and libraries for Native American children and families. The project partners  include Crow Tribe of Montana (Montana), Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (North Carolina), Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina (North Carolina), Northern Cheyenne (Montana), and Kewa Pueblo, formerly Santo Domingo Pueblo (New Mexico). The project will have national impact in seven ways: 1) It further pilots, scales, and extends activities previously funded and tested in the field through an IMLS planning grant; 2) Expands these activities to new audiences; 3) Is easily replicable and implementable across the field; 4) Addresses all three aspects of the core mission of IMLS – Promote Lifelong Learning, Build Capacity, and Increase Public Access; 5) Focuses on the Lifelong Learning project category by working with cross disciplinary partners working with children from 0-10; 6) Establishes a team with the expertise, experience, and culturally appropriate perspective to implement the project; and 7) Develops and disseminates, in partnership with local and national library associations and community organizations, a Native American literacy and library model. The project team will also develop and disseminate a process to be shared via web-based toolkit and traditional academic presentation and publications for easy replication.

Educating for Equity?: Sexual and Gender Minority Privacy in Library and Information Studies Education

Co-PIs: Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran and Dr. Darra Hofmann
Funding Agency: Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Research Grant Competition
Funding Amount: $5,000
Funding Period: 2021-2022

Summary: This project examines whether students are equipped to handle complex questions of information policy by examining an urgent information problem facing libraries: the privacy of sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals in the face of COVID-19 surveillance. Sexual and gender minorities face significant information risks that differ from those of cis-gender, heterosexual people; improper information disclosure can lead to the loss of employment, housing, access to health care, and social support for SGM due to outing. This study asks, “Are LIS programs preparing their students to meet the needs of LGBTQ+ patrons and stakeholders from a policy perspective in the workplace?” It will answer that question with a mixed-methods study, including a survey of LIS faculty, a content analysis of ALA-approved masters programs’ learning outcomes and syllabi, a document analysis of the privacy policies of a purposive sample of libraries, and interviews with library employers. 

Feels Like Begging: First-Generation Online Graduate Students in Library and Information Science

Co-PIs: Dr. Anthony Bernier and Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran 
Funding Agency:  SJSU Level-Up Grant. 
Funding Amount: $20,140
Funding Period: 2021-2022

Summary: What can the experiences of first-generation students (FGS) in online masters programs teach us about improving student success? Dr. Bernier and Dr. Villagran will use the SJSU Level Up Grant to produce a competitive project prospectus potentially leading to an IMLS invitation to submit a full proposal for its Research in Service to Practice Grant in response to a new question relevant to the experiences of First Generation Students in online LIS programs.

Integrating Immigrants into the LIS Workforce: A Pilot, Collaborative Project  

PI: Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran (with Co-PI Dr. Ana Ndumu from University of Maryland, College Park) 
Funding Agency:  Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)  
Funding Amount: $750
Funding Period: 2020-2021

Summary: The REFORMA Education Committee is partnering with the REFORMA Mid-Atlantic Chapter and Prince George’s Public Library System on a one-year pilot project to introduce refugees and immigrants to the library professions through a self-paced mini-course. Funding supports a collaboration to develop the course and then encourage participation among up to five immigrant or refugee adults who seek to apply their skills to the U.S. workforce. This project advances the ALISE Community Conn@CT mini-grant’s mission of connecting with social justice organizations to create innovative solutions. In addition, it presents an avenue for increasing ethnic and racial diversity in the library field.

Native American Community Anchors: TV Whitespaces for Tribal Connectivity, Equity, and Inclusion

PI: Dr. Kristen Rebmann
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $249,882
Funding Period: 2018-2021

Summary: San Jose State University’s School of Information, the Tribal Libraries Program of the New Mexico State Library, the New Mexico State Department of Information Technology Office of Broadband & Geospatial Initiatives, the Gigabit Libraries Network, and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Computer Science will collaborate with tribal libraries across New Mexico to explore dramatically improving tribal internet connectivity, equity, and inclusion through the design and implementation of several TV Whitespace (TVWS) networks statewide. The project will address challenges associated with Native American digital access and inclusion through a four-part work plan involving professional development, technology implementation via a subaward program, evaluation research, and model development/dissemination.

National Forum on the Assessment of Scholarly Communication Programs

Partner: Dr. Lili Luo
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $149,384
Funding Period: 2019-2021

Summary: Dr. Luo Lili joins the IMLS grant project titled  “National Forum on the Assessment of Scholarly Communication Programs” as an evaluator. Her role is to provide methodological expertise in the data gathering and analysis for the project. With the support of the grant, the Sacramento State University Library, in collaboration with the San Jose State University Library, will hold a two-day forum that will focus on standards and best practices in evaluating scholarly communications programs at large master’s degree-granting public universities. Forum attendees will include experts from library assessment, who may have experience in scholarly communication, to present and lead discussions on how existing assessment techniques can be implemented for scholarly communication services. The forum will result in a report with recommendations for standards and a comprehensive set of best practices in assessing the range of services that comprise a scholarly communication program.

CSU Commission on the Extended University/Innovation Grant for MS in Informatics Degree

PI: Dr. Sandy Hirsh
Funding Agency: California State University Commission on the Extended University/Innovation Grant
Funding Amount: $50,000
Funding Period: 2019-2021

Summary: This grant funding is to assist in the development of the fully-online Master of Science in Informatics degree at SJSU offered in Fall 2019 through a self-support model. The development grant was intended to help fund course development stipends, marketing activities, student assistant salaries, and software licenses to create a robust, high-quality program. 

Recasting First Generation Student Experience for LIS Success

PI: Dr. Anthony Bernier
Funding Agency: ALISE Research Grant
Funding Amount: $5,000
Funding Period: 2019-2020

Summary: This research project will further a previous investigation on how library and information science (LIS) in general, and SJSU iSchool in particular, can better prepare first generation professionals to thrive both at school and in practice.  This competitive grant was awarded on the basis of its potential for LIS education, the significance of the project, Dr. Bernier’s demonstrated qualifications, and the overall project design. 

Debating Diversity: How Twitter Facilitates Professional Discussions

PI: Dr. Deborah Hicks 
Funding Agency: San Jose State University RSCA Grant Program
Funding Amount: $5,000
Funding Period: 2019-2020

Summary: Discussions about diversity and what it means for librarianship have been ongoing for decades. There is little doubt that librarianship is committed to diversity as a core value; however, recent debates have highlighted a disagreement among librarians about how this core value should be interpreted. This disagreement came to a head in 2018 in response to the ALA’s revision of “Meeting Rooms: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.” The revised interpretation included hate groups amongst the groups libraries could not exclude from using library meeting spaces. Librarians took to Twitter to debate the revisions, with their conversations coalescing around the hashtags #NoHateALA and #IStandWithALA. The debate highlighted not only the power of Twitter as a platform for professional discussions, but also how librarians understand their core values. This project will use these debates as a case study to examine how librarians negotiate the collective meaning of their core values. A discourse analysis and social network analysis will be performed, alongside interviews with stakeholders, to examine the professional discourses and relationships that arose during the controversy. The aims of this project are: To explore librarians’ evolving understanding of their core values of diversity and intellectual freedom; and, to understand how librarians use Twitter to debate and discuss issues important to the profession. 

Examining the Cultural Intelligence of Academic Law Librarians

PI: Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran
Funding Agency: AALL Academic Law Libraries SIS Research & Scholarship Grant
Funding Amount: $2,000
Funding Period: 2019-2020

Summary: The mixed-methods research analyzes the cultural intelligence of academic law librarians. It is a timely effort with the new AALL Body of Knowledge (BoK) to expand this research to examine all types of law librarians with this research focused on academia due to aspects such as artificial intelligence, OER, data science and analytics which are impacting the profession. This research supports both the spirit and the practical application of at least three of the AALL Body of Knowledge Domains (professionalism + leadership, teaching + training, and marketing + outreach). To date, the researcher is the only individual who has contributed empirically to the literature on this topic as it applies to law librarians and law libraries. The target population for this study is academic law librarians who currently work in an academic law library with the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section as the basis for invitation to participate in this research.

Native American Community Anchors: TV Whitespaces for Tribal Connectivity, Equity, and Inclusion

PI: Dr. Kristen Rebmann
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $249,882
Funding Period: 2018-2020

Summary: San Jose State University’s School of Information, the Tribal Libraries Program of the New Mexico State Library, the New Mexico State Department of Information Technology Office of Broadband & Geospatial Initiatives, the Gigabit Libraries Network, and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Computer Science collaborate with tribal libraries across New Mexico to explore dramatically improving tribal internet connectivity, equity, and inclusion through the design and implementation of several TV Whitespace (TVWS) networks statewide.

Libraries Leading in Digital Inclusion and Disaster Response via TV WhiteSpace Wireless Connections

PI: Dr. Kristen Rebmann
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $249,998
Funding Period: 2016-2019

Summary: This project helps libraries explore dramatically expanding internet access in their communities by using TVWhiteSpace (TVWS), a new low-cost wireless technology. This project is led by San Jose State University’s School of Information. Key collaborators, including the Gigabit Libraries Network, the School, Health, & Libraries Broadband Coalition, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center, explore dramatically expanding digital access/inclusion and modes to provide connectivity as part of disaster preparedness. Read more here.

Reaching Those Who Served: Recruiting and Preparing Military Veterans for Careers in Librarianship

Partner: Dr. Sandy Hirsh
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $488,501
Funding Period: 2016-2019

Summary: The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, and its partners, the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UH-Manoa) and the School of Information (iSchool) at San Jose State University (SJSU), collaborate to conduct a two-pronged project to help more U.S. veterans to become librarians. The three-year project includes 1) scholarships for 12 veterans to attend LIS masters programs; and 2) research exploring how military veterans choose careers in librarianship and information studies. Read more here.

Institute for Research Design in Librarianship

Partner: Dr. Lili Luo
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $394,014
Funding Period: 2016-2019

Summary: Loyola Marymount University’s William H. Hannon Library, in partnership with San José State University School of Information and the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium, extends and improves the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). Throughout the project, sixty novice academic and research librarian researchers receive instruction in research methods and a full year of support to complete a project. Read more here.

Searching for First Generation LIS Student Success

PI: Dr. Anthony Bernier
Funding Agency: ALA Diversity Research Grant
Funding Amount: $2,500
Funding Period: 2018-2019

Summary: The project analyzes the experience of First Generation masters students enrolled at San Jose State University’s School of Information. This research addresses the gap in various literature that have omitted the First-Generation graduate student experience, both on-campus and virtually. Read more here.

Investigation of Possible Uses of Blockchain Technology by Libraries-Information Centers to Support City-Community Goals

Co-PIs: Dr. Sandy Hirsh and Dr. Sue Alman
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $100,000
Funding Period: 2017-2018

Summary: Through a national forum, the project investigates ways that blockchain technology can be used by libraries to partner with other organizations and to support city or community goals. Blockchain technology is a shared digital/electronic ledger featuring a constantly updated list of transactions. It is supported by a peer-to-peer network that may be either public or private. This technology has the potential to help libraries develop a distributed metadata system; facilitate better digital rights management; and create a protocol for supporting community based collections. Read more here.