Editorial

The C-EBLIP Fall Symposium: Librarians as Researchers

Virginia Wilson

Guest Editor

Director, Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

University Library

University of Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Email: virginia.wilson@usask.ca

2017 Wilson. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

I am very pleased to introduce the special feature in this issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice: papers from the 2016 C-EBLIP Fall Symposium: Librarians as Researchers. The C-EBLIP Fall Symposium is a day-long gathering of librarians who are interested in or actively conducting research. The symposium is presented by the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (C-EBLIP) at the University of Saskatchewan. The first symposium was held in October 2014 with 52 attendees from across Canada (and one from the US!). In October 2015, 62 interested library and information professionals attended, and in October 2016, we had about 50 library folks participate.

C-EBLIP officially opened in July 2013 and has a mandate to support our librarians as researchers and to promote evidence based library and information practice. The idea of an event to gather library and information professionals from far and wide occurred early in C-EBLIP’s existence. It’s nice to have internal research and EBLIP support, but it’s even nicer to be able to connect with others outside of our institution so that we’re not working in a vacuum. Additionally, the C-EBLIP Fall Symposium presents another venue for librarians to disseminate their work.

The day consists of a single-track of sessions kicked off by an opening keynote address. What follows are various types of presentations. Some presenters talk about their research projects, current or finished. Some discuss why they do research. And there are other sessions about the pitfalls of doing research, or tips and tricks. The day is designed to have as many take-aways as possible for as many attendees as possible. The sessions are quick (20 minutes including questions), and the day is interspersed with plenty of time for networking, connecting, and getting to know one another. As a side note, we have always received happy feedback on the food after the events.

I’m excited that the EBLIP journal offered us the opportunity for publication. There is a great lineup of articles for you to enjoy from the 2016 edition of the Fall Symposium. It all kicks off with the keynote from Margaret Henderson, Director, Research Data Management at Virginia Commonwealth University. Margaret’s talk is entitled “Collaborating to Increase the Evidence Base in Library and Information Practice.” There are five additional articles for you in this special feature. Three are about the nuts and bolts of research and of being an academic from Lise Doucette, Western University, Shannon Lucky and Joe Rubin from the University of Saskatchewan, and Marjorie Mitchell from UBC Okanagan Campus. And there are two articles focusing on research projects – one from Shailoo Bedi, University of Victoria, and Janaya Webb, University of Toronto, and one from Carolyn Doi, University of Saskatchewan.

I would like to thank everyone who has participated in our past three C-EBLIP Fall Symposia. The events have been engaging, informative, and uplifting. Partnerships have been created, friendships have emerged, and on that day especially, we all feel proud and accomplished. I hope you will consider joining us at a future symposium as a presenter or as an attendee. We are taking a break in 2017 but hope to return in October 2018. Please watch for developments on Twitter @CEBLIP or check out the C-EBLIP website at http://library.usask.ca/ceblip/. In the meantime, please enjoy these fantastic papers!