Data sources for library and information science research

Abstract

It is definitely a pleasure and honor to be participating in this seminar with all of you. I am here, in part, because of conversations I have had with library school faculty members about the lack of use of my library’s resources by library school researchers, particularly doctoral students on our campus. I work as a Special Librarian at the Data and Program Library Service at UW-Madison, which serves the Social Science research community on campus through reference and provision of machine-readable statistical data files and accompanying documentation. I believe that Library and Information Science (LIS) is an inter-disciplinary field, and that to a great extent, Library Science can be characterized as a Social Science. This assumption shapes the rest of this paper, and what I have to offer in the way of research stones unturned. First I will discuss the notion of secondary analysis, then I will discuss some of the major datasets available.