RES 5040: Teacher as Researcher (spring 09)

As neither a teacher nor an employee at a public library, I am looking forward to the challenge of this action action research project and am still searching for topic that will bring about positive change in a given area and provide a high level of personal satisfaction. My main area of concern in choosing a topic is finding a meaningful issue that has enough of an audience/focus group as to allow the deep and evolving reearch required of action learning. Though I have not committed to one idea as of yet, I do have several ideas that I will be exploring as the coming week progresses.

I am in the public library track as well as an employee at an independent bookstore, so the aspects of action learning that most inspired me concerned community and the signficance of the "life-world" of each person and group found within an institution's service area. Stringer cites understanding cultural needs and differences as the "key to running a successful classroom [or library]" (p.20) and uses several examples from his experience with the Aborigines to illustrate the concept's importance. Similarly, a small bookstore owes a great amount of its success to its comprehension of community values, needs, and concerns. This knowledge of audience and service sommunity is seen not only in stock selection but through a schedule of author events and other special promotions. However, as mentioned in the text, both the bookstore and the library, even though they seek to serve the community, are often guilty of viewing things through a subjective lens. The library is forced to consider staff, budget, and circulation needs when discussing community service and the bookstore is, in the end, a business with an eye towards the bottom line. I was also struck by the democratic process involved in action research and how each party empowered the other through collaboration. A librarian's or bookseller's knowledge is a great resource, but this expert knowledge requires communication with a feedback from the community to realize its full potential (p.25), resulting in the life-enhancing experiences that Stringer mentions among the end results of action research. To this end I am exploring options in both the public library and my bookstore and hope that my final project will raise the level of service provided by either institution through a deeper exploration of community values and their applications in either setting and result in greater patronage from the community members.

Idea #1: The West Asheville branch of the Buncombe County Library System is host to an ethnically and econmoically diverse community of patrons, including many Spanish-speaking families. The branch hosts succesful storytimes for toddlers and young children during the week, but recently discontinued a bilingual storytime due to low attendance. The librarians failed to realize that the majority of its target audience consisted of two-income families, and the early weekday storytimes were just not practical for most families. I would be very interested in reevaluating the concept of a bilingual storytime that would be more accessible to Spanish-speaking families. I would also explore its appeal to the rest of the West Asheville community, which, according to head librarian Julie Newinsky, contains lots of younger families, white-collar and otherwise, concerned with offering their children a diverse and early education.

Idea #2: Independent bookstores counter their smaller selection and lack of discounts with an inventory tailored to community needs and frequent author events. In this option I would explore the effect of author events on the community's perception of the store, tracking both sales and customer opinions, and how the events could be more productive for both the store and, more importantly, the community.

I also work in the special collections section of the UNCA library, where I am putting a lot of archived information on the web for Ramsey Library's new and improved search pages. Special collections houses a wealth of interesting information about the western NC region and Asheville in particular but not many people are aware of its existence. The new webpage archives make the collection much more accessible but suffer from a lack of marketing and a limited (web savvy) audience. I would examine what is currently being done to prmote this new area of special collections, who is and who might be interested in using it, and how we could expand its user base through better promotion and public awareness. This is the last option at the moment, but it also one I just thought of while at work today, so I will be discussing things with the head of special collections Tuesday morning and may be able to enhance and refine this area of exploration.

-John Harrington