I, for one, would strongly encourage ALCTS to do this. As part of this effort I suggest that ALCTS focus not only on actually doing the research, but also encourage its use. We have a long history of not using research.
An example that comes to mind is the recommendation from the CLR OPAC studies in the 1980s to include spellcheckers. I just searched 3 public and 3 university library catalogs for "tennesee" - not a big sample, but the public libraries had spellcheckers and the academic did not. The fact that spellcheckers are not universal in OPACs strikes me as a good example of vendors not responding to research findings and the rest of us (except maybe the public librarians in this case) not being demanding enough.
A related issue that came up several times in the Ethics and Information Organization conference is that our cataloging rules are not based on research. I don't know if this is the case, but it strikes me that getting students more involved in reading and discussing the research literature and how it can be applied can only be a good thing.
Hope
Hope A. Olson, Professor and Associate Dean
School of Information Studies
510G Bolton Hall
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201
USA
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS
email [log in to unmask]
----- "Allyson Carlyle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: "Allyson Carlyle" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 9:20:13 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
> Subject: Re: [eduCAT] Who do you pay attention to?
>
> Hi all,
> Just an fyi - the Year of Cataloging Research (2010) is still in the
> planning stages - we will work on the idea at Annual in Chicago, and
> will announce (I hope) in early fall.
> Allyson
>
>
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