Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Publication Title

The Journal of Academic Librarianship

Volume

42

Issue

4

First Page

469

Keywords

Research; Practitioner-researcher; Research culture; Scholarship

Last Page

471

Abstract

There is increasing interest in defining the competencies of librarians, including the skills, abilities, and knowledge required for librarians to engage in research. While competencies are helpful when evaluating performance or identifying development opportunities, a focus only on competencies may be restrictive. Through the lens of social constructionism, this essay advocates for a shift in our conversations towards an exploration of librarians’ capacity to experience, grow, and evolve as researchers. This shift in focus and in language may assist in building a context for librarian-researchers where research is not viewed as the application of static set of skills, where research success is understood to rely on more than the skills of the individual, where the potential for approaches to research far exceed any single list, and finally where librarians recognize that they can be successful researchers.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.06.002

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