Determining how libraries and librarians help

METHODOLOGY

Knowledge Gains Resulting from Qualitative Methods

Throughout this article qualitative research methods and approaches receive particular attention because it is the assumption of the authors that this framework provides the researcher with a variety of tools that can be used to understand the complex interactions that shape phenomena of study including the impacts of libraries and librarians on society.

Qualitative research, as defined by Creswell, is "an inquiry process of understanding based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting" (Creswell, 1998 p. 15). "Accordingly," Denzin and Lincoln (2000) add, "qualitative researchers deploy a wide range of interconnected interpretive practices, hoping always to get a better understanding of the subject matter at hand" (p. 3). The use of qualitative approaches allows the researcher the flexibility to look closely to describe and explain. These frameworks, especially when informed by theory, bring a user perspective to agency evaluation. Qualitative approaches can "illuminate aspects of libraries, library services, and library users' perspectives in ways we have not had access to in previous research" (Lincoln, 2002).

LIS has benefited over the past two decades from work done by researchers using qualitative approaches. For example, starting in the 1980s, Carol Kuhlthau's extensive work on the information search process has used theoretically grounded qualitative approaches to give the field not only a framework for understanding a range of cognitive and affective states associated with the search process (factors that strongly influence the outcomes of any search), but also an understanding of the various--and very different--stages of the search process. Kuhlthau's research has shown that these now well-known stages--initiation, selection, exploration, formulation, collection, and presentation--can be understood both by those who experience them and by information professionals who can, by understanding them, develop appropriate intervention strategies (Kuhlthau, 1991, 1993, 1994, 2001). A longitudinal study of her initial group of informants indicated the positive impact on the seeker of understanding the search process (Kuhlthau, 1999).

Pioneered by Brenda Dervin in the 1970s, sense-making studies employing qualitative methods have been conducted for decades (Dervin et al., 1976). This work has made strong contributions to information behavior research; it can also be seen as contributing to an understanding of the impact of library services. In a project funded by the State Library of California, Dervin and Clark (1987) identified a range of user-identified "helps" (outcomes) associated with public library services. Dervin's categories of "helps," framed from the perspective of the general library user, included: got ideas/understandings about something; accomplished something; decided what to do or when or how to do it; got rest and relaxation and a quiet retreat; got motivated to do something; felt good about myself, my decision, my circumstances; calmed down and eased my worries; felt like I belonged and was not alone; got pleasure, entertainment, and happiness. The purpose of Dervin and Clark's overall study, which was well ahead of its time, was to bring sense making approaches to librarians so that they might collect use data "in human terms" (Dervin & Clark, 1987, p. 1). These methods laid the groundwork necessary to determine the outcomes implied in the research question examined in this article. Most information behavior researchers who use qualitative approaches also enrich this research through theory application and development.