Cataloging Research by Design: A Taxonomic Approach to Understanding Research Questions in Cataloging

Abstract

This article asserts that many research questions (RQs) in cataloging reflect design-based RQs, rather than traditional scientific ones. To support this idea, a review of existing discussions of RQs is presented to identify prominent types of RQs, including design-based RQs. RQ types are then classified into a taxonomic framework and compared with RQs from the Everyday Cataloger Concerns project, which aimed to identify important areas of research from the perspective of practicing catalogers. This comparative method demonstrates the ways in which the research areas identified by cataloging practitioners reflect design RQs—and therefore require design approaches and methods to answer them.

Keywords:

• Cataloging research
• research questions
• design
• Everyday Cataloger Concerns
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the members of the Everyday Cataloger Concerns research team: Violet Fox, Eli Gandor-Rood, Paul Weiss, Morgan Bell, and especially Allyson Carlyle. Additional thanks are due to Young-In Kim for her assistance with data analysis for this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Notes

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2 “2010 Designated as the Year of Cataloging Research,” ALCTS Newsletter Online 20, no. 4 (2009), http://www.ala.org/alcts/ano/v20/n4/nws/alcts (accessed April 10, 2017).

3 Allyson Carlyle, “Invited Editorial: Announcing 2010, Year of Cataloging Research,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 47, no. 8 (2009): 687–690; Allyson Carlyle, “Cataloging Research Guided by Values,” Library Resources and Technical Services 54, no. 3 (2010): 126–128.

4 Allyson Carlyle, “Research.” http://faculty.washington.edu/acarlyle/publications.html (accessed April 10, 2017). See the section on ongoing research projects.

5 Allyson Carlyle, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Paul J. Weiss, and Violet Fox, “Everyday Cataloger Concerns: A Research-Based Agenda for Library Cataloging.” Presentation given at the Cataloging and Metadata Management Section of the Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group, ALA Annual Conference, Anaheim, California (June 21–26, 2012). Presentation slides available at http://connect.ala.org/node/183589 (accessed April 10, 2017).

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7 See for example Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Marie L. Radford’s Research Methods in Library and Information Science (6^th ed), which refers sporadically to research questions throughout the text but never offers a concrete definition, or Alison Jane Pickard’s Research Methods in Information, which only discusses research questions in relation to specific research methods.

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20 Feldt 2010.

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23 Feldt 2010; Alvesson & Sandberg 2013.

24 Ibid.

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26 Maxwell 2013.

27 Onwuegbuzie & Leech 2006.

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30 Trochem 2006.

31 Meltzoff 1998.

32 Feldt 2010.

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42 Alvesson & Sandberg 2013.

43 Liedka 2004.

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50 Dillon 1984, 355.

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