Interacting with Librarians to Locate Australian Sociology PhDs in the Era of Constant University Restructuring

ABSTRACT

University librarians occupied an important role in facilitating our academic research project identifying and locating sociology PhDs completed in Australia from 2010–2019. This project was to be based on the supposedly straightforward collection of sociology doctorates to assess research publication practices during and post PhD. This collection process, however, proved to be complex, arduous and time-consuming. When we approached librarians for information or were referred to them by university administrators, their service ethic was evident. Structural university changes, however, sometimes impacted librarians’ ability to locate and retrieve sociology PhD theses. Successive technological changes had often fragmented catalogue and repository data, affecting librarians’ ability to trace PhDs. Loss of library staff impacted universities’ collective memory of where and how theses were stored or could be accessed. The rich interactive process between researchers and librarians in this project is explored through reviewing the corpus of emails and other exchanges developing strategies to overcome barriers tracking down completed PhD theses within Departments of Sociology or their iterations in interdisciplinary Schools of Social Sciences containing sociology ‘disciplines’, ‘programmes’ or individual sociologists. The present manuscript aims to chronicle the intricacies of gathering data on completed Australia sociology PhDs with the assistance of librarians.

KEYWORDS:

• Administrator
• digital records
• sociology PhD
• university restructure
• doctoral students
• librarian

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Research funded by Macquarie University (International Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship iMQRES – PhD Scholarship Allocation No. 20224138) and forms part of Adam Rajčan's PhD.

Notes on contributors

Adam Rajčan

Adam Rajčan is a PhD candidate at Macquarie University and Adjunct Research Officer in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University. He is currently researching publishing patterns of Australian and New Zealand sociology doctoral students along several lines: gender, destination journals, university ranking, and monograph v thesis by publication.

Edgar Burns

Edgar Burns is Hawke's Bay Regional Council Chair of Integrated Catchment Management, Waikato University School of Social Sciences, developing social change insights about environment practices in the light of climate change. He publishes on expert knowledge and various aspects of tertiary education and regenerative agriculture.