#ITOT Dissertation Proposal

Last week I submitted my research proposal for my dissertation. Since one of the primary purposes of setting up a blog was to track it's progress I thought I should give a little summary.


At library school, whenever we had a guest speaker questions often aimed at them from classmates were not about their roles but how they got them. In other more casual conversations people often expressed concerns about what to do next, how were they going to get their first professional jobs if the work's not there, organisations are closing shop (hiring freeze) or people weren't moving out of their posts at the necessary rate?


My initial reading focused on this career platauing and the concept of the greying profession labelled at librarianship, not just because of it's dowdy perception but backed up by demographic research. The "greying" profession has been widely written about from an American perspective where employment planning is quite cyclical. The late 1990s saw many folk concerned about the impending wave of retirements that were believed to be around the corner and prompted a recruitment drive in early 2000s ($10M from US Government).


The exodus, didn't happen. Of course a contributing factor being the economic downturn. So there were a lot of LIS graduates with no-where to go, feeling they had been miss-sold on the profession (see Fiakoff 2010).


So I wanted to explore getting that first professional post, what are the perceptions of those looking and the experiences of those who acquired it - the UK perspective.


Data Collection


Inevitably this will require a questionnaire - an online form being most efficient. Since there is no set sampling frame I hope to solicit as many responses as possible from a snowball effect. 

• I hope once it's launched, to promote it's completion from LISNPN, Twitter (please retweet) and other new professional's groups and mailing lists.

• Initial responses will inform further open questions to be asked in online Twitter discussions similar to the format used by @uklibchat, using the #ITOT.

• There is also the intention to carry out small interviews (face-to-face or telephone) with relevant representatives in recruitment.

So that's a very brief summary of where I'm at. If anyone has come across any good articles/blogs about this or similar please do pass them on and follow @costyouall to get involved. There are a few things emerging that are following the American trend, I would like to see a UK version of this: INALJ.COM which features success stories to inform and inspire.