My Role: Principal Researcher (2011-2013)
This project represents research conducted in completion of my graduate thesis, “The Shoemaker’s Son: A Substantive Theory of Social Media for Knowledge Sharing in Academic Libraries.” My thesis was successfully defended on March 23, 2013.
Status: Completed.
Summary
In the last decade social media have become integrated in the knowledge sharing practices of libraries. While an entire genre of literature is devoted to the use of social media for promotion (i.e., ‘Library 2.0’), little research has been done on the use of social media for organizational knowledge sharing in academic libraries. Using knowledge management as a framing discourse, this study addresses the gap in the literature by examining social media use at two academic libraries. Analysis of qualitative interviews with 14 librarians using a Grounded Theory approach produces a substantive theory of social media use for knowledge sharing in academic libraries, revealing that these tools are underused for the purpose of dialogue and the sharing of tacit knowledge, and providing practical implications for their future implementation. This study establishes a theoretical framework for the examination of how social media are used in organizations that can inform future research.
Funding
In 2011-2012 I was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship from the Government of Alberta.
Publications and Presentations
The Shoemaker’s Son: A Substantive Theory of Social Media Use for Knowledge Sharing in Academic Libraries. Master’s Thesis for MLIS and MA in Humanities Computing, University of Alberta, Canada. March 21, 2013. [Link]
On the Edge of Method: Qualitative Data Analysis Software and the Critical Researcher. Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH/SCHN) Annual Meeting, Victoria, British Columbia, June 3-5, 2013. [PDF]
The Use of Internal Blogs for Knowledge Sharing in Academic Libraries… and More! NEOS Mini-Conference 2012, Edmonton, Alberta, June 8, 2012.
A Pilot Study of Blog Use for Internal Knowledge Sharing in Academic Libraries. Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS-ACSI) 40th Annual Conference, Waterloo, Ontario, June 2, 2012. [Link] [PDF]