SFPL Internship : Week 11 (Recap)

Last week, I received what can only be described as "a gift" from one of our Ten Peers: articles, overviews, detailed budget information, selection criteria, forms, charts! -- and, as icing on top of an already substantial cake: a friendly and helpful contact person. Thank you so much, Northwester!  (Your generosity offset our frustration over Uptown's eighth-inning departure).


This week was spent largely in libraries:

• Researching how to write a literature review 
• Researching digital resource policy 
• Skimming 40+ books to hone in on the ones that would be my focus
• Skimming article abstracts to hone in on the ones that would be my focus
• Debating whether it was worth my time (and that of the Interlibrary Loan staff) to request books from other libraries which would likely not arrive until May ...
• Drafting a very basic structural outline for my report: what elements it would contain, what order they would appear, etc.
• Sitting in the Special Collections Department of an academic library, so that I could review their reference materials related to digital policy (which don't circulate)

I deliberately made this a week of libraries, so that next could be a week of writing. Sustained, focused, "hard-core" writing. The kind of writing you do when you've done your research and you're confident that no matter what path your thoughts take, you'll find something somewhere to back them all up. (I'm not quite at that stage yet -- nor do I think I can be, due to the shortage of time -- but I've got a much better grasp on the literature now than I did a week or so ago, so that's good.)

And, I had to make a difficult decision this week:

Now that I know what a professional-level literature review is (and now that I've already promised to share my research with our Peer Libraries in exchange for their participation), I don't feel that I can create one in the remaining three weeks that would be up to the standard where I'd feel comfortable sharing it with everyone, let alone publishing it in a scholarly journal! Initially, that realization was a big blow to my self-esteem -- but once I came up with an alternative plan, I bounced back quickly.

What I'll do instead of a literature review is an annotated bibliography. SFPL and the Ten Peers should find an annotated bibliography equally useful -- since it will highlight and summarize relevant books for them.

In summer, after my internship is officially over, I'll turn my annotated bibliography into a proper literature review, then give it to SFPL and submit it to an appropriate journal. 

It's a compromise -- but ultimately, I think it will be more beneficial for my work, my career, and especially for my health.