What Do Patrons Really Do in Music Libraries? An Ethnographic Approach to Improving Library Services
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10588167.2013.787522
ISSN1540-9503
AutoresDavid Hursh, Christine B. Avenarius,
Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoAbstract Traditional approaches to gathering the data necessary to make informed decisions aimed at improving library services begin with librarians identifying issues they think may be in need of investigation. The ethnographic approach, on the other hand, allows the actions of library patrons to identify the issues of importance to their specific patron population. For this to occur, librarians must become participant observers, carefully recording what patrons do and then using the mixed methods approach to verify the findings. In this study, investigators based the methods they employed on the “sweeps” concept—an observation technique gaining popularity in current-day patron observation studies. Keywords: music librariesethnographypatron activitiesobservationsweepsmixed methodscollaborative learning Notes © David W. Hursh and Christine B. Avenarius 1. Douglas Zweizig, Debra Wilcox Johnson, Jane Robbins, and Michele Besant, The Tell It! 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Francine May and Fiona Black, “The Life of the Space: Evidence from Nova Scotia Public Libraries,” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 5, no. 2 (2010), http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/6497. 15. Tord Hoivik, “Count the Traffic,” Presented at the World Library and Information Congress: 74th IFLA General Conference and Council, Quebec, Canada, August 10-14, 2008, http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/107-Hoivik-en.pdf. 16. Linda R. Most, “The Rural Public Library as Place in North Florida: A Case Study,” PhD thesis, Florida State University, 2009. 17. H. Russell Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2006): 347. 18. Ibid., 367–371. This study was also granted exempt status by the Institutional Review Board of East Carolina University because it posed no more than minimal risk to participants, and no information was recorded in such a manner that human participants could be identified in any way. 19. Of the dozens of statistical analysis programs, the SPSS software is one of the most respected for social science research, and for this reason was chosen by study investigators. 20. Barney G. Glaser, Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis (Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 1992): 38–48. 21. Statistical significance is the probability, or likelihood, that the outcome of a statistical test to establish the relationship between two or more variables (in this case, casual chatting and days of the week) is not a chance occurrence. A level of statistical probability below .05 indicates that the likelihood of the findings occurring by chance is less than five times out of one hundred, or one out of twenty. 22. Leckie and Hopkins, “Public Place of Central Libraries.” 23. May and Black, “Life of the Space.” 24. Hoivik, “Count the Traffic.” 25. Leckie and Hopkins, “Public Place of Central Libraries.” 26. May and Black, “Life of the Space.” 27. Hoivik, “Count the Traffic.”
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