'Librarians as Researchers' in Perth

By Gaby Haddow

 

The ALIAWest Committee organised an event at the State Library WA this week titled Librarians as researchers. It was advertised as:

Learn how you can take that great idea or interesting project you are currently working on and share it with the world. The session will work through how you can convert an idea you have into a conference paper or journal article. Starting with preparing the abstract, then translating the abstract into a paper or presentation. Hear from others who have gone through the process and perhaps event attempt to prepare a short abstract during the session and receive feedback from others.

Over 25 practitioners came along – a great turnout for an after work event. The session included two presentations by practitioners with experience. The first was a very brief ‘3 tips about writing an abstract for a conference paper submission’, followed by a longer presentation about submitting an article to a journal. A colleague and I then raced through some of the main issues to consider when writing and submitting a conference paper abstract – using the ‘just published’ instructions for submissions to the Online Conference in 2015.

My own tips for running a session like this:

1.       Don’t try to fit too much in – with 90 minutes, the event this week couldn’t possibly cover everything it promised in any depth

2.       Allow lots of time for questions

3.       Include some time for hands-on work or one-to-one discussions with attendees