Dr. Abigail Leigh Phillips

Category: young adults

  • Diving Into Real-Live Research Headfirst

    Last semester I began my first official (at least that’s what I’m calling it) research project. It began with calls for participation via social media, list-servs, and blogs to librarians across the United States. Slowly but surely, people began respond to my little online survey. I’ve snuck a few peeks at the responses, but I’m looking forward to actually digging into them. There has been some surprises! But what I’m been most surprised (and pleased) by is how enthusiastically and positively librarians have been responding to my pleas for help. This is a good reminder of how motivated, thoughtful, and engaged our community can be. We librarians are helpful by nature, but this is a step beyond what I expected. Hopefully, those who participated in the survey believe that research like mine can add something to our field. These librarians have been very giving with their time and input, especially since they aren’t received any compensation for taking my survey. I have no money/stuff to give them. Maybe one day? I’m relatively sure that once/if you get a tenure track position, the money just flows in.

    In this study, I’m investigating how librarians engage with young adult patrons through their library’s social media profiles; and what role(s) do librarians see social media as playing in marketing and promoting library services. Surprisingly (to me anyway), there hasn’t been much in the way of scholarly research into the perceptions and attitudes of librarians have towards social media. Especially public librarians. Although public libraries are well covered in the practitioner publications (American Libraries, Library Journal, etc.), there is a significant gap in the LIS literature about public librarianship. This study is my first step into doing my part to add to public library and librarian focused research.

    Over the next two months, I will work on the second step in this project: conducting interviews with librarians. This is my main reason for attending ALA Annual this year. Besides the social events and general funness of Annual, it seems like a good place to find willing interviewees. Well, that’s my game plan anyway. This will also be my first experience conducting interviews. I’ve heard that it’s not an easy process, particularly for introverts. The intense focus that interviewing demands will be challenging for me. But I’ll survive! I’m not the first introverted, non-talkative person to conduct research interviews. And I probably won’t be the last. Expect a blog post during Annual about my experiences – good or bad.

    Of course you can still help me out!

    In case you would like to participate in the survey, there’s still time. Here’s the link: https://fsu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_22YzFRW6XwThz8h

    If you are planning to attend ALA Annual and would be kind enough to sit down for a brief interview, please e-mail me at alp07@my.fsu.edu or comment below!

  • I’m a Newbie Published Author!

    I’m officially a published author as of last Thursday. My first peer-reviewed journal article has been published in the Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults (JRLYA). It’s a very exciting/intimidating experience to see your name in print, out there in the world for anyone to read. The peer-reviewed publication process is (unsurprisingly) long and challenging. After submitted a paper, there’s the sometimes lengthy wait to hear whether it has been accepted, accepted with major/minor edits, or rejected. Then there’s the peer-reviews, which are a delightfully agonizing read. After a back and forth of changes and corrections, your paper is okayed for publication. Copyright forms are figured out (I’m confused by legalese) and signed. Followed by another wait for your article to actually be published.

    Luckily, I’ve had terrific experiences with JRLYA, Journal of Education for Library and Information Studies (JELIS), and Public Libraries Quarterly (PLQ). The editors are friendly, encouraging, and understanding. This is exactly what I (and probably many other writers need). Having your writing read, judged, and openly critiqued is uncomfortable. I blogged about my experience with the peer-reviews I received from this JRLYA article back in November. As a perfectionist by nature, I’m already prone to intense self-criticism and doubt. Peer-reviews rarely help ease these feelings. But I’m learning to make peace with peer-reviews. Well…as much as I can.

    I’ve also deposited my article into the Diginole Commons, FSU’s virtual repository for electronic scholarship. I love the idea of providing open access to my work. For some reason do this makes me feel even more a part of a research community. I look forward to depositing more in the near future. My article in PLQ comes out in September, and another article will appear in JELIS in October. Hard work can pay off. I could gush more about writing and publishing, but I’ll contain my enthusiasm. I’m only jumping up and down a little bit right now. And nobody can see….

    Read my article, More Than Just Books: Librarians as a Source of Support for Cyberbullied Young Adults, via the link below. You know you want to! Yes you do.

    http://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya/2014/05/more-than-just-books-librarians-as-a-source-of-support-for-cyberbullied-young-adults/

  • I Have a Little Theory About That.

    Earlier this month, I received the go ahead to start writing my literature review. Hooray! It’s been fun taking all the research about cyberbullying I’ve been accumulating in my head and putting it on paper where it can do some work. I have my outline for the review all neatly organized, but I’m still lacking something. That something is my theory. Very little theory has been used in the cyberbullying literature. This will be my first “real” (non-assignment related) attempt at applying theory to my own research. It’s both mildly terrifying and thrilling.

    I’ve run into a roadblock with my first stab at theorizing cyberbullying. I worked with Elfreda Chatman’s theory of information poverty, trying to see how it could be used in cyberbullying. After a meeting with a faculty member who knows far more about information poverty and Chatman than I could ever hope, it seems the theory doesn’t fit as well as I hoped it would. Now I’m scouring my trusty copy of Theories of Information Behavior and other literature to find a theory that could be useful to cyberbullying research. Although I had a doctoral seminar in theory last spring, theory continues to intimidates me (to a lesser degree than before but still). Whenever I hear people discussing theory, I have this vague feeling that I’m too slow to keep up. Smiling and nodding sometimes suffices as a response. Maybe more people are intimidated by theory. They’re just better at putting on a cool front than I am. I’m confident that I’ll get through this and find the right theory (or right-ish?). Being a beginning researcher, I’m a mixture of conflicting feelings – inadequacy, fear, confusion, and excitement. Or maybe you always experience these feeling as a researcher? Maybe the intensity just changes.

    Anyone have words of wisdom for a novice theorist? What experiences have you had at applying theory to research? Triumphs or horror stories to share? How useful do you see theory in research?

    Theory can be funny?
    Theory can be funny?

  • So much drama!!

    Not long after I started researching cyberbullying I came across the concept of ‘drama’ in a conference paper by Alice Marwick and danah boyd. Unfortunately, I can’t find much more on drama in scholarly literature. Nuts. I’m familiar with drama from my own teen and undergrad years (and even as an adult. Sigh.). But that was before social media really exploded. Drama seems so closely tied to cyberbullying to adults, but also something else altogether to teens.

    Marwick and boyd (2011) describe drama as “the language that teens—most notably girls—use to describe a host of activities and practices ranging from gossip, flirting, arguing, and joking to more serious issues of jealousy, ostracization, and name-calling.” (p. 2).

    In a recent report from Pew Teens, Social Media, and Privacy, drama was cited as one of the main reasons teens are less enthusiastic users of Facebook than they once were. Reading this report and a New York Times op-ed by boyd and Marwick (2011) interested me even more in how teens define ‘drama’ and ‘cyberbullying’. What terminology should be used as a researcher? I feel that I’m missing something important by not using the words that teens use to define their experiences.

    Now I have some questions to think about:

    • How can I incorporate theory into cyberbullying research? There is a definite lack of it in cyberbullying literature.
    • How can public  librarians empower teens through digital citizenship and encourage empathy in teens? We don’t have access to teens the same way that school media specialist, teachers, administrators, or parents do.
    • How much of cyberbullying is really anonymous? the perceived  anonymity/non-anonymity of cyberbullying is fascinating to me. On one hand, most of the cyberbullying takes place within a social circle. These teens know one another. On the other hand, its hard to know how far the bullying or drama has spread. How many people? How far outside that circle?

    What to Read:

    ~Obviously I’m really into danah boyd’s work at the moment.~

    boyd, d., & Marwick, A. (2011, September 22). Bullying as true drama. New York Times, pp. A35. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/why-cyberbullying-rhetoric-misses-the-mark.html/?_r=0.

    Marwick, A., & boyd, d. (2011). The drama! Teen conflict, gossip, and bullying in networked places. Presented at A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society. Retrieved from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926349.

    I'm starting my lit review. Old school.
    I’m starting my lit review. Old school.