So I described my change in my own research direction following my doctoral program here... And I also got involved in student projects that, while ultimately productive and good for my publication rate (and interesting), also dilute my programmatic focus. So, with the grant I submitted unscored, I'm now in a position to really seriously evaluate whether this is a direction I want to continue in now. If the grant had been scored high or funded I would have continued this path because, well, the grant was funded...
so what are my options now?
1) The simple and obvious one is wait for feedback on the grant. Revise and Resubmit. No serious change in focus. Keep plugging away at the role of tagging in knowledge organization both in libraries and elsewhere since that is where my interest lies and what I think is most interesting (particularly the connections between libraries and elsewhere).
Pros: I want to be doing this work. I've already gotten feedback once and am getting feedback again on it. I have pilot data and stimuli created and ready to go for the proposed projects. I just need the funds to carry things out on the proper scale to find results. I should have a submitted publication on tagging within libraries by the time I resubmit the grant. And hopefully solid pilot data on tagging in other contexts as pilot data with a large N.
Cons: It got a very low score the first time and wasn't talked about this time. So either the reviewers think the work has a fatal flaw, or they don't like the theoretical framing, or they think it is overambitious. Not being scored is a big clue that it's time to rethink.
2) Narrow down and only focus on tagging in libraries. I'll have to think hard about how to improve my stimuli and frame my questions here so that it is effective. And it means giving up a piece of the theoretical stuff. It still allows me to set up for later projects with this grant and it still means continuing down this changed direction stuff. I don't know if it's sufficiently different that it restarts the clock on number of submissions I have available. If I narrow so considerably, but get rejected AND it uses up my last submission I'm not sure what I'll do. I think in many ways this depends on what the reviews say - which part they thought was particularly weak and which were most salvageable.
Pros: I will soon have a publication in this area. I have pilot data for a spin off. There are really an infinite number of spin offs available to me. I think it's a theoretically plausible direction. I can make a stronger case for applied relevance. I think it will require an extremely large number of participants to be interesting though and so I'm a bit worried about it as a topic by itself.
Cons: I miss the whole connection with non-library areas. This is the most difficult part of the grant, but it's a longstanding interest. I did a paper on this as part of my comps in my phd program and then let the topic go on the advice of my dissertation direction. It narrows the possible future directions pretty dramatically. Lower risk and lower impact. I'm not sure if I can do this quickly enough to have publications out in sufficient number within this topic so that I am programmatic enough for tenure.
3) Return to my original dewey decimal studies. I'll look more programmatic with just a year or two off doing something else. There is plenty to be studied systematically here. I can keep doing variations on the theme, and I can see a clear line of research to be done here.
Pros: I have a clear track record here. There is an applied need for a more full understanding of how this system of classification works with different library patrons. And the group of patrons I specialize in are particularly understudied. I could put together a grant that would be competitive fairly easily I think.
Cons: I'd be starting the grant from scratch. I don't think I'd get funded on the first try but possibly. Really I'm resisting this because I don't really think this is a plausible direction for organization in the future. And I don't know how to ground the work with my population of patrons within the new framework to make it look like I'm not switching gears.
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Being Programmatic
So I got some pretty bad news about my grant submission last week. The grant was unscored. That means the reviewers deem it to be in the bottom 50% of the grants that they read. It doesn't get talked about. I just get critiques from the reviewers. But since the reviewers view the grant as unfundable, the critiques may be very short and not fully developed and thus hard to respond to. I get one more shot with this idea for this funding agency. So I have to think carefully about going back in with this submission in order to maximize my chances.
As I talk and think about this I think some history is relevant. I did my dissertation with Big Name Gracious Scholar. It was a fantastic experience. He studies the details of the Dewey Decimal system and dabbles in other approaches to card cataloging. But it's safe to say that most of his research is grounded in traditional approaches to card cataloging. My dissertation focused on similar issues but at a slightly more global level - say organization within the whole library rather than organization within a subject area.
Then I took this job. I industriously published my dissertation data and 1 reanalysis of that data. I started a followup study which took about 18 mos in data collection and the analysis/write up is just finishing up. It has the potential for 2 more re-analyses of the extant data (1-2 publications depending...). In the first semester I did a round of readings with 3 students on nontraditional approaches to cataloging. I'm not talking about selecting just a different flavor of organization, but radically different approaches to the whole problem of knowledge organization and retreival. Say instead of an externally imposed organizational system like the Dewey Decimal system, instead a self-organizing system like tagging and ranking of items by users. Presumably over time and with a large number of users you still end up with subject based groups of books and other items. Ultimately you still have a well organized library, but how you come up with the groupings is radically different. And I learned alot.
Out of that, I started three tangential student projects - one on font styles and readability and one contrasting the Dewey Decimal system (external organization) with user tagging as an organizational method(self-organization) and one examining how people come to learn whatever system is in place grounded in the self-organization approach. The compare and contrast project turned into a dissertation I'm co-advising that is moving very slowly (and not likely to be published before I come up for tenure). The font styles one is under review now and the training study is in the final stages of data collection.
In addition I was exposed extensively in a variety of contexts to self-organizing approaches to solving a related problem - say font selection in publishing or coming up with meaningful book titles. And I started thinking about nontraditional approaches to card cataloging. Most of this exposure wasn't directly through things that apply to card cataloguing though. But some people say that the problem of meaningful book names really isn't that different than the problem of organizing books into meaningful retrievable units. And if that's true than my intellectual community isn't as isolated as it feels right now.
But here's the problem. Technically I'm the card catalog person on faculty. And I currently have 2 publications and 1 under review on the dewey decimal system. But I also have 1 publication on the interface between fonts and the classification in the dewey decimal system. And 1 publication on fonts under review. And potentially 1 publication soon on learning to use tags for both book titles and books. And eventually 1-2 publications contrasting these two approaches. And a grant in, that has just be soundly rejected, looking at tagging both in card cataloging and in other knowledge systems not found in libraries - say in the phone system or something very unrelated.
I'm a bit afraid that I look unprogrammatic right now. I think I can right that by tenure time, but I think I'll have to pick an area and get focused soon....
And this has turned into a terribly long post, so I'll write more about what I think my options might be tomorrow.
As I talk and think about this I think some history is relevant. I did my dissertation with Big Name Gracious Scholar. It was a fantastic experience. He studies the details of the Dewey Decimal system and dabbles in other approaches to card cataloging. But it's safe to say that most of his research is grounded in traditional approaches to card cataloging. My dissertation focused on similar issues but at a slightly more global level - say organization within the whole library rather than organization within a subject area.
Then I took this job. I industriously published my dissertation data and 1 reanalysis of that data. I started a followup study which took about 18 mos in data collection and the analysis/write up is just finishing up. It has the potential for 2 more re-analyses of the extant data (1-2 publications depending...). In the first semester I did a round of readings with 3 students on nontraditional approaches to cataloging. I'm not talking about selecting just a different flavor of organization, but radically different approaches to the whole problem of knowledge organization and retreival. Say instead of an externally imposed organizational system like the Dewey Decimal system, instead a self-organizing system like tagging and ranking of items by users. Presumably over time and with a large number of users you still end up with subject based groups of books and other items. Ultimately you still have a well organized library, but how you come up with the groupings is radically different. And I learned alot.
Out of that, I started three tangential student projects - one on font styles and readability and one contrasting the Dewey Decimal system (external organization) with user tagging as an organizational method(self-organization) and one examining how people come to learn whatever system is in place grounded in the self-organization approach. The compare and contrast project turned into a dissertation I'm co-advising that is moving very slowly (and not likely to be published before I come up for tenure). The font styles one is under review now and the training study is in the final stages of data collection.
In addition I was exposed extensively in a variety of contexts to self-organizing approaches to solving a related problem - say font selection in publishing or coming up with meaningful book titles. And I started thinking about nontraditional approaches to card cataloging. Most of this exposure wasn't directly through things that apply to card cataloguing though. But some people say that the problem of meaningful book names really isn't that different than the problem of organizing books into meaningful retrievable units. And if that's true than my intellectual community isn't as isolated as it feels right now.
But here's the problem. Technically I'm the card catalog person on faculty. And I currently have 2 publications and 1 under review on the dewey decimal system. But I also have 1 publication on the interface between fonts and the classification in the dewey decimal system. And 1 publication on fonts under review. And potentially 1 publication soon on learning to use tags for both book titles and books. And eventually 1-2 publications contrasting these two approaches. And a grant in, that has just be soundly rejected, looking at tagging both in card cataloging and in other knowledge systems not found in libraries - say in the phone system or something very unrelated.
I'm a bit afraid that I look unprogrammatic right now. I think I can right that by tenure time, but I think I'll have to pick an area and get focused soon....
And this has turned into a terribly long post, so I'll write more about what I think my options might be tomorrow.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Bad.
The grant is a revision. Of the original review panel exactly 1 person remains on the roster. And he has to recuse himself due to conflict. Good? or Bad?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Baffled.
So I've been slow to take on serious supervision of doctoral students because I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing before I started telling someone else what to do. So last year I felt 'ready' to consider a student and there weren't any good doctoral applications in my areas, but there was a masters level student who seemed to be quite qualified. Exciting. I can get my feet wet with a small scale project and if I'm lucky recruit her along to a doctoral candidate (we are desperate for doctoral level personnel in my field). She did an undergraduate thesis so I know she has a sense of the research process. But... (can you see that coming?)
This student seems to have lots of personal issues that interfere with her ability to follow through. She keeps missing meetings. She is unprepared for meetings. She is early or late for meetings. I am baffled. So we had a discussion about respecting my time and being professional. And I thought she was on the right track.
And then at meetings I have to keep verbally pulling her back to the topic at hand and reminding her that there's more than one way to approach the data. And encourage her not to dismiss anything that doesn't conform to her view as non-relevant. I thought this could be over come. More reading, more discussion. It will work. Especially because I think she dismisses things because they are hard and she doesn't want to show that she doesn't understand. Not a great coping strategy, but one that can be worked through.
At the end of the fall term we made an appointment to meet and go over data over the break (because she thought this was the best time for her, less stressful & more suited to scheduling around her personal life issues). Well, she's missed that meeting completely and didn't respond to email about rescheduling. So I went to the trouble of looking up her spring course schedule just to see where we stand (maybe she decided to drop the thesis option and her enrollment will reflect this and she hasn't told me yet?). Well, she's not enrolled at all in anything for the spring. That's quite suspect actually. I don't know whether to be angry or concerned.
This student seems to have lots of personal issues that interfere with her ability to follow through. She keeps missing meetings. She is unprepared for meetings. She is early or late for meetings. I am baffled. So we had a discussion about respecting my time and being professional. And I thought she was on the right track.
And then at meetings I have to keep verbally pulling her back to the topic at hand and reminding her that there's more than one way to approach the data. And encourage her not to dismiss anything that doesn't conform to her view as non-relevant. I thought this could be over come. More reading, more discussion. It will work. Especially because I think she dismisses things because they are hard and she doesn't want to show that she doesn't understand. Not a great coping strategy, but one that can be worked through.
At the end of the fall term we made an appointment to meet and go over data over the break (because she thought this was the best time for her, less stressful & more suited to scheduling around her personal life issues). Well, she's missed that meeting completely and didn't respond to email about rescheduling. So I went to the trouble of looking up her spring course schedule just to see where we stand (maybe she decided to drop the thesis option and her enrollment will reflect this and she hasn't told me yet?). Well, she's not enrolled at all in anything for the spring. That's quite suspect actually. I don't know whether to be angry or concerned.
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