About the LIS Research Coalition
The LIS Research Coalition was established in 2009 as a three-year project by its founding members.
The broad mission of the LIS Research Coalition is to facilitate a co-ordinated and strategic approach to LIS research across the UK. The Coalition aims to:
- bring together information about LIS research opportunities and results;
- encourage dialogue between research funders;
- promote LIS practitioner research and the translation of research outcomes into practice;
- articulate a strategic approach to LIS research;
- promote the development of research capacity in LIS.
Through its work the Coalition strengthens links between LIS researchers and LIS practitioners, and between research and practice. By bridging the gap between LIS research and LIS practitioner communities, the Coalition encourages research-led practice, so that librarians and information scientists are able to:
- exploit existing LIS research for improved decision-making in services delivery;
- enhance the value of prior work by capitalising on the significant investment in earlier studies through reuse;
- demonstrate the value and impact of library and information services to individuals, citizens/society and specialist user groups, and thus secure future investment in services delivery;
- derive job satisfaction through intellectual stimulation, enjoyment of learning, career progression, leadership development, and pride in enhanced work practice that engagement in research brings.
The Coalition has a particular interest in supporting practising librarians and information scientists, both in how they can access and exploit available research in their work, and in their own development as practitioner researchers. For researchers and practitioners alike, the Coalition provides a formal structure to improve access to LIS research, and maximise its relevance and impact in the UK.
The resources that the Coalition brings together saves researchers and practitioners time in identifying and accessing relevant material to support their engagement with research. The Coalition’s advocacy work seeks to persuade services managers of the need to support research initiatives and improve the recognition of research knowledge within the LIS professions.
The Coalition also supports projects that focus on specific goals to support LIS research in the UK, notably to develop a formal UK-wide network of LIS researchers (Developing Research Excellence and Methods – DREaM), and to determine the factors that increase or hinder the impact of research project outcomes on practice (Research in Librarianship Impact Evaluation Study – RiLIES)
The Coalition is governed by a Board of Directors comprising a representative of each member organisation. In August 2009 Professor Hazel Hall was appointed to implement the plans of Coalition. Professor Hall took on the role as a part-time secondment, while maintaining her position as Director of the Centre for Social Informatics in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University.
Details of the work that went into the establishment of the Coalition between 2006 and 2009 are available on the Coalition history page.
In March 2010 the LIS Research Coalition published a report to review the activities of its implementation from August 2009 to the end of February 2010. In March 2011 it commissioned a review of its work since its foundation in 2009. Drawing on the findings of the 2011 review, the Coalition established key priorities for its third year in 2011/12.