2018 Round-Up: the Scholar-Librarian

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Annual Review, 2018

St Pauls SilhouetteI am a Performing Arts Librarian 3.5 days a week, and a Postdoctoral Researcher 1.5 days a week.  In this self-imposed annual review, I’m not listing routine activities conducted in either capacity; it goes without saying that I’ve answered queries, catalogued, delivered library research training to a number of different class groups, attended meetings, and pursued research-related activities and fieldwork.

From September 2017 to September 2018, I was the AHRC-funded Principal Investigator for a new research network, the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall music research project.  Since then, I have continued to conduct research and network with the various scholars and libraries involved with this project, and in the new year shall be pursuing further grant-funding in order to extend the reach of the project.

As someone who continually asks themselves, “Am I doing enough?”, I feel that even I can be reasonably content with this year’s outputs!

  • JANUARY
  • Chaired sessions at Traditional Pedagogies, international conference at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
  • FEBRUARY
  • Blogpost: Copyright Literacy: Legal Deposit (Copyright Behind the Scenes) – and Scores of Musical Scores  https://copyrightliteracy.org/2018/02/21/legal-deposit-copyright-behind-the-scenes-and-scores-of-musical-scores/
  • Initial iteration of Claimed From Stationers Hall Bibliography, (since updated regularly) https://claimedfromstationershall.wordpress.com/bibliography/
  • Book chapter, ‘Wynds, Vennels and Dual Carriageways: the changing Nature of Scottish Music’, in Understanding Scotland musically: folk, tradition and policy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, p. 230-239.
  • MARCH
  • Claimed From Stationers’ Hall Workshop, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, (26 Mar)
  • Scottish Library & Information Council (SLIC) From PGCert to PG Certainty: Enabling the Distance Learner (invited talk, sectoral organisation) (March 2018)
  • APRIL
  • IAML(UK & Irl) Annual Study Weekend, invited talk, Pathways, outputs and impacts: the ‘Claimed from Stationers Hall’ music project takes wings
  • IAML(UK & Irl) Annual Study Weekend From PGCert to PG Certainty: Enabling the Distance Learner (quick-fire session) (April 2018)
  • MAY
  • Blogpost based on the session I gave at the IAML(UK & Ireland) Annual Study Weekend 2018 for the IAML(UK & Ireland) blog, http://iaml-uk-irl.org/blog/libraries-reaching-out-distance-learners
  • JUNE
  • EAERN (Eighteenth-century Arts Education Research Network), ‘Claimed From Stationers’ Hall: But What Happened Next?’ (University of Glasgow, 6 June)
  • Romantic Song Network steering group seminar at British Library
  • JULY 
  • IAML/AIBM Annual Congress, Leipzig, ‘A Network of Early British Legal Deposit Music: Explored through Modern Networking
  • SEPT
  • RMA Conference, Bristol, ‘Overlapping Patterns: the Extant Late Georgian Copyright Music Explored by Modern Research Networking’
  • NOV
  • Field-trip to King’s Inns and Trinity College Dublin Libraries, and British Library
  • EFDSS Conference, London, ‘National Airs in Georgian British Libraries’
  • ARLGS (Academic and Research Libraries Group Scotland) Teachmeet at Glasgow University Library – speaker
  • Article, Trafalgar Chronicle, New Series 3 (2018), 202-212, jointly authored with Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, ‘My love to war is going’: Women and Song in the Napoleonic Era’.
  • DEC
  • Article, Information Professional, Nov-Dec 2018, ‘Coffee and Collaboration’ [teaching electronic resource strategies]

Additionally, I have authored 79 blogposts and 5 Newsletters in connection with the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall research project.

Bat printed cup and saucer possibly New Hall £2-00Institutional Repository: Pure.  My profile:- https://tinyurl.com/KarenMcAulayPureInstRepository

I’ve blogged elsewhere about my musical and sewing activities – both essential to me in terms of relaxation and balance!  You’ll find it here:-

https://karenmcaulay.wordpress.com/2018/12/22/2018-round-up-in-creative-mode/

Collage map golden triangles legal deposit

Researchfish – Little Fish in a Big Pond

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

When one is awarded a grant by a major research body, obviously accountability is a fishmosaicvery important consideration.  To that end, activities have to be logged on the poetically-named but very definitely serious Researchfish website.  All big scholarly funders use it, asking for details of such matters as publications arising out of the research, further funding, engagement activities (there’s quite a bit I can enter here!) and so on.

At first sight, it’s a bit intimidating, but once I’d downloaded a list of “Common Outcome Types with sub-types”, and crossed out the columns in which no-one would remotely expect me to have outputs (Medical Products, Interventions and Clinical Trials, or such Research Tools as Biological samples, or human models of mechanisms or symptoms), it didn’t look quite so bad.  I do feel a bit like a little fish in a big pond compared to people winning major awards to find cures for horrific diseases, design new space rockets, or solve the greater political and social conundrums of our age.  Still, one has to start somewhere!

So, my activity for the rest of today will be to go through the list I’ve already compiled, and add the various presentations, blogs and guest-blogposts, and so on, and just see how far I get!  For one-and-a-half days a week over 13 months, it looks okay – well, in my opinion, at any rate!  As I’ve said often enough before, watch this space.

 

 

Research Impact in Library Land

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’m reading a book about research impact at the moment.   (We have a copy in the library, but I’ve also got it on Kindle, so I have no excuse not to plough right through it!)  I must admit, there are moments when I metaphorically kick myself under the table, because some of the advice is basically common sense.  But, if it’s common sense, why didn’t I think of it?  So it’s a good idea to get reminded of the obvious things whilst simultaneously getting plenty of fresh ideas, and just generally making sure that impact is built into this research network right from the very start.

So, here are the first questions, quoted directly from my new guru (Mark S. Reed, author of the Research Impact Handbook, pp.72-73):-

  • “What aspects of [our] research might be interesting or useful to someone?…”
  • “Could [our] research help address these needs [ie, issues, policy areas … trends]?”
  • Can our research help remove barriers that are currently inhibiting these areas?
  • If we know who might benefit from our research, can we identify “what aspects of [our] research they are likely to be most interested in?” Could we make it even more relevant?
  • So, what changes could our research effect?
  • And do we know who would benefit and who we should guard against disadvantaging?

Please don’t leave these questions hanging in the air! I’m looking for answers, and I’m keen to engage with other researchers interested in similar issues in this curious world where musicology, book history and library history meet with legal deposit on the one hand, and individual music-makers on the other.  Do share your views!