In the field of Library and Information Science, research may often begin with extensive amounts of text. Core concepts of information literacy, historical debates of best practices, and established literature on the fundamental theories of providing these information services make up the basis of our field’s “science” – but data analysis may provide the best and only way to observe objective reality. The course on Evidence-Based Decision Making challenged us to craft our own hypothetical research, and the Service Evaluation project asked us to apply that research to an imagined professional practice.

Combining a literature review with designing a possible data analysis process to assess a library service – in my case, the performance of a leisure reading collection in an academic library – taught me a lot about how the library field conducts research. It is a project that has paid dividends; in my own academic library workplace, discussions about how to handle our popular reading collection has brought me back to the research I did for this project repeatedly so I can apply it to the real world. Knowing how to navigate scholarly research and assimilate varied viewpoints and data is a skillset I can return to again and again in my future career.