Research and the Materiality of Knowledge - Presentation on Post-Soviet Social Sciences and library support. ASEEES-CESS conference, Astana, Kazakhstan, May 2014.

1. Research and the Materiality of
Knowledge in the Post-Soviet Social
Sciences: Faculty Information Use
in Kazakhstan
ASEEES-CESS Presentation
by
Celia Emmelhainz, 24 May
2014
Astana, Kazakhstan

2. Presentation Overview
o Background on the research
o Quotes and discussion:
oFaculty research habits
oEllis information-seeking model
oStrengths and challenges of location
oCreative workarounds
oMaterial aspects of research
o Recommendations and feedback?

3. AU Library Project
o “Atameken University” in Kazakhstan
o 21 faculty/student/librarian interviews
o Proposed that research habits might
differ by country of training/native
culture
o Instead, geographic location and
material limitations emerged as
stronger concern.

4. Preliminary research
questions
How do social-science students and
faculty in post-Soviet institutions
conduct research?
What factors impact their choice of
tools or approach in seeking
information?
What limitations or opportunities do they
face given their geographic and
institutional context?

5. Faculty Research Processes
Anthro: heavy use of field data, pictures,
maps; high use of area studies (Hartman
1995)
Sociology, psychology, and social work
faculty focus on journal articles over
books (Sutton & Jacoby 2008)
Librarians not a primary source of
information (Folster 1995)
Social scientists use peer feedback
heavily (Shen 2013)

6. AU: Faculty Research
Processes
“We co-author a lot” – Laurence
“I’m just basically reading” – Frannie
(Uses Google to find terms, then
Google Scholar to locate terms in
relation to scholarly debate) – Nathan
“Мен сол, дел сол сөйлемде Googleдан
іздедім” – Saltanat
Quite broad…

7. Ellis’ (1989) info-seeking
model
Social-science faculty seek info in six
steps?
1. starting work in a new area
2. chaining of citations from paper to
paper
3. browsing in an area of interest,
4. differentiating between high/low value
resources
5. monitoring research in a particular
area

8. Meho and Tibbo (2003)
additions
Difficulty of researchers studying
stateless nations provokes additional
steps of:
1. accessing difficult information
2. networking with other researchers,
3. verifying origin or accuracy of data,
and
4. managing large sets of information
effectively

9. Chaining:
“I’ve never been a huge fan of search-
engine based library research—I prefer
working from bibliographies other
people have done. I usually find I have
a much better sense of a topic based
on—looking at sort of a summary
journal article and looking at their
bibliography and grabbing random
things.” – Alex

10. Extracting:
“to me extracting is the second step, in
terms of intensively—well I intensively
read it, and on the basis of my intensive
reading I begin the process of chaining
[between citations]. And then chaining
and extracting become these reciprocal
steps that are constantly feeding back
and forth, or feeding into one another.”
– Alex

11. Differentiating
“I gain a sense of which authors are
continually being cited by other people
and are worth in turn reading carefully
myself. And if I see their names come
out I would obviously save that article
and print it out. But from the very
beginning I’m looking for particular
journals and academic publishers, and
away from others. .” – Alex

12. Monitoring
“I know I could set up an RSS feed that
tells you when they update… but I like
to check them on my own. Yes,
monitoring is fun, I think because it
keeps you in tune with what’s new, it
gives you new ideas.”
– Gareth

13. Discussion
o Faculty highlight differentiating high-
value sources, extracting data
systemically, and chaining to other
sources as key stages in their
research.
o Research online & facing paywalls
means access and networking emerge
as key concerns in their information-
seeking process – support Meho.
o Translating and Extending other

14. The Central Asian Location
o Strengths:
oSolid Central Asian/Soviet library
collection
oAccess to local archives, in-person
interviews
oUniversity investment in diversity of
resources
o Challenges:
oDifficult to access many books and
articles either in print or online
o“Teaching collection” does not yet support

15. Workarounds
o Personal networks:
◦ “I sent a journal article out late last year and
the reviewer…comments that I need to cite
this book that had been published in 1989…
That was hard to get ahold of. It was not
available as an ebook, it was not—the library
here did not have it, weirdly enough. [But] the
author himself randomly passed through
town […] It turned out he had a PDF of the
book and he was able to give it to me. This
was after giving out broadcast calls saying,
‘who the hell has a copy of the book and can
give it to me?’ It was very interesting.” – Alex
◦ Asking – limited use

16. Workarounds
Google Scholar:
◦ “it kind of like links to them. I mean,
whatever, I’ll take that… I do that more
often with the texts I’m assigning in the
class. In [one] case, I just randomly ran a
search for it and someone had scanned it
and posted it online as a class reading.
So I was able to download it and chop it
up and… give it to my class. And that
happens fairly often.” – Alex (cf. Vic)

17. Workarounds
o Old Institutional Logins:
oVia friends, faculty, old roommates,
favours
oAlex & Jake – “they have not yet cut it off”
oLaurence – “blah blah blah university”
oGareth – friend’s password for student
work
o Individual PDFs from colleagues –
Kula Ring of favors?

18. Workarounds: Summary
o Personal Networks / asking favors
o Google Scholar / linked PDFs
o Institutional Logins
o Import physical books / buy abroad
o Downloads: “Books on my hard drive
which I should not talk about”

19. Material Workarounds: the
Screen
o Switch to reading articles on screen
o Laurence: “It used to be all papers, but then
I’m moving towards screen. Not because
saving trees is my priority,” he say, but
because it’s easier to download electronic
articles to a tablet right away, if he’s reading
in a café.
o Print is “a waste of paper” (Jake), “not
environmentally friendly” (Nursultan); faculty
should “save paper” (Vic).
o Environment saved by moving from material
consumption (paper into books) and towards
processes of techno-material consumption (rare
minerals into iPads)?

20. Discussion
o Work in Central Asia defined by the
limits of print, dependence on digital
sources. Researchers compile
personal collections.
o This digital research is itself a material
practice particularly shaped by one’s
location in Central Asia.
o We treat digital objects as if they are
physical collections of texts, folders,
buttons, icons… as if they were things.

21. Recommendations/Research
Needs
o Need for recruitment/support of skilled
specialist librarians in Central Asia
oNetworks/personal librarians

22. Recommendations/Research
Needs
o Need for recruitment/support of skilled
specialist librarians in Central Asia
oNetworks/personal librarians
o Time, staff, and resources to continue
developing print collections
o Advocacy for digital access
oCf. Patricia Thurston’s presentation
yesterday – democratization vs.
privatization of access
o Continued research on information

23. THANK YOU.