Advocating for a more active role for the user in LIS participatory research: a scoping literature review
| Date | 21 November 2023 |
| Pages | 446-468 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2022-0254 |
| Published date | 21 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Valerie Nesset,Nicholas Vanderschantz,Owen Stewart-Robertson,Elisabeth C. Davis |
Advocating for a more active role
for the user in LIS participatory
research: a scoping
literature review
Valerie Nesset
Department of Information Science, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
Nicholas Vanderschantz
The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Owen Stewart-Robertson
School of Information Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and
Elisabeth C. Davis
Department of Information Science, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Through a review of the literature, this article seeks to outline and understand the evolution and
extent of user–participant involvement in the existing library and information science (LIS) research to identify
gaps and existing research approaches that might inform further methodological development in participant-
oriented and design-based LIS research.
Design/methodology/approach –A scoping literature review of LIS research, from the 1960s onward, was
conducted, assessing the themes and trends inunderstanding the user/participant within the LIS field. It traces
LIS research from its early focus on information and relevancy to the “user turn”, to the rise of participatory
research, especially design-based, as well as the recent inclusion of Indigenous and decolonial methodologies.
Findings –The literature review indicates that despite the reported “user turn”, LIS research often does not
include the user as an active and equal participant within research projects.
Originality/value –The findings from this review support the development of alternative design research
methodologies in LIS that fully include and involve research participants as full partners –from planning
through dissemination of results –and suggests avenues for continuing the development of such design-based
research. To that end, it lays the foundations for the introduction of a novel methodology, Action Partnership
Research Design (APRD).
Keywords Research methods, Action research, User research, Participatory design
Paper type Review
Introduction
The history and development of research in library and information science (LIS) has been
well documented, with various literature reviews having described the field’s many shifts and
turns (e.g. Ali, 1985;Dora and Kumar, 2020;Gatten, 1991;Hewins, 1990;Kumpulainen, 1991).
Perhaps most broadly, a shift from systems-oriented approaches toward a user-centered
paradigm has been widely noted (Dervin and Nilan, 1986;Gonz
alez-Teruel and Abad-Garc
ıa,
2007;Hartel, 2018,2019;Hepworth et al., 2014;Luca and Ulyannikova, 2020;Talja and Hartel,
2007). However, the extent to which this user-orientation has contributed to the design and
JD
80,2
446
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS), Grant RE-18-19-0072. Since acceptance of this article, the following author has updated
her affiliations: Elisabeth Davis is at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, USA.
Declaration of competing interest: The authors declare that they have no significant competing
financial, professional or personal interests that might have influenced the performance or presentation
of the work described in this manuscript.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 28 November 2022
Revised 25 April 2023
29 September 2023
Accepted 7 October 2023
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 2, 2024
pp. 446-468
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-11-2022-0254
delivery of improved services remains unclear. Moreover, as the state of research in the field
has been described as potentially fragmented (Albright, 2010;
Astr€
om, 2007;Savolainen,
2007), LIS research methods may still tend toward representing the perspectives of
researchers over participants (Julien et al., 2013) and recognition of the predominance of more
systems-focused approaches in the context of recent technological trends has been noted
(Cibangu, 2015).
As stated in a study of international LIS research trends (Dora and Kumar, 2020), major
research topics within the field of LIS have gradually shifted and expanded. General trends
have included a focus primarily on indexing and classification in the 1960s; increased interest
in information management in the 1970s; interests in areas such as LIS education and
collection management in the 1980s; added attention toward information seeking research,
focusing almost exclusively on search (Dervin, 1998) and system design (Julien and Duggan,
1996;Park, 1994) in the 1990s; and, greater interest in information uses and context (J€
arvelin
and Ingwersen, 2004), knowledge management and biometrics (Dora and Kumar, 2020) and a
growing interdisciplinarity in the field (Julien et al., 2011) into the 2000 and 2010s. Other
literature reviews (e.g. Ali, 1985;Gatten, 1991;Hewins, 1990;Kumpulainen, 1991;Tuomaala
et al., 2014;Wilson, 2000;Wilson, 2008) and assessments of the field (Hartel, 2018,2019) have
reiterated similar directions in LIS research.
Along with this shift in research topics, reflecting the wider move in the late 1980 and
1990s from investigations of information systems toward studies of information users and
information behaviors (Case and Given, 2016;Wilson, 1994), an accompanying expansion of
methodological approaches has been noted (Kumpulainen, 1991). From the 1990s, the field
began to see greater inclusion of users as participants in research studies, applying
methodologies such as surveys, interviews, participatory designs and other methodologies
borrowed from the humanities and social sciences (Hewins, 1990;Julien and Duggan, 1996;
Nesset and Large, 2004;Powell, 1999;Wilson, 1994). However, the extent to which this change
in methodologies and research approaches has resulted in greater inclusion, if not integration,
of user–participant perspectives in research on the development of new programming or
services requires further questioning. Indeed, we reassert Wilson’s (2008) suggestion that
there is a divide within the literature between theory and practice, with the former often not
actively reflecting the latter.
To explore these issues, a scoping literature review (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005;Gough
et al., 2012;Levac et al., 2010) was conducted, with the goal of answering three research
questions:
RQ1. How have conceptualizations of the user changed in LIS participant-design
research?
RQ2. To what extent have these changes resulted in more participant-led and/or
community-centered research approaches?
RQ3. What approaches are suggested by the literature that might further support
partnerships between researchers and participants in LIS research methodologies?
By answering these questions, this study sets the groundwork for a new methodology which
adopts a more inclusive label and role for research participants at every stage of the research
process.
Methodology: a scoping literature review
While planning a review of relevant LIS literature from across a number of decades, both
systematic and scoping review methodologies were considered and literature on both
methods was consulted and compared. The breadth of the literature to be covered and the
A user timeline
in LIS
participatory
research
447
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