Scholars’ research-related personal information collections. A study of education and health researchers in a Kuwaiti University
| Pages | 155-173 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-04-2015-0069 |
| Date | 21 March 2016 |
| Published date | 21 March 2016 |
| Author | Mashael AL-Omar,Andrew Martin Cox |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval |
Scholars’research-related
personal information collections
A study of education and health
researchers in a Kuwaiti University
Mashael AL-Omar
The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET),
Kuwait City, Kuwait, and
Andrew Martin Cox
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of the paper is to explore the character of scholars’research-related personal
information collections (PICs).
Design/methodology/approach –The study was based on in-depth interviews and office tours of
17 scholars in Education and Health Sciences in a Kuwaiti Higher Education Institution.
Findings –Scholars’research-related PICs were added to throughout the research life-cycle.
They were huge, diverse, hybrid and fragmented. Key factors shaping the collections were the pressure
to do research, time pressure in general, quality of space available, technology opportunity, lack of
support from central services, the need to collect Arabic material, self-presentation and self-
management. Older scholars and non-Kuwaiti nationals experienced the pressures slightly differently.
Research limitations/implications –The study was limited to scholars in two disciplines, in one
institution in a developing world context. However the models produced are suggestive of factors
involved in shaping of the research-related PICs of scholars in general.
Practical implications –Failures in personal information management are a cause for concern in
terms of data integrity and validity of research. Interventions could include training of early career
researchers for a life time of collecting.
Originality/value –This is the first study to examine the contents of scholars’research-related PICs
and to provide a model of factors shaping them.
Keywords Research data management, Personal information management,
Personal information collections, Researchers, Scholarly information practices, Scholars
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Scholars are intensive users of information, and study of their work has long been
important to information science. For example, the investigations of different scholarly
practices of seeking and using literature have been central to the development of
Information seeking and behaviour research as a whole (Case, 2012). For the field of
personal information management (PIM), the study of scholars’behaviour has been less
central, yet in the course of their work, scholars generate large collections of
information and managing this material must at least in part determine their
effectiveness. PIM’s main focus today is on everyday office working life, especially
management of digital content and the broad principles of PIM such as the difficulties
everyone has in managing information effectively apply also to scholars. However,
there has been surprisingly little research specifically into how scholars manage their
material (Palmer et al., 2009). One of the few exceptions is Kaye et al.’s (2006) fascinating
study that developed a model in which different motives for collecting were found to
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 68 No. 2, 2016
pp. 155-173
©Emerald Group Publis hing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-04-2015-0069
Received 30 April 2015
Revised 18 October 2015
Accepted 16 November 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
155
Scholars’
research-
related PICs
produce very different types of collections. But there might be other ways of conceiving
of scholars’information collections. It is an interesting area because major changes
have occurred over the last 20 years, which means that PIM has taken place in a
context where the technical affordances have been revolutionised.
Furthermore, this area has become potentially more interesting in the last few years,
because of growing concerns around research data management (RDM). Changes in the
nature of research, especially the emergence of large scale, collaborative e-research has
directed attention to how research data are managed within the research cycle (Pryor,
2012; Pryor et al., 2014). Initial interest revolved around the impact of the “data deluge”
in big science, but there is also concern about how data are created and managed in the
long tail of small scale research. The study of research data –data scholarship –is an
important emerging area of information science (Borgman, 2015). It is becoming
recognised that good data management is a basic part of good research practice.
Because of funders’requirements, many institutions have become very interested in
how practical data management issues are being handled by researchers, hence
institutional surveys usually contain questions about volumes and types of data, back
up practices and so forth (Pryor et al., 2014). If we want to help to improve RDM, we
should know more about how and why data are stored and created to understand
where the critical problems lie. One cannot assume that “data”, which is hard to define
anyway, is managed separately from other material. As yet studies of RDM and digital
curation have tended to neglect the wider context of PIM.
Thus investigating how research-related personal information collections (PICs) are
created, maintained and used becomes increasingly important. It is also interesti ng to
explore specific contextual factors that operate for scholars outside western research
contexts, which tend to dominate the literature. Thus the study reported in this paper
investigated scholars’research-related PIM practices in Public Authority for Applied
Education and Training (PAAET), a Higher Education Institution in Kuwait.
The paper is set out as follows: a section on related studies explains the role of
research in universities and considers the core concepts of PIM and defines the PIC.
Previous research about scholars’PIM is reviewed. The nature of the exploratory and
qualitative methodology used in the study is then explained. The findings are
organised around explaining how the PIC was created, what its main features are and
investigating what factors shape this. A discussion considers the specific nature of the
Kuwaiti experience.
Related studies
Research has become central to higher education institutions, key both to institutional
and individualsuccess (Scott, 2009). It is a core definingactivity of many universities; it is
also an importantsource of income. The pressure to do researchand increasing culture of
evaluation and performance measurement ( Jarvis, 2014) or “performativity”(Fanghanel,
2012), creates a pressurised context within which scholars have to work. Productivity is
closely monitored. Many of these pressures are manifested at the institutional level, but
much of the scholarship on academic research focuses on disciplinary differences
as key to understanding variations in scholarly practice (Becher and Trowler, 2001).
Certainly the numerous studies of scholars’information seeking and information
behaviour recognise great differences between researchers in the metadisciplines of
science, humanities and social science, and also by individual discipline within
these categories (Case, 2012). Research is a highly complex, non-linear process, a
“complicated mix of mundane and seemingly idiosyncratic tasks”(Palmer et al., 2009, p. 3).
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