Pitman Supporting Research in Area Studies

A Guide for Academic Libraries
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78063-471-5
Verlag: Woodhead Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 124 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Supporting Research in Area Studies: A Guide for Academic Libraries focuses on the study of other countries or regions of the world, crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences. The book provides a comprehensive guide for academic libraries supporting communities of researchers, exploring the specialist requirements of these researchers in information resources, resource discovery tools, information skills, and the challenges of working with materials in multiple languages.

The book makes the case that adapting systems and procedures to meet these needs will help academic libraries be better placed to support their institutions' international agenda. Early chapters cover the academic landscape, its history, area studies, librarianship, and acquisitions. Subsequent chapters discuss collections management, digital products, and the digital humanities, and their role in academic projects, with final sections exploring information skills and the various disciplinary skills that facilitate the needs of researchers during their careers.



- Describes the nature of area studies research and the traditional strengths of area studies librarianship in supporting inter- and trans-disciplinary research
- Applies the latest thinking in research support in university libraries to the specific needs of the area studies research community in the United Kingdom and United States
- Explores how internationalizing systems and processes can bring broader benefits to the university as a whole
- Analyzes the particular issues caused by working with content and systems in multiple languages

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pitman, Lesley

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Bibliothekswesen, Informationswissenschaften Bibliothekswesen, Informationswissenschaften, Archivwesen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Area studies: The academic landscape: Its history, its controversies and the nature of contemporary area studies research Research support and area studies librarianship Area studies librarianship as a specialist skill with its own training needs and distinct place in the university library; Its place in supporting the new agenda in research support Acquisitions: The continuing challenges of acquiring material in multiple formats and languages from across the world Collection Management; What collections do area studies scholars use? How are they arranged, managed, defined? The national research collection and the role of collaborative collection management Resource discovery and problems with systems: The challenge of providing access to resources in multiple languages across multiple systems, from specialist databases and library catalogues to Google Digital projects and the digital humanities: New opportunities for specialist librarians in creating and curating content, and adding their skills to academic projects Information skills and user support: User-centred skills and services

Leseproben

1 Area studies
The academic landscape
Abstract
This chapter looks first at official and academic definitions of area studies, and the scope and variety of the field, which is likely to be different in each university. Although largely considered to date from the second half of the twentieth century, especially in the USA, its roots go back further. Controversies from the past have largely been resolved. Area studies today is a varied and dynamic field, with researchers skilled in their discipline, knowledge of a country of region, and dependent on material in a range of languages. This creates a challenge for academic libraries. Keywords Area studies Definition of area studies Controversies around area studies Strategic importance of area studies Library support for area studies Definitions and controversies
The first difficulty in deciding how best to support research in area studies is to decide what the term means. There is no single, widely understood definition, and the nature of area studies is in itself the subject of considerable academic discussion and some controversy. There have been long-running and sometimes heated disagreements in the academic community about how it should be defined, and even about the value of area studies as a distinct field of academic endeavor. As an umbrella term, it can cover such a broad range of activity that a single definition can be misleading and unhelpful. This section will attempt to summarise some of the questions around area studies and identify current trends in a very diverse landscape. It will also look at the different types of research that are carried out under the broad heading of area studies, and try to identify those common elements that cause particular challenges for academic libraries. These will then be dealt with in more detail in subsequent chapters. An attempt to find an official definition of area studies in the UK leads us to the formal process for assessing the quality of research carried out in UK universities, and an explicit recognition of the difficulty. Every few years, the UK government carries out a review process most recently entitled the Research Excellence Framework, or REF. The guidelines for submission to the Area Studies sub-panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework define area studies as “the study of all regions of the world and the communities which are associated with or which inhabit them” (REF 2014, 2012). Alongside this rather vague statement, they provide a useful list of the sub-divisions of area studies most likely to be studied in the UK at the present time: The sub-panel takes an inclusive view of Area Studies, which we recognise to be a dynamic field, and the following list should be considered as indicative rather than exhaustive: African studies; American and Anglophone studies, including Canada and the United States, taken to include colonial North America; Asian studies, including Central Asian, North East Asian (including China), South Asian and South East Asian studies; Latin American and Caribbean studies; Australian, New Zealand and Pacific studies; European studies, including European Union studies and Russian and East European studies (including post-Soviet studies); Middle Eastern studies including Israel studies and Islamic world studies; and the interactions of these regions and peoples with the wider world, including African, Asian, Jewish, Muslim and other diasporas. REF 2014 (2012) The list of disciplines from which they are prepared to receive submissions gives an indication of the range of research currently taking place, and captures both traditional and newer approaches: all aspects of the history, languages, cultures, literatures, religions, media, society, economics, human geography, politics and international relations of the above areas, as well as inter-regional and globalisation studies. REF 2014 (2012) Taken together, this list of regions and disciplines potentially covers the humanities and social sciences of most of the world, excluding only the country where the research is carried out—in this case the United Kingdom. The divisions are partly geopolitical, partly cultural and partly religious, and in the final phrase all such divisions are abandoned, allowing for global studies and comparative studies to be included as well. There is almost no limit on the disciplines included, apart from pure and applied science, and even they could be included in their historical and cultural aspects. The changing nature of area studies is recognised in the use of the word “dynamic,” as is the potentially all-encompassing nature of it. There is probably no university in the UK or even the world that could claim to carry out research on the whole of area studies as defined above. Instead, most will specialise in particular regions or countries, applying to them the techniques and theories of a more limited range of disciplines. The scope of area studies research will thus be different in each university where it is carried out. Academics engaged in area studies from various perspectives have attempted more precise and concise definitions, aiming to capture the purpose of area studies research rather than simply describing it. In a piece on Japanese studies in the USA, Alan Tansman provides the following succinct definition: “an enterprise seeking to know, analyze, and interpret foreign cultures through a multidisciplinary lens.” (Tansman, 2004). In the same volume, David Szanton produces a useful and well-received definition which goes further in summarising the features that differentiate area studies research from other fields: “Area Studies” is best understood as a cover term for a family of academic fields and activities joined by a common commitment to: (1) intensive language study; (2) in-depth field research in the local language(s); (3) close attention to local histories, viewpoints, materials, and interpretations; (4) testing, elaborating, critiquing, or developing grounded theory against detailed observation; and (5) multi-disciplinary conversations often crossing the boundaries of the social sciences and humanities. Szanton (2004) In Oxford in 2005, shortly after Szanton wrote his definition, a workshop funded by the ESRC and the AHRC for UK area studies scholars was also grappling with the question of what area studies should be. The three definitions the participants came up with were as follows: “area-led area studies (e.g., the study of Japan per se); globalization-led area studies (e.g., multidisciplinary and comparative research within regions); issue-led area studies (e.g., terrorism, democracy, etc.).” The workshop agreed that “high quality area studies needs to be involved in all three of these areas and certainly not restrict itself to just the first” (Goodman, 2007). The literature shows that successive attempts to define area studies and prescribe its direction have been intended to answer some long-standing criticisms, usually applied by those working in the more traditional single disciplines with a longer history in the academy. The first and the one that has caused most controversy in the past is that area studies research is lacking in intellectual rigour, and is not soundly based on theory. It is true that there is no theory of area studies as it is not a separate discipline in itself, but the criticism has been that scholars working in area studies have not in the past recognised developments in theory, particularly in the social sciences. Instead, their work has been accused of being purely descriptive. In the 1990s, this debate played out within the American Political Science Association in a series of articles that looked at the relationship between area studies and political science, published in response to a provocative “Letter from the President” by Robert H. Bates, then President of the Comparative Politics Section of the Association, who described area studies scholars as both hostile to and “lagging behind” in their grasp of theory. To bridge the gap that he perceived, Bates advocated a future where area studies scholars would apply themselves to gathering the empirical data that the social scientists would then analyse, using the techniques of game theory and rational choice theory (Bates, 1996). In the ensuing debate between the advocates of area studies and those of theory, strong opinions were expressed on both sides and the divisions seemed deep, but over the intervening years, the two sets of skills have come much closer together. Although it is still the case that area studies research is likely to have a strong empirical element, the tools of academic theory are now an intrinsic part of the training of an area studies researcher as they are in any other field. One American expert on Japan sees the tensions between theory and empirical research in area studies as “the greatest source of its vitality and potential” (Tansman, 2004). At a 2012 conference on area studies at Duke University, the Director of International and Area Studies at that university captured the way that the approach to theory had changed: Forty years ago the study of comparative politics consisted largely of case studies of individual countries, whereas today the dominant modalities are cross-national studies of the interactions among specific variables, using as units not just whole polities but often sub-national...

Über Autor(innen)

Pitman, Lesley
Lesley Pitman is Librarian and Director of Information Services at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies Library in London, a research collection of international importance dating back to 1915. She is currently responsible for devising and implementing UCL Library Services' strategy for research support across the institution, and has also been involved in managing a number of externally funded digitisation projects, including most recently the EuropeanaTravel project funded by the EU. She was Chair of COSEELIS for nine years, and is one of the founding managers of the CoFoR collaborative collection management partnership for Russian and East European Studies in the UK. Her professional interests and writings range from library buildings to digitisation and the digital humanities