EBL 101

Riding Into the Sunset

Virginia Wilson

Director, Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (C-EBLIP)

University Library

University of Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Received: 2 May, 2015 Accepted: 13 May 2015

2015 Wilson. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

Time flies when you’re having fun and when you’re writing the EBL 101 column! And with that pithy sentiment, I’m pleased to let you know that this is the final EBL 101 column in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP). I’m pleased because EBL 101 has had an exciting run spanning eight years! It has become a go-to resource for those beginning to think about evidence based library and information practice (EBLIP) and for overviews of research methods. If the citations of the research methods columns are any indication, scholars from within library and information studies (LIS) and without have found value in the overviews. I’m also pleased for another reason that I’ll get to in a moment.

I started writing the EBL 101 column in 2009 (Vol 4, no 1), continuing the steps of EBLIP.

When those steps were finished, I moved on to writing concise overviews of research methods,

including examples of the methods from the LIS literature and resources for further information as there’s only so much one can do in 2 or 3 pages of a column. Here’s an overview of all the columns as a whole. Aside from the first two EBL 101 columns, the rest where written by me:

EBL 101: Steps of EBLIP

· Vol. 3, no. 3 (2008) Evidence Based Librarianship Backgrounder – Su Cleyle, Julie McKenna

· Vol. 3, no. 4 (2008) Asking the Right Question – Lorie Kloda

· Vol. 4, no. 1 (2009) Matching Question Types to Study Designs

· Vol. 4, no. 2 (2009) Looking to the Literature: Domains to Help Determine Where to Look

· Vol. 4, no. 3 (2009) Looking to the Literature: Open Access and Free Sources of LIS Evidence

· Vol. 4, no. 4 (2009) Conducting Your Own Research: Something to Consider

· Vol. 5, no. 1 (2010) An Introduction to Critical Appraisal

· Vol. 5, no. 2 (2010) Applicability: What Is It? How Do You Find It?

· Vol. 5, no. 3 (2010) Evaluating the Results of Evidence Application, Part One

· Vol. 5, no. 4 (2010) Evaluating the Results of Evidence Application, Part Two: At the Practice Level

· Vol. 6, no. 1 (2011) Disseminating Your Research

EBL 101: Research Methods

· Vol. 6, no. 2 (2011) A New Path: Research Methods

· Vol. 6, no. 3 (2011) Design, Methods, Case Study...oh my!

· Vol. 6, no. 4 (2011) Content Analysis

· Vol. 7, no. 1 (2012) Focus Groups

· Vol. 7, no. 2 (2012) Interviews

· Vol. 7, no. 3 (2012) Bibliometrics

· Vol. 8, no. 1 (2013) Altmetrics

· Vol. 8, no. 2 (2013) Mixed Methods Research

· Vol. 8, no. 3 (2013) Systematic Reviews

· Vol. 8, no. 4 (2013) Action Research

· Vol. 9, no. 1 (2014) Triangulation

· Vol. 9, no. 2 (2014) Sampling

· Vol. 9, no. 3 (2014) The Most Significant Change Technique

· Vol. 9, no. 4 (2014) Scoping Studies

Quite the list! There are plans in the works for a "virtual issue" that would bring all the EBL 101 columns together in one place for readers and we’ll keep you posted about that. Also (and this is the part I’m really pleased about), on the horizon and taking EBL 101’s place will be a new column that I’m very excited to begin - Research in Practice. This column will be designed for practicing librarians who are using research in their practice, conducting research for their practice, and otherwise interested in the varied and vast topics pertaining to research in practice. The scope of the new column is broad, allowing for a variety of topics to be explored in a number of ways. There could be interviews, guest columnists, co-authored columns...it boggles the mind!

I would like to thank my past editors of the EBL 101 column, Denise Koufogiannakis and Alison Brettle, for their patience, help, and guidance, and for the opportunity to explore my thoughts in a column format. And thank you to Lorie Kloda, EBLIP’s new Editor-in-Chief, for being open to the idea of reconfiguring the column. EBLIP’s editorial board has had some exciting ideas for the column and I look forward to continuing in this capacity with the journal. Look for Research in Practice in the next issue of EBLIP.