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1. Scope of work
LFF conducted this study, during August through November 1997, under a contract with the Department of Education that defined the issues to be considered, the types of data needed, and the nature of the final product. Researchers were asked to identify "the major federal and non-federal funding sponsors for library and information science research from 1983 through June 1997, " as well as "dissertations, meta-analyses, conference papers, journal articles, etc. that describe additional (not institutionally funded) research efforts in library and information science." They were asked to supply, where possible, names of sponsoring institutions, nature of research done, funding level, and names of principal investigators and their institutional affiliations. The basic charge was to conduct research and perform analysis that would help identify an estimate of the nature and dollar amount of funded research and provide a reliable estimate of the extent to which library research needs identified in the last decade have been met and the extent to which further research priorities should be pursued.
1.a. Timespan of research examined
The Letter of Agreement that governed conduct of this project specified that we pay special attention to assessing the degree to which explicit federal priorities established during the 1980s and early 1990s were reflected in LIS research during the period 1983 through June 1997. The priorities had been set forth in two studies, A Library and Information Science Research Agenda for the 1980s (the Cuadra Report), published in 1982, and Issues in Library Research: An Agenda for the 1990s. A major goal of this project was to estimate the degree to which publication of the Cuadra Report and Issues in Library Research had influenced library and information science research.
1.b. Funded and unfunded research
The Letter of Agreement also required that LFF assess the nature of research that was not supported with grants or other outside funding. Therefore, our study made a fundamental distinction between "institutionally funded" and "not institutionally funded" projects.
1.c. Definition of the field
The Letter of Agreement broadly described the subject matter to be examined -- the large and diverse field of library and information science -- but qualified it with a proviso that the search for data should locate "particularly those [projects] relating to education, such as (but not limited to) community-based education, informal learning and access to information." Our understanding of this proviso placed the focus of our work on the institution that historically has been most closely associated with "community-based education, informal learning and access to information" -- the public library. This interpretation was accepted by OERI and became a fundamental boundary to our work. We therefore designed a research plan that took the public library as a beginning point and central focus but reached out to include large samples of research in related subjects, such as computerization, electronic connectivity, catalogue design and testing, and so forth.
The goal of the research was not to locate every LIS project but rather, following the charge noted above, to identify projects sponsored by major funders of research and to find unfunded projects that represented "rigorous" research. We understood this charge to require collection of enough examples to provide an estimate of the nature and dollar amount of funded research and a reliable cross-section of unfunded research.
1.d. Interpretation of key phrases
The Letter of Agreement used two terms that required interpretation before they could be applied in the analysis: (i) "major funders" and (ii) "research."
(i) Major funders.
We left the definition in abeyance until we had conducted enough searching to gain a sense of what counted as large or important funding in the LIS universe. We concluded that "major" funder meant any entity that had contributed at least $50,000, to LIS research during the period 1983-97. As our research proceeded, we decided to include lesser funders also, to giver a broader context for assessing the contributions of all funders to LIS. In absolute dollar amounts these lesser funders contributed a small fraction of the amount of the major funders -- not enough to materially alter the annual dollar totals -- yet they supported many intellectually rigorous projects that merit consideration as part of the national research endeavor in LIS.
(ii) Research.
We began our work with an informal definition of research as an intellectual endeavor that has the following characteristics:
The Letter of Agreement added specificity to our initial working definition. It asked us to consider "basic and applied research, hypothesis-testing, surveys, assessments, evaluations, investigations, experiments, and demonstrations" (the list of categories was taken from OERI's guidelines for field-initiated fundable research). We refined the definition through an examination of those projects that OERI had verbally identified to us as constituting the core of federally funded research in the field of library and information science, as the field was interpreted in the Letter of Agreement. This examination of projects funded under the Higher Education Act, Titles IIB, C, and D, gave us a sense of how OERI wanted us to understand "research."
2. Search strategy
The Letter of Agreement required that we consider for inclusion reports and publications from projects funded by the federal government, state and local government, private foundations, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. It also included a list of categories of materials, such as "dissertations, meta-analyses, conference papers, journals articles, etc. that describe additional (not institutionally funded) research efforts in library and information science." It further asked us to identify projects by name or title and date, "as well as and where possible to supply names of sponsoring institutions, nature of research done, funding level, and names of principal investigators and their institutional affiliations."
Our search had two parts: first, identify projects and publications that seemed candidates for inclusion, and second, find abstracts or full texts that contained information about items such as institutional affiliations that were unavailable in bibliographies and other finding aids.
2.a. Databases
Following the lead of the Letter of Agreement, which required that we consult important databases, such as those of NSF and the Foundation Center, we targeted five major finding aids:
2.b. Other sources
We augmented these searches with targeted searches in the catalogues of the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. We also searched the websites of selected organizations, including:
We solicited additional information directly from agencies, organizations, and foundations.
To identify projects or sponsors that may have eluded the database search, we did a cross-cutting search by examining selected serial publications, including official reports of major funding entities.
Official documents examined as part of the cross-cutting search included:
Among the journals examined in hard copy or microfilm were:
3. Placing data into the tables
As we acquired abstracts or complete copies of items that warranted inclusion in Tables IV or V, we began sorting them by category -- funded, unfunded. We assumed that if a publication carried no mention of a funder, it represented "unfunded" research.
3.a. The Tables
Tables IVA and B, in the words of the Letter of Agreement, identify "the major federal and non-federal funding sponsors for library and information science research from 1983 through June 1997." For each project the tables have the following categories:
Tables VA and B identify "additional (not institutionally funded)" research efforts, and for each project have the following categories:
Table VA, research published in periodicals, is a cross-section, not a comprehensive listing. The annual production of LIS research articles -- amounting to perhaps several hundred a year -- is too large for detailed examination of the sort required by the project. However, it is likely that this selection, based on a variety of search techniques applied to an array of periodicals, captures a good sense of basic trends.
Table VB is based on a search of the Dissertation Abstracts database; it is a comprehensive listing of theses and dissertations in LIS that relate to public libraries
Each project bears a date. For funded projects the date is usually the project's beginning date; for dissertations it is the date of acceptance by the university; for periodical literature is the date of publication. Funding for multi-year projects was attributed to the beginning year.
3.b. Closing gaps
As we began placing items in the tables we identified gaps in information, most commonly the level of funding. When we could not locate information from the annual reports or grants databases of foundations and federal agencies or from webpages, we made phone calls, to approximately 40 foundations, other funders, and principal investigators.
Despite our efforts, the funding data are incomplete. In some cases we simply could not locate anyone who had the information we needed; in others the funders were unable to provide an estimate of support for projects done in-house. In addition, we did not have the time to assess the contribution of the Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA), for decades the largest federal program for public libraries. Upon advice from staff at OERI, we decided that it was not time- or cost-effective to sift through the hundreds of state reports that constitute the documentation of LSCA projects, especially considering that LSCA, aimed largely at construction, implementation, and staff support, did not constitute a major funding source for LIS research.
3.c. Removing redundancies
If we found that a given research effort was represented by more than one citation -- such as a dissertation that was also the basis for a monograph or article, or a funded project that provided the research for a journal article -- we selected only one citation to represent the research in the tables. We chose the funded manifestation of a given project over its unfunded manifestation; thus an OERI-funded project described in an annual report by the Department of Education and also represented by a journal article or monograph appears only once, in Table IV (funded projects).
4. Special assistance from sponsors/funders/libraries
At the request of LFF, Thomas C. Phelps, director of the Division of Public Programs, National Endowment for the Humanities, arranged for a search of NEH's in-house database of grant awards. Suzanne Krouse provided general information on funding of projects by OCLC and back issues of annual reports that would have been otherwise difficult to obtain. Richard Ekman, secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, discussed project priorities and funding and sent back issues of the foundation's annual reports. James Humphrey, president of the H. W. Wilson Foundation, and his secretary searched files for funding information about projects, some dating to the mid 1980s.
Leigh Estabrook, Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provided information about projects at the Center on Public Library Research. Staff at the National Library of Education helped locate annual reports for projects funded by Title II of the Higher Education Act. The files of Libraries for the Future yielded several significant items.
[The Data]