As we enter the final stages of the STOREE project, our team has been reflecting on STOREE’s milestones and next steps.
We’ve spent the past five years identifying opportunities to challenge and advance practices related to knowledge exchange, open scholarship, librarianship, and community engagement. Through this work, the STOREE team has produced over 50 outputs, ranging from articles in academic journals to conference presentations, to infographics, to blog posts, to toolkits.
The project also offered 15 students at UBC’s School of Information (iSchool) the opportunity to combine theoretical and practical knowledge while gaining professional experience, and has supported a graduate thesis. As a result of the team’s efforts, STOREE’s findings have directly informed iSchool curricula and have been shared directly with professional and non-academic communities to support their information practices.
In short, we’ve been busy!
“Our learning through the STOREE project has reinforced that research can have both positive and negative impacts, and we must consider and support the needs and priorities of non-academic affiliated individuals and communities when we practice and communicate research,” shares Dr. Heather O’Brien, STOREE’s lead investigator. “Library and information professionals are central in knowledge exchange, and their skills are pivotal in making research accessible, comprehensible and engaging for everyone.”
Some of the highlights from STOREE and its eight sub-projects include:
- An infographic and blog post that summarizes three strategies for researchers to reduce stigmatizing and harmful language used in resource description
- An Open Education Resource to support instruction on knowledge exchange and community engagement
- A web guide to support literature reviews for community scholars and organizations
- New insights into the role of library and information professionals in knowledge exchange work
- An investigation into the effects of the style of video abstracts on engagement and comprehension (with a bonus infographic!)
“We hope that others will be inspired in their own research to communicate their scholarship in multiple formats and consider how different audiences can use research in meaningful ways.”
In the next few months, the STOREE team will be busy planning a storytelling workshop for information professionals and identifying conferences and other speaking opportunities to share findings—check out this blog post for details!