Knowing their news: Library workers as informants to journalism studies research

Tyler W. S. Nagel identifies a new role for the public library: a knowledge base of community media information, and a new collaboration between libraries and library workers

This research note describes a new role for the public library: a knowledge base of community media information in the context of a larger journalism research project. In rural areas of the Canadian province of Alberta, professional journalism has been struck by a series of cutbacks as newspaper titles have closed or merged to form regional publications. In studying this, efforts to generate a census of Alberta newspapers were stymied by incomplete search results when looking online to identify the titles of publications in scores of rural towns. Public libraries provided the solution: they were easily locatable online, and the library workers were aware of their community’s information ecosystem and were eager to help the researcher in a quest for information on local journalism. This article describes the process and outcome, and encourages further partnerships between small town libraries and academic research.

Read the full article in the latest issue of Facts and Frictions here.

Facts and Frictions is published by J-Schools Canada/Écoles-J Canada, Canada’s national association for post-secondary journalism research and education. All content is open access and available via J-Source.