Objectives: Research questions: Main question: How do academic librarians with disabilities experience the hiring process? Sub-question: What strategies have disabled academic librarians used in order to successfully navigate the hiring process?
Methods: This research project will be conducted using in depth interviews with disabled academic librarians. In-depth interviews allow for more organic and long-form sharing of experiences, which is ideal for discussing topics that involve a lot of potentially sensitive context and personal choice. Only employed librarians will be included for this study; the goal is to gather strategies and tips from librarians who have successfully navigated the academic hiring process with a disability. After interviewing 45 disabled librarians (any disability type), the author will code the qualitative data and pull out recurring themes.
This lightening talk will focus primarily on the literature review that informed the research questions and the chosen methodology. It is not anticipated that full coding of qualitative data will be complete by the date of this presentation, which is why the lightning talk format was chosen.
Results: By the time of this presentation, the author anticipates having completed all interviews but not having completed thematic coding. The results discussed will involve how successfully interviews can be conducted for a topic that is sensitive and personal, but necessary for the diversity and equity of our profession. How well did interviews work for this type of research, and how much was learned? Would a different method have been better or more helpful?
Conclusions: The conclusion will discuss the next steps of this research project- after collecting the qualitative data, what will be done with it? Was it of the quality and usefulness that I expected and will I be able to form a coherent set of best practices for other disabled academic librarians to use as they look for jobs? For the purposes of this lightning talk, I will be discussing whether the methodology I chose was the right fit.
