December 15, 2011

I recently took a library science class online from Northern Kentucky University. When I mentioned this to my co-workers, their typical first reaction was, “Why would you do that?,” which was almost immediately followed by, “And what exactly does that have to do with marketing research?”

Both are reasonable questions.

Libraries have always been a passion of mine and I love to read. I worked in the school library in middle and high school and my first paid job was at a public library.

Library science has more to do with marketing research than people think. Marketing research focuses on primary research while library science focuses on secondary research. With the huge amounts of data now available and more data mining taking place, the skills associated with secondary research are becoming more important in the marketing research field.

I use secondary sources quite frequently at work. As VP of Research, I get lots of unusual questions. Just this week questions have included best practices for moving from offline to online research, sourcing sample from social media in China, and data differences due to questionnaire wording. When I don’t have primary research, I then shift to secondary research. I actually maintain a large bibliography of secondary marketing research articles that I reference several times a week.

The class I took was on reference and information services. The course covered foundational skills for providing information and reference assistance to library users. Some of the key topics covered included performing basic research, searching techniques, evaluating information sources, and reference interview methods.

The course expanded my repertoire of sources for secondary information. I have already used several of the sources in searches for articles on specific topics.

The other thing the course emphasized was evaluating secondary sources. Some of the key considerations when evaluating a secondary source include:

• Credentials of the author, which may require some investigation outside the article.
• Currency of the information. With online research in particular, technology is always changing and information can quickly become out-of-date.
• Purpose and scope of the article, which helps you understand what questions can be addressed with the information.
• Sample definition and sample source (when data is referenced) since findings among a specific group (e.g., college students) may not apply to a general population.

When I share secondary articles I always make sure to point out any positives and negatives based on these types of evaluation criteria.

This course showed me there are some parallels between marketing research and library science. The two disciplines can learn from each other.

Category:Research on Research
Posted on December 15, 2011



Back to Home >>