Methodological Restraints

My background is primarily in English, but I've also studied a Biology, Psychology, and even a bit of Physics. I'm familiar with a lot of the conventions of research in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. I've thought a lot about interdisciplinarity and mixing methods for research, and I find it fairly easy to relate to Luker's concept of salsa dancing researchers. However, when I sat down to write about my own research ideas, I found myself drawing a complete blank. This is particularly strange to me because I find it very easy to be interested and curious about things. I often come up with questions about the world that I'd love to research and answer, or at least take a step toward answering. But I found that in the frame Luker created, one focused so closely on sociology research, my ideas about research became focused on the sort of topics she was posing. The only questions I could think of were ones related to, say, human sexuality, or online communities. I was hesitant to write them down, though, for two reasons. Firstly, those questions felt highly unrelated to my current studies in libraries and information systems, particularly since I wasn't focusing on information seeking. But secondly, I was primarily thinking of approaching them in fairly rigid, scientific ways that I felt Luker wouldn't approve of. I'm sure that thought in itself is problematic from a free-wheeling, salsa-dancing perspective, but the whole experience was particularly startling to me since, previously, I've been very interested in pursuing research in Chaucerian studies, and because there are so many information science topics I'm interested in. It was very interesting to me that my conception of what made interesting research was so influenced by Luker's perspective in her text - and perhaps that in itself could be an interesting research project. That is, how researchers conceive of their research question, and what influences them to pursue specific methodological avenues.

I think that what I need to keep in mind in the future is that Luker's ideas and advice are useful and interesting, but her perspective is very focused on the world of an academic social scientist. To keep myself open to all of the topics and approaches I find interesting - and useful - I need to remember that research is conducted in many different ways, from the highly controlled and regimented quantitative lab studies in physics and microbiology to the practice-based case studies common in library science.