We reached out to the 2014 RPC award winners for an update about their research projects and how they used the award funds.  All three winners made great use of the funding.  Here is an update from the second of three award winners.

Shannon Marie Robinson
Denison University Libraries
When I initially applied for the grant, I thought I would survey faculty. However, after many conversations with other dance librarians and further research, it seemed best to conduct interviews that would provide exploratory, qualitative data about these scholars’ research experiences. From May 2014 through February 2015 I held in-person interviews with 12 dance faculty from three institutions. The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has the largest undergraduate dance program in the nation. The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio is a founding member of the National Association of Schools of Dance and one of the first schools to award undergraduate, master, and doctoral degrees in dance. The dance department at Denison University in Granville, Ohio is representative of those at other small, independent liberal arts colleges. The interviews provided insight into the variation of research happening in dance, faculty use of library resources and format preferences, and research organization practices.

All of the interviews have been transcribed and I am currently writing my research findings as an article for a peer-review journal. While I am still analyzing the results, I learned that there is a tremendous amount of non-dance research occurring in the field; history, neuroscience, gender theories, cutting edge technology, and digital humanities are extremely important and oft-consulted disciplines. I am investigating the possibility that librarians can better support dance faculty (both text-based and performance-based scholars) if we consider them interdisciplinary scholars.

RPC Chair note:  Shannon Marie Robinson received $505 (full funding) for this research project.

Shannon Robinson, Denison University
Heidi Gauder, University of Dayton, Research & Publications Committee Chair