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Dear readers, welcome to our first member submitted post. Mary approached us as a new author of a peer reviewed article and we felt that readers who have never published before would benefit from hearing about her experiences. We welcome submissions of topic proposals, guest essays, and other content you feel should be highlighted and is of high relevance to FHSLA members. Send us your ideas to fhslanews@gmail.com. We hope that you find Mary's experiences as interesting and enlightening as we did and like Mary we also encourage future first time authors to seek publication if inspiration strikes. - Janet & Tim  Mary C Rickelman, MLIS, AHIP Advent Health University, Orlando, FL Hello FHSLA members -- This past January a professor and I published an article titled: “Assessing Information Literacy Skills and Library Anxiety of First-Year Occupational Therapy Graduate Students” in the Journal of Occupational Therapy Education. I am new to publishing and I would like to share my journey from an idea to journal publication. Here is a short background that led to the article -- I had a “research idea” and connected with one of the professors in our Occupational Therapy Department. I currently work at a small university where we serve mostly allied health students. I presented the idea and thankfully the professor was excited and jumped on board. I wanted to know if graduate students who attended a research consultation (one-to-one) with a librarian would feel more comfortable with library research. We discussed the idea and tweaked it to include measuring library anxiety. We began our research with one of her classes in Fall 2018. After gathering data, we presented our findings in a poster at the 2019 American Occupational Therapy Assn Conference. That was very exciting and a great experience to speak with other Occupational Therapists. I promoted working with librarians to help students learn information literacy skills and help reduce the students’ library anxiety. I had some great conversations. Our provost encouraged us to consider publishing in The Journal of Occupational Therapy Education, she happens to be an OT. We decided to gather additional data with a second class in Fall 2019 before writing an article. In Spring 2020, I applied to present a poster with our additional data at the 2020 Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students Conference to be held in Tennessee and was accepted. Unfortunately, COVID-19 occurred, and the conference was cancelled. The professor and I worked on the article diligently during 2019 and 2020. We had set meetings on our calendar during this period for article writing and editing time. The article went through the peer-review process. This was not a fast process and I had always heard this. We started with an editor prior to submission. We submitted the article and many months (about 3 or 4) passed before we heard anything. Then each editor (there were several) had their suggested changes and helped improve the article. Several weeks passed between each edit so again be aware this takes time. If we had a question we could ask, but overall, we accepted the editor’s suggestions. I admire those who edit. I really see that publishing takes mental energy and perseverance. Finally, the article was ready for publication. I am grateful for Dr. Moghimi saying “yes” to my research idea and guiding me through the article research process. I would like to encourage anyone interested in publishing to connect with someone and write an article together. I know many in academic libraries have publishing requirements for rank promotion. What I learned is taking one small step and connecting with another person can sure blossom into many wonderful experiences. My advice --- “Go for it.” Suggestions and tips:
Check out Mary's article in the Journal of Occupational Therapy Education.
Moghimi, C., & Rickelman, M. C. (2021). Assessing Information Literacy Skills and Library Anxiety of First-Year Occupational Therapy Graduate Students. Journal of Occupational Therapy Education, 5 (1). Retrieved from https://encompass.eku.edu/jote/vol5/iss1/4 |
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