Sometimes, research doesn’t always go the way you thought it would. Myself and my colleagues, Curtis Sassur and Alison Skyrme, had high hopes for the research project we conceived back in April 2014. With fire in our bellies over the state of the labour market in memory institutions and pie-in-the-sky visions of 100% response rates, we forged ahead with our First Big Research Project exploring the use of unpaid internships in Ontario academic libraries. Two and a half years later, here we are – decidedly shunning the traditional route in favour of a popular blog – Letters To A Young Librarian. Thanks so much to Jessica Olin for agreeing to work with us on this! It’s been a great experience.
So, here it is. The culmination of our efforts, in all its glory. This is the unreviewed version, as submitted. It’s far from perfect, but we worked long and hard on it, and it would be a shame for it not to see the light of day. While we were unable to draw any definitive conclusions, we think there is some value in our findings. We hope that others can learn from both the experience we had from project conception to submission, and the outcomes of the research itself.
The Incidental Academic Librarian 