Ronald Powell

Ronald R. Powell (1944- ) has contributed to the development of the discipline of Library and Information Studies (LIS) by raising understanding of librarians’ leadership attributes and research skills through numerous journal articles, influential books, and service as a practicing librarian and educator.

Education, Honors and Professional Positions

Born May 24, 1944 in Columbia, Missouri, Powell received his BA in history from the University of Missouri. Immediately upon graduation, he entered the MLS program at Western Michigan University and graduated Beta Phi Mu in 1968. Remaining in academia, he enrolled in the PhD program in Library Science at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign and took a succession of positions as Acquisitions Bibliographer, Assistant Circulation Librarian and Associate Librarian at the Library Research Center.

After receiving his PhD in 1976, Powell served as library director of the University of Charleston for three years before receiving a full time faculty appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. In 1982 he was a UCLA Senatorial Fellow and was featured in ‘’Who’s Who in Library and Information Services’’.

Powell received a year-long fellowship at the University of Brasilia in 1985, then returned to his alma mater, the University of Missouri, as a tenured Associate Professor of Library Science. During his six years at Missouri, he served as Director of Graduate Studies from 1987-1990 and department chair from 1990-1992.

In 1993, Powell joined the Library and Information Studies program (LISP) at Wayne State University as a full professor. He served as interim director from 1999-2002 and oversaw the program’s successful ALA re-accreditation in 2002. Powell remains active as a teacher and scholar; during the Winter 2007 quarter he will teach the core course, “Research in Library and Information Science” and an elective, “Evaluation of Library and Information Resources and Services” ("Courses & Schedules" 2006).

Research

Powell’s current research centers on a) the analysis of desired and actual qualities of public, academic and research library directors, and b) identifying research competencies for practicing librarians and LIS students.

Powell’s five-year collaboration with Peter Hernon and Arthur Young produced Next Library Leadership (2003). After citing literature discussing the prospect of widespread retirement among library directors and concerns about shortages of qualified replacement candidates, the authors present original research to identify what attributes qualified candidates will need. The authors used interviews, Delphi studies and content analysis to survey directors from ARL, ACRL and large public libraries and classify their responses; this comprehensive study produced, among other outcomes, a list of 208 desired qualities. A subsequent study (Hernon, Powell and Young 2004) used content analysis of diary entries from twelve directors of ARL and ACRL libraries to map these attributes to directors’ daily activities.

Powell’s textbook Basic Research Methods for Librarians, recently revised with coauthor Lynn Silipigni Connaway for a fourth edition (2004), aims to explicate the fundamentals of social science research for LIS students as well as practicing librarians. After an introductory chapter promoting the importance of basic research that can be generalized, Powell and Connaway provide overviews of: the scientific method; experimental design; hypothesis testing; sampling; quantitative and qualitative data collection methods including Questionnaires, interviews, content analysis, document analysis, and historiographic or bibliographic approaches; basic statistical analysis, including both descriptive and inferential statistics and parametric and nonparametric techniques; and advice on writing research proposals and presenting research. Jack Glazier contributes an appendix describing how the division of knowledge into disciplines imprints the research in a given field with particular paradigms, methodologies and ontologies.

Powell also delved into the world of virtual reference service in his 2000 article coauthored with Beth Garnsey, “Electronic Mail Reference Services in the Public Library”. Garnsey and Powell used a directory of public library websites to identify libraries offering e-mail reference services, and attempted to survey these institutions and their virtual “visitors” to determine how the services were used. The authors found that libraries varied widely in their implementation of e-mail reference, and the relatively homogeneous population of online reference users used e-mail to ask a variety of questions, including many outside the service’s intended scope. Some methodological challenges exposed in the study may be of consequence to scholars researching virtual reference service.

Critical response to Powell’s publications has been positive. According to reviewer Danny Wallace (2005), “Basic Research Methods for Librarians… is the textbook for research methods courses in schools of library and information studies” (154). Indeed, Powell uses it in his own research methods course ("Course Profiles" 2006). This work on LIS research skills combined with his contributions to the assessment of library leadership qualities have ensured his continuing recognition as an important figure in librarianship at the turn of the 21st century.

References

"Course profiles". (2006). Retrieved November 18, 2006, from http://www.lisp.wayne.edu/courses/profiles.html

“Courses & schedules”. (2006). Retrieved November 18, 2006, from http://www.lisp.wayne.edu/courses/schedules.htm

Beta Phi Mu. (2003). College of information: About us. Retrieved November 18, 2006, from http://ci.fsu.edu/go/virtual_host/beta_phi_mu_org/about_us

Hernon, P., Powell, R. R. & Young, A. (2003). The next library leadership: Attributes of academic and public library directors. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

---. (2004). Academic library directors: What do they do? (Electronic version). College and Research Libraries, 65(6), 538-561.

Powell, R. R., and Connaway, L. (2004). Basic research methods for librarians (4th ed.). Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

"Ronald Powell". (1982). In Joel M. Lee (Ed.), Who's who in library and information services. Chicago: American Library Association.

"Ronald Powell". (1988). Directory of library and information professionals. Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications.

"Ronald Powell". (2002). In C. E. Klebba (Ed.), Directory of American scholars (10th ed.). Farmington Hills: Gale.

Wallace, D. P. (2006). Basic research methods for librarians, 4th ed. (Book Review) (Electronic version). Library and Information Science Research, 28, 149-167.

Sanjeet-Singh E. Mann