Having never attended a RAILS (Research Applications in Information and Library Studies) conference before I wasn’t really sure what to expect but with 15 presentations, 20 mins in length I knew I wasn’t going to have time to be bored. Despite having been in libraries nearly 20 years I had forgotten about the research side of our profession and the importance that it has in keeping LIS in the academic sphere and our practioners seen as professionals.

The research presented ranged from the importance of information as a social inclusion tool to information seeking behaviours, from the hermeneutic circle of literature reviews to classifying Australian PhD Theses and many other areas in between. The scope was wide and from a practitioner’s point of view of varying degrees of practical relevance.

The audience was a mix of practitioners and academics and a reminder to those of us working in libraries that there is research being undertaken that can inform practice and also a view into the future direction of some of this research. It would have been interesting to be able to debate more about future directions of research from both an academic and practical viewpoint. Maybe a few less papers and a bit more time for discussion and debate.

This was a good networking opportunity for me as I consider embarking on a PhD and a reminder that research is an important part of our profession. All papers will be published in the Australian Library Journal.