Introduction

An integral part of completing a project, particularly one involving research or evaluation, is the process of reporting the work to the wider community. Becoming effective in writing research requires knowledge and skills that are transferable from the wide range of attributes and awareness already existing in the library and information science (LIS) practitioners’ skills portfolio. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an insight into aspects of writing to ensure that, as a writer, you become familiar with both the pleasures and challenges of writing. Strategies to overcome the challenges of writing are provided and the complex and varied motivations for writing are explored.

Motivation for writing

In some professions the culture, professional framework, job responsibilities and support structures are highly influential in motivating writing activity. While this is true for academic libraries in countries such as the USA and Nigeria, where tenure and financial gain are factors, in general extrinsic motivators are unusual within the LIS sector. As neither career progression nor a permanent contract are linked with writing output for most librarians, it is down to you as an individual to identify what motivates and influences your approach to writing.

Writing is often a primarily solo activity, and so it can be helpful to have an understanding of a range of factors identified in the literature that motivate others to write up their work (Bradley, 2008; Clapton, 2010; Sullivan, 2011):