Conversations with Rising Stars
MEGAN SENSENEY
As associate librarian and department head of research engagement for University Libraries, Megan Senseney leads a team dedicated to emerging specialty areas within academic librarianship. Her research focuses on the social dimensions of data-intensive research initiatives. She discusses several aspects that are distinctive to the University of Arizona, its collections, and its commitments in our Conversations with Rising Stars…
What initially attracted you to your current focus of research?
Generally speaking, I’m interested in the social dimensions of data-intensive research initiatives. This has included studies of cross-boundary collaboration, the impact of policy and the law on data curation and analysis, and digital training for scholars in the humanities. My current research focuses on data and digital storytelling, which has been a great vehicle for exploring how to develop and integrate library services into the research lifecycle. At heart, I’m a service-oriented professional, and my research is grounded in exploring ways to facilitate, represent, disseminate, amplify, and preserve other people’s scholarship.
When I first arrived in Arizona, the University had recently adopted the creation of a Border Lab within its strategic plan, which represents a commitment from the University to prioritize and fund efforts that reflect our borderlands region. I was attracted to the prospect of applying data and digital storytelling techniques within this context because the topic is so interdisciplinary, and there is so much opportunity to support community-engaged research.
How have collaborations impacted my work on campus?
My work is fundamentally collaborative, whether engaging with other departments within the libraries or building relationships across campus. I was especially grateful for these collaborations during the most isolated period of the pandemic. At the time, I was working with library colleagues and faculty across multiple departments on a Newspapers as Data Project, which explored strategies for using a bilingual corpus of historical Arizona newspapers to integrate data and computational analysis methods into courses focused on the humanities and humanistic social sciences. I was barely into my second year here, and I was so grateful to be building and maintaining a sense of campus community through that collaboration. That was also when we had just learned that Digital Borderlands would be funded by the Mellon Foundation, a library-based initiative to award research seed grants for data and digital-storytelling projects that explored a range of topics related to the U.S.-Mexico border. Running proposal development workshops created opportunities to make a host of connections across campus. Through this and other projects, I’ve had the good fortune to engage with the Disability Resource Center, HSI initiatives, and a variety of museums, centers, and institutes. As these relationships and collaborations evolve, I feel like I have a better sense of how interconnected and interdependent our work is. I’m keen to continue building bridges across units and research initiatives.
Research breakthroughs take time, so what keeps you motivated in your daily duties?
I think the concept of interdependence is a big motivator – knowing that other people rely on me for my portion of the work, making and honoring commitments to a team with broader goals. Related to that, I feel like I developed a different relationship with time management after I had a kid. Knowing that I have less flexibility after hours and anticipating unexpected sick days has motivated me to make the most of the very bounded research time that I have.
What about your experience at the U of A makes you want to continue your career as a Wildcat?
Regarding research, it’s been gratifying to help grow and evolve a library-based research agenda at the intersection of digital scholarship and border studies from Newspapers as Data to Reclaiming the Border Narrative and two different initiatives under the umbrella of Digital Borderlands. This work is distinctive to the University of Arizona, its collections, and its commitments.
More generally, I would just like to say that I have truly incredible colleagues. I’ve mentioned my project collaborators, but I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the entire Research Engagement team for their professionalism, collective expertise, dedication, and good humor.
When you describe your research to someone for the first time, what’s one major point you hope they understand?
I hope they develop a more expansive understanding of the role of libraries within the ecosystem of higher education and the work of librarians not just as service providers but as researchers in their own right.
