CRB Nexus 2024 Year-End Report
A Year of Establishing Our Community of Practice
Dear CRB Nexus Community of Practice,
It has been a tremendous first year for CRB Nexus programming! Our community’s story is the result of innovation and entrepreneurship that sprouted when CRB Nexus’ founding project director was awarded visiting scholar status at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies in 2023. Our goal? To implement more and better ways to serve Californians and their policymakers through the California State Library’s California Research Bureau (CRB) by bringing together our state’s vast research resources across universities and other nonprofit research organizations.
“By 2026, the Library will be…a modern research library whose online and physical resources meet the state government’s research needs and contribute to sound policy decisions.”
Greg Lucas, State Librarian
CRB Nexus’ project director recruited partner organizations and invited them to recommend established researchers for public virtual events and up-and-coming researchers to attend partner-led training workshops. Those two programs quickly blossomed into three additional programs, including a database of California public researchers, research-to-policy briefs, and a pilot multimedia program, CRB Nexus Connect! In our first year, we grew from 9 to 20 partner organizations.
CRB Nexus’ success in 2024 resulted from a true team effort. This includes the State Library executive team, librarians, researchers, and support staff in CRB; our CRB Nexus partner organizations; and state legislative and administration staff.
We invite you to read on about our 2024 successes and the future of CRB Nexus: Where Policy Meets Research.
Tonya D. Lindsey, Ph.D.
Project Director
CRB Nexus: Where Policy Meets Research
tonya.lindsey@library.ca.gov
Tom Negrete
Director
California Research Bureau at the California State Library
tom.negrete@library.ca.gov
CRB Nexus at the California State Library
“CRB Nexus: Where Policy Meets Research” (CRB Nexus), an initiative of the California Research Bureau, supports the California State Library’s mission to serve state government and the Legislature, libraries, and academia by providing credible information services.
The California Research Bureau is a State Library bureau, created in 1991 and modeled after the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service. The Research Bureau provides nonpartisan and confidential public policy research for the Governor’s Office and the State Legislature through direct research and information requests and through initiatives such as CRB Nexus and the California Homeless Youth Project, which seeks to improve understanding of youth and young adults who experience homelessness and the issues they face.
CRB Nexus is a community of California researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and organizations committed to public policy solutions informed by data-driven research. We come together to connect, build professional relationships, and share information. Together, we translate evidence into action and foster the next generation of public scholarship aimed at identifying and solving policy issues.
Purpose
“Appreciate your team providing these services. The Senator is a huge supporter of all libraries!”
District Director, Senate
CRB Nexus is a hub for gubernatorial, legislative, and agency staff to easily find and connect with California’s publicly funded and independent not-for-profit research-intensive organizations, researchers, and research.
Audiences and Web Traffic
“I think what CRB is doing [with CRB Nexus] will be of great benefit to our consultants and other legislative staff.”
Policy Director, Assembly
Values
Our values are rooted in principles to advance a well-informed public.
Praxis
The best solutions emerge from an iterative process of translating ideas into action, reflecting on outcomes, and revising ideas for subsequent action.
Research & Research Methods
The best solutions emerge when information and data are systematically collected and analyzed using innovative and established research methods to answer practical questions and test theories.
Collaboration
The best solutions emerge when individual interests are focused on people and organizations working together.
Interdisciplinary
The best solutions emerge when researchers and practitioners representing different disciplines, organizations, and occupations come together to solve public policy issues.
CRB Nexus 2024 Programming
“We were so glad to be connected and excited to hear about CRB Nexus. It sounds like an incredibly valuable resource for us.”
Administration Staff
CRB Nexus programs are the bridge between our partner research institutions and the California State Library to bring cutting-edge research to policymakers and their staff. Our inaugural year exceeded expectations, growing from two planned programs to five by the end of 2024.
Programs
“I love the idea of bridging the divide between research and policy making and I’m excited to learn more about how to make this a reality. In addition, I’m always looking for ways to bring students into the fold, so I’m interested to learn more from the panel and share exciting opportunities with my students.”
University Faculty
- Virtual Events: Established scholars and special policy guests provided public discussions across a range of current topics relevant to state government.
- Featured Cohort: Early career public scholars received professional development training from CRB Nexus partner organizations.
- Database Development: With roughly 75 initial partner recommendations for both established and early career researchers, the project director developed a searchable public scholars database and invited recommended scholars to participate. Some 70 scholars were included in the database in 2024.
- One-Page Briefs: Legislative staff and panelists suggested that our scholars write one-page research-to-policy briefs to support staff accessing relevant research. We published five briefs in 2024.
- New Program – CRB Nexus Connect!: In 2024, we began a pilot audio-visual series of interviews with senior legislative staff to provide insights for interns, fellows, and junior legislative staff. The series is on track for release in 2025 when research librarian and CRB Nexus creative content manager, Cesar Reyes, finalizes the first interviews.
Partners
208 signed up for CRB and partner newsletters
2024 Event Feedback Surveys
Partner organizations complete a questionnaire to recommend established and early career researchers for inclusion in virtual events, our public scholar database, and the featured cohort. Recommended researchers are based in California and may include faculty from research universities, staff at nonprofit research organizations, post-doctoral researchers, and advanced PhD students. After a recommendation, partners introduce the researcher to the CRB Nexus project director, who formally invites them to join.
Our partners include University of California, California State University, nonprofit research universities, and nonprofit research institutes and organizations in California. CRB Nexus expanded from 9 to 20 partnerships in 2024. These partnerships reflect increasingly diverse policy areas and engage underserved and underrepresented communities.
Partners on the Map
CRB Nexus 2024 Virtual Events
“Thank you! That’s more than 30 people we’ve added to our email newsletter list thanks to your help! :)”
CRB Nexus Partner Organization
Virtual events are a platform for researchers and policy staff to connect, build professional relationships, and share information. We held nine public virtual discussions, with each event featuring a panel of policy guests and established partner-recommended public scholars. Each virtual event aligned with the policy topic of an existing legislative committee.
Virtual Event Policy Areas in 2024
“It was wonderful hearing from many diverse perspectives on the intersection of research and policy, as well as how policy can be better informed by emerging research. Thank you for your facilitation of this meeting and I hope to connect to others in the future.”
Staff, State Board
- Higher Education
- Economics, Labor, and Employment
- General Government
- Environment and Natural Resources
- Housing, Transportation, and Infrastructure
- Public Safety
- Immigration, Guaranteed Income, and Inequalities/Government
- Health and Human Services
- Utilities and Energy
Established Scholars
Event attendees strongly agreed they felt engaged, learned, something new, met someone they did not previously know, felt comfortable to participate, and would attend future CRB Nexus events.
They found panelists shared policy-relevant information and that they heard information that should be important to CA policymakers, trust the information shared, and view the information as actionable.
2024 Event Feedback Surveys
Established scholars have a PhD, or equivalent, from a research-intensive university and are faculty or researchers—typically associate or full professors, senior researchers, or long-term lecturers. These scholars are CRB Nexus panelists, invited to be in our database, and asked to write research-to-policy briefs. Many have decades of research experience.
Established scholars often have published books, peer-reviewed journal articles, and op-eds, and have served on government committees or contributed to translating complex research into public policy solutions. These scholars are vetted by their organizations through a highly competitive process and involves the submission of CVs, cover letters, teaching portfolios, recommendation letters, multiple interviews, and onsite visits.
Featured Cohort
“The workshops are the most useful; interactive and topics definitely well chosen.”
2024 Featured Cohort Member
Our featured cohort program further prepared 12 early career California public scholars to deliver actionable research to a policy audience. Early career includes assistant professors, lecturers just starting out, post-doctoral scholars, and advanced PhD students. Members of the featured cohort go through the same vetting process as established scholars and are also highly accomplished. After completing partner-led workshops, at the end of the year, we invite cohort members to write a one-pager.
Through CRB Nexus, the Featured Cohort attended the virtual events and nine partner-led or recommended virtual private professional development workshops:
- Accessing state and local government documents and data: Institute of Governmental Studies
- Grants and funding for public scholarship: UC Irvine, School of Social Ecology
- Op-Ed do’s and don’ts: California Opinion Editor. Sacramento Bee & McClatchy
- Senior Legislative Staff Member – Working in the Legislature: Senate Office of Research
- Evaluating Claims in the Social and Health Sciences: UC Center Sacramento
- Executive summary writing for policymaking audiences: California Council on Science and Technology
- Policy brief writing: California Policy Lab
- Policy pitching: UC Riverside, Science to Policy
- Briefing policymakers: UC San Francisco IMPACT
Public Scholars Database
The database is a web-based hub for connecting policymakers and researchers to each other and to policy-relevant research, information, tools, training, and data.
- Over 70 partner-recommended scholars added to the database.
- 300+publications catalogued
Research in Brief
“Staff [are] interested in learning more [about this one-pager] research.”
Legislative Staff
CRB Nexus scholars design their research-to-policy briefs to transform in-depth research into a digestible format for busy policymakers. In 2024, we published five one-pagers. Each research brief includes book citations for legislative committee consultants and policy staff to take a deeper dive.
- California’s Non-College Goers: Latinos Surpass Other Ethnoracial Groups in a Hispanic-Serving State (May 2024)
- Prytaneum: A Web-Based Town Hall Platform Designed for Public Meetings (August 2024)
- The Health Effects of Home Design (October 2024)
- Is Car Parking Destroying Cities? (December 2024)
- Housing, Recessions, Inequality and Policy Responses (December 2024)
Staffing and Resourcing
For Calendar Year 2024, CRB Nexus was primarily staffed by one full-time (1.0 FTE) Research Data Specialist II (RDS II). Additional staff assisted throughout the year for specialized tasks. However, the initiative’s rapid growth has quickly outpaced the capacity for 1.0 FTE.
As an overview, the specialized tasks included activities such as information technology and website support, audio/visual support, assistance with managing web-based events, and graphic design.
In its first year, the supporting staff were stretched across many domains, each of which would be better supported by dedicated staff for each essential function. This need will be more pronounced as CRB Nexus continues to grow.
Looking Ahead: 2025-2030
“Great to know that you have the support of the California State Library to ensure that such vital information is made readily available.”
University Faculty
We have planned our second year of programming in the context of the limited staffing and resources at the California Research Bureau and California State Library and will continue to work with partners to identify and implement interim external support.
Partners
We will continue to engage with potential new partners as current partners recommend them.
2025 Virtual Event Policy Areas and Public Workshop
“This is such a great resource. Thank you for letting me know about it. I look forward to participating in the virtual event and learning more about the CRB Nexus Project.”
District Director Senate
Our 2025 virtual events include one public workshop in addition to nine policy events.
- Science and Technology Panel: January 24, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Writing for Policy Makers Workshop with Dr. Lynette Ubois, Director of Content Strategy at Public Policy Institute of California: February 7, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- SB 1 Transportation Panel: February 21, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Housing and Homelessness Panel: March 14, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- General Government Panel with California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls: May 2, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Mental Health Panel: May 23, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Public Safety Panel: June 20, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Health Panel: August 22, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Higher Education Panel: September 19, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Environment and Natural Resources Panel: October 24, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- Economy, Labor, and Employment: November 14, 2025, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
2025 Featured Cohort
Twelve early career scholars accepted the invitation to be in our 2025 featured cohort. As resources become available, we will develop and implement more ways for the cohort to better support the needs of legislative and agency policy staff. The 2025 cohort members will attend 10 virtual events and 10 partner-led or recommended virtual professional development workshops:
- Grants and funding for public scholarship: UC Irvine, School of Social Ecology
- Writing for legislative audiences (public): Public Policy Institute of California
- Accessing state and local agency data: California Research Bureau
- Leadership: Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University
- Op-Ed Editing: 27-year news veteran covering state issues, California Research Bureau invited guest
- Policy pitching: Science to Policy
- Policy brief writing: California Policy Lab
- Collaborating with people doing similar work: CSU Bakersfield, Center for Economic Education and Research
- Innovative methods in public scholarship: Scholars Strategy Network, San Diego
- Executive summary writing: California Council on Science and Technology
Public Scholars Database
“Thank you for reaching out and for passing along the public scholars database! What a treasure trove of great research!”
Staff Member, Department of Social Services
We will continue to update our database with each partner-recommended scholar’s information as that information comes in.
Research-in-Brief
We will continue to publish CRB Nexus researchers’ one-page research-to-policy briefs as they are submitted.
Pilot: CRB Nexus Connect!
As the CRB Nexus creative content manager completes the pilot multimedia interviews with policy staff, we will release them.
Acknowledgements
The CRB Nexus concept grew out of conversations with Joan Budesa, Sarah Fenstermaker, Charmen Goehring, Jon Gould, Debra Guckenheimer, Valerie Jenness, Jennifer Rogers-Brown, and Christine Trost.
Special thanks to CRB researchers Yovana Gojnic and Mike Stajura for their leadership of our first year-end report; all CRB staff; CSL’s Information Technology Bureau Staff who worked with us to develop the database and webpages; CSL’s Communications staff who field many of our announcements, social media, and graphic design; and CSL LibCal and event staff who gave feedback and training.