Are you one of those people whose mind is always percolating with research dreams? Whose cranium is overflowing with innovative, ground breaking ideas you cannot wait to share? Whose words flow effortlessly from brain to keyboard, displaying a vocabulary that is both extensive and captivating? Who can always find the time to write, no matter how many projects are piling up on your desk? If you are … you make me sick!

Okay, not sick exactly. Actually, I am extremely jealous. Because, as a writer, I am nothing like that. I have a hard time generating research ideas that I think are worth my time and effort to write, and other people's time and effort to read. If I do come up with a good idea, I often procrastinate and never begin. Nor do words pour out of my brain like a flood; each word is more like a drip that I have to get just right. (Hmm, is that the cataloger in me?) And do not even get me started on being able to find the time.

So what do I have to offer as a columnist then? (I have asked myself that question more than once!) Well, I suspect many of you can relate to my shortcomings—lack of ideas, lack of motivation, lack of persistence. So you and I will be fellow sojourners on this path. A research project is often like a journey. You do not always know what the ultimate destination will be. There may be pitfalls and heartache along the way. But despite the pain, there is an immense feeling of satisfaction when the trip is done. So as one who needs encouragement, I will try to encourage you. As one who needs a kick in the pants from time to time, I will try to motivate you. I am mindful that I am standing on the sturdy shoulders of those who have gone before me. Brian Striman, Ellen McGrath, LeGrande Fletcher, and a host of guest columnists have always made this a place where ideas can be shared and accomplishments lauded. I hope I can tend this garden as well as they have.

Now for a little substance. I think one thing that makes some of us reluctant writers is a narrow view of what research is. Sometimes we get locked into the mindset that for something to be truly worthy of the designation "research," there must be a great deal of mind-numbing statistical analysis accompanied by 200 footnotes. I recently read a book titled Scholarship Reconsidered by Ernest L. Boyer,¹ however, that made me think of research in a different light. Boyer contends that "scholarship" has come to be associated exclusively with research, when in fact there are several different types. He identifies four kinds:

• the scholarship of discovery, or the advancement of knowledge through investigation, which comes closest to what academics typically think of as "research"
• the scholarship of integration, or putting our ever-advancing knowledge into perspective and context and finding relationships among different disciplines
• the scholarship of application, or putting our knowledge into practice
• the scholarship of teaching, or making our cache of knowledge understandable to others

He encourages academic institutions, therefore, to abandon the one-dimensional view of scholarship and recognize and affirm the diverse talents and interests of their individual faculty members as they pursue scholarship in one or more of these forms.

Although this book was primarily addressed to teaching faculty, are there lessons in here for librarians? I definitely believe there are, because I think we can use these models to broaden our own concepts of what research is. We oftentimes, I feel, never get past associating research only with discovery. Consequently, if we do not see ourselves as bold explorers of the library frontier, if we despair of ever creating a new classification system or inventing the next MARC, we might be inclined to excuse ourselves from participating in the research arena at all.

But in truth we have much more to offer. Whereas the discoverer might ask, "What remains to be known?," the integrator asks, "What does this information mean?" In your law school or firm, does any group have a broader base of knowledge than the librarians? We have one foot in the realm of information technology, and another foot in the world of information retrieval, and another (wait, how many feet do we have?) in information evaluation, and other feet who knows where. I guess we are information centipedes. We stand in the gap between information sources and information users. Are we not uniquely positioned to make connections among the ever-blurring boundaries of disciplines?

Application is certainly an area where there are abundant research opportunities. While library literature is often criticized for having too many "how-we-did-it-good" articles, our profession is at its heart a practical one, and also one that values cooperation. Sharing lessons learned and mistakes to be avoided is just another way that librarians assist one another. The mistakes, in fact, are often more valuable to hear about than the successes, although we are usually loath to admit them.

Do you think of yourself as a teacher? Sometimes we believe we must be an expert in order to publish an article on a certain subject. But teaching is the highest form of learning, and if you shed the misconception that you must be an expert before you even begin a project, you might open yourself up to a whole new realm of possibilities. What are topics you would like to learn about that are not currently being covered in the literature? Why not study those topics yourself and teach the rest of us?

I do not much like articles that ask a lot of questions and fail to give many answers, but with smoke rising from my keyboard, I realize I have written one. But that will not stop me from asking one more. What might some of these discovering, integrating, applying, or teaching research projects look like? Well, see, I told you I was not very good at generating those kinds of ideas. So you tell me—email me some ideas and I will share them with everyone. And I will continue to think about it too. And if you have published something, email me that as well and I will include it the next column. We may never gain riches from our research, but we can at least bask in the adulation of our peers!

Endnotes

¹ Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered (1990).