Editorial: Future Research and ACRL's RedefiningScholarship Project

In June, a member of the Carnegie Mellon bagpipe band piped the North American Serials Interest Group to the opening of its 14th national conference. Program organizers had drafted Rush Miller, University of Pittsburgh's Library Director, and me for a program about the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) redefining scholarship initiatives. Privately, Miller had challenged me to demonstrate how articles in the Journal of Academic Librarianship (JAL) fit into that construct. Based on the resulting program, this editorial demonstrates the value of the redefining scholarship work and suggests initiatives for further research in each of the four categories, with some additional comments on new developments. My thesis is that research in librarianship fits well into a system that can be applied to all disciplines. Doing research, talking about it on campus, and publishing it in refereed journals does increase campus respect both for the field of librarianship and for individual librarians.