Research and the Practicing Librarian

EARLIER in this program, H.C. Wright argued eloquently that librarians need to become more concerned with ideas than with things and that library researchers need to use more than the scientific method as they approach library problems. While librarians accept these ideas in principle, most practicing librarians would have problems in seeing the practical side of them. To quote Wright, "The most brilliant failure of librarians to date is the inability to distinguish their substance from their instruments." But that may not be bad or even relevant. One is reminded of the question the information scientists used to ask librarians as the latter dealt with people: "Did you give him the information he wanted or did you simply give him the item in which the information was contained?" That was an infuriating question then and still is to librarians. Simply stated, librarians work with ideas as well as with things and deal with several professions which are increasingly unclear whether they are sciences, humanities, behavioral sciences, or some as yet undefined amalgam of these. Medicine and librarianship in particular are unclear, and since these are the professions with which many librarians spend most of their time, they, too, are unclear. The dilemma this creates is pervasive in the author's thinking of how we might reach some accommodation. Wright and this author are probably not as far apart as might appear, however, and the assignment here is to articulate a stance toward research