Research, For What?

Prentiss, S. Gilbert

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1503 Copy

Description

Title

Research, For What?

Author(s)

Prentiss, S. Gilbert

Issue Date

1961

Keyword(s)

Libraries and state --United States

Abstract

"""Research"" is rapidly becoming one of the hardestworking words in our contemporary vocabulary. In our daily references to research we may mean anything from the assignment a second grader carries home from school to a multimillion dollar project relating to our national defense effort. Yet a biochemist doing fundamental research in cell growth would probably be quite unhappy at calling either of these activities research, because neither is primarily concerned with the discovery of new facts at the growing tip of knowledge. Turning to Webster for some much needed help, we find research defined as: ""1. a careful search; a close searching. 2. studious inquiry; usually critical and exhaustive investigation or emperimentation having for its aim the revision of accepted conclusions, in the light of newly discovered facts. "" Certainly we are given a great deal of latitude here, and for our purposes the term ""studious inquiry"" would seem to serve well enough. Library research, by the nature of the questions that it concerns itself with, falls largely in the realm of applied research. And who is to say where a survey leaves off and research begins? For the purposes of this discussion, then, we shall not exclude studious inquiries of any kind, whether they involve a survey, a study, or a demonstration as the vehicle of research."

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (8th : 1961)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1503

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Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1959.

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