The Advantages of Practice, or We Work in Libraries: That's Why Our Research is Most Likely to Be Relevant

This editorial responds to an article in the previous issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship (November 2016), in which the editor-in-chief wrote about the difficulties of librarians conducting research, focusing on "the constraints of practice." The current author contends that librarians are best suited to address research questions that arise from practice. Practice is an advantage, not a disadvantage, for library and information science research. Despite the challenges of balancing research and practice, librarians write the majority of research articles published in the leading library and information science research journals,including The Journal of Academic Librarianship.