Manuscript by May: Fostering a Scholarly Writing Community of Practice

Academic librarians are frequently expected to actively engage in scholarly research and contribute to professional discourse through publications and presentations. This is especially true for tenure-track and tenured faculty librarians, for whom research and publishing are necessary for career advancement. However, many librarians in these roles have little knowledge of how to conduct research and navigate the intricacies of the writing and publishing process. The gap in academic librarians’ familiarity with producing scholarship underscores the demand for structured and comprehensive support systems to address this issue. We, as two tenure-track librarians, recognized the need to provide librarians at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with not only a foundation in research, writing, and publishing but also with a community that would support this type of work.