I am grateful to the Editor for giving me excuse to delve into the fossil record. I confidently hope that my article was written before most of The Australian Library Journal's present readership was born. I am happy to stay with my pragmatic attempt at a definition of research as an intensified search undertaken with the hope of finding something and with the intention of making some use of what is found. I am happy also to stand by my argument on the necessity of research in librarianship. This necessity was never in doubt in archives administration with its integral relationship with history, and I am delighted that librarians seem now to perceive the relevance of research in other fields to their concerns--in modern parlance, the other "I" fields.