In the beginning there was an idea...

Scholarly research begins at a place we can't generally see - the "Invisible College," a loose network of information activity and sources that are generally unavailable to the public. Ideas are generated, often by a solitary researcher, and then discussed in the “invisible college." "Membership" is largely dependent on personal communications and often initiated by meetings or conferences. The Internet has greatly expanded the size and number of invisible colleges.
Source: Feather, John and Paul Sturges, eds. International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science. New York: Routledge, 1997.

During the research process scholars gather and discuss information and ideas behind the scenes using many different methods:

• Email

• Electronic discussion lists

• Telephone conversations

• Informal conversations

• Research logs/files

• Personal journals

The flow continues through several steps toward dissemination:

• Primary and/or secondary research

• Informal presentation of results

• Conference paper / conference proceedings

• Journal article

• Book or dissertation

• Review article

• Article indexed and abstracted in Citation indexes

• Ideas widely accepted and “canonized” in an encyclopedia, handbook, or textbook.

Libraries are responsible for acquiring, organizing, and preserving knowledge in order to make it available to future researchers.

To do this, they must acquire general periodicals, scholarly journals, books, and the indexes/abstracts/databases and other tools that make access to the information possible.