A Glimpse of True Scholarship
What is Scholarship? Is it really something one does alone? T. Mills Kelly from George Mason University presents a simple working description (Making Digital Scholarship Count (3)): “. . . it is the result of original research; it has an argument of some sort and that argument is situated in a preexisting conversation among scholars; it is public, it is peer reviewed; and it has an audience response.”1 Academic freedom within the context of scholarship is not a radically individualistic adventure. Although new and original ideas are a given, these ideas have a logical and hopefully well reasoned presentation that interacts with scholars both past and present. Its public nature – instead of a clandestine teaching, combined with a peer review – experts in the field rather than dilettantes – fosters an open and transparent environment. Ultimately, scholarship is never intended to be a monologue, but rather a voice in a polyphonic stream. Academic freedom is intended to allow the one voice to blend with that stream to form the symphony.
As I have been writing my dissertation, I have emailed several scholars, experts in their specific fields and have found that many have been willing to respond to me and give me a little of their assistance. Although I am writing, as it where, alone, on top the mountains that surround Baguio City, Philippines, I still am part of the wonderful conversations in the scholarly world. I appreciated all these men and women that live true scholarship.
1 T. Mills Kelly, “Making Digital Scholarship Count (3),” edwired, August 2, 2008, http://edwired.org/?p=317. Gerald Gerbrandt, “Scholars as Servants of the Church,” Direction 33, no. 2 (2004), 134 writes about the university having three tasks: “(1) the preservation of knowledge, (2) the dissemination of knowledge, (3) the advancement of knowledge.” For Gerhandt, scholarship is specifically the third task.
