Research Immersion?

From Lee Bassette in last Thursday’s Inside Higher Edabout the Digital Humanities Summer Institute —

I am excited because I am surrounded by people who are interested in similar research and skills as I am. I can talk about my project with people who a) actually know what and who I am talking about and b) are as excited by it as I am. People are interested in me and know me as a researcher, respect me as a researcher. My professional identity at home is so wrapped up in being a teacher, it’s nice to have this important other part of me recognized and, dare I say it, validated. I have a real intellectual community, not just a theoretical one.

I have lots of professor friends on other campuses who talk about this kind of isolation, but not librarians. When we talk about the issues of solo librarianship, we’re usually talking about something else — not about being the only metadata person, or instruction librarian, or archivist in the place.

And as librarians, we have both a (sometimes potential) research self, and a (usually actual) practice self — I could easily imagine that there are some librarians who are alone in their research interest, even with plenty of professional peers. Who needs this kind of shared experience more than us — what would it look like? Research Immersion?