How do you engage in professional development? What do you think of expectations for academic librarians to participate in scholarship and dissemination? Do you feel your library’s leadership and organizational structure are adequately supportive of librarians’ efforts to grow and be successful? The role of scholarship in academic librarians’ professional development is examined in the context of a model of knowledge creation borrowed from the corporate world and business expert Ikujiro Nonaka. Tacit and explicit knowledge, knowledge conversion stages, and ‘ba’ –facilitating environments for individual and organizational knowledge growth – are discussed in the context of the presenter’s library.