Examines the role of research skills from the perspective of staff and students involved in courses at the Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Library and information science programmes are expected to provide students with the right skills to become information specialists. The focus is on one narrow area of these skills, the research skills, i.e. research problem definition, research methods use and research report writing. Some of the students, as future professionals, will seldom have to conduct research, but will constantly have to read and evaluate it for their professional use. The analysis of the curriculum for the research content is presented. A publishable manuscript is a requirement for graduation at the Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies. The dissertation should reflect the research skills acquired through the studies. This paper is actually a case study, but with the aim of presenting a possible solution on how to define research skills based on this study.