This issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI") highlights the value of professional failure. The idea to explore this theme emerged from conversations with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Innovation Lab Advisory Group earlier this year. It is the hope this issue highlights the value of failure--both its necessary role in experimentation and its key role in learning. This is seen as an opportunity to help shift the community's culture away from risk aversion and toward risk-taking and innovation. The vignettes and case studies published in this issue show that failure in many forms is a stepping stone to success. Following an Editor's Note by Kaylyn Groves, the contents of this issue include: (1) Failure, Risk, and the Entrepreneurial Library (Tom Wall); (2) 7 Vignettes on the Value of Failure (Gerald Beasley, Marwin Britto, Holly Ann Burt, Samuel "Scott" Hall, Amanda Rinehart, Lorelei Rutledge and Lis Pankl, and Catherine Soehner.); (3) A Quest to Survey Library and University Press Collaborations in Canada: A Case Study in Research Approach and Design (Rosarie Coughlan, Geoffrey Brown, Robert Glushko, and Inba Kehoe); (4) Failure Is an Orphan: Reflecting on the Fall of the University of Michigan Orphan Works Project (Robert Glushko); (5) Failure or Perseverance? A Case Study of a Legislative Initiative by the Utah Academic Library Consortium (Peter L. Kraus); and (6) This Is a Story about a Collections Budget (Hannah Sommers).