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We are at an exciting juncture, with new opportunities to face these serious challenges. The same network and information technology that is responsible for foundational shifts in our environment makes possible tools to face this new environment that would have seemed a futuristic fantasy a decade ago, while the internet provides an ability to collaborate with each other over a distance on solutions, accomplishing through cooperation what limited resources make infeasible individually. Libraries are increasingly realizing that while there are risks to undertaking a transformation of our technology and our organizations, there are even greater risks to maintaining the status quo. In order to take full advantage of these possibilities, libraries are increasingly realizing they need to step up to a leading role in technological innovation towards our users’ needs, alongside our vendors.
===The Code4Lib Community===
One locus of pragmatic innovation has been the Code4Lib community [1]. Inspired in part by the social dynamics of distributed open source projects, Code4Lib is an annual conference and , more importantly , an informal online social and professional network embodying values of transparency, cooperation, and pragmatic problem solving. This informality and lack of structure is a strength which provides agility and helps make Code4Lib a focal point for collaborative opportunities dynamic community fosters collaboration and encourages the sharing of skills and ideas [2,3,4]. But paradoxically, this amorphous informality can make it hard for someone new to the field—or field—or wanting to take a new look at the field—to field—to find a comfortable entry point to the community and the resources it has to offer.
We hope the Code4Lib Journal can embody the successful values of the Code4Lib community, while providing increased access to the collective knowledge and experience held in our various informal professional networks (Code4Lib and others) and local organizations, increasing cross-pollination among library technology innovators.
===This Journal is an Experiment===