Changes

This is a critical time for libraries. The social environment around libraries has changed such that libraries need to transform as well. This is specifically a critical time for library technology. Digital services, content and tools have become a part of nearly every aspect of library operations. The “digital library” is already here, and most of us work in one. But these digital libraries of today need to be transformed into the digital libraries of tomorrow to meet radically new needs while carrying forward libraries’ principles of quality provision of information, and bringing libraries’ tradition of collaboration to bear on new challenges. This mission of this journal is to cover “the "the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future,” " providing practical information to help the library community envision and achieve our technological future, one step at a time.

The Code4Lib journal Journal project aspires to balance a variety of sometimes competing goals. We want to provide quality articles providing useful information and discussion on bringing library technology into the future. We want every article to be a useful intervention into our communities of practice. We value readability over formality, and hope to meet high standards for quality and utility. At the same time we want to ensure an easy process for authors, letting authors share their important work and ideas with as few barriers as we can get away with. The journal is intentionally edited rather than refereed, and we try to contribute editing advice to help authors improve their articles without aggravation. We are committed to the Journal’s Journal's free online availability, to increase its visibility and impact in addition to its accessibility. We want the immediacy of a blog, the usefulness of a professional conference, the reliable quality of a good scholarly journal, and the participatory nature of our online communities, all in one easy to read and easy to produce package.

And we are trying to accomplish all of that on a shoestring, with an all volunteer editorial committee sharing management and editorial responsibilities in an informal, open, and productive way as per the Code4Lib ethic. Our Coordinating Editor will rotate with every issue; I’ll I'll soon be passing the baton to Eric Lease Morgan.  That is, the Code4Lib Journal project is very much like some of the innovative library technology projects many of us work on in our daily lives, balancing competing values and priorities with limited resources. And we’ve tackled this project the same way we do those, with a ‘can do’ spirit and an agile development approach—that is, we’re making it up as we go along.  So how is the experiment working out? We think we’ve got a great first issue. This is due to the great work of our authors, and of the editorial committee. I am not alone among the Editorial Committee in discovering that inventing a journal—even one solely online which is intended to be relatively informal and agile—is more work than I personally expected. All of our authors and editorial staff deserve to be proud of what we’ve produced together through hard work.[5] But ultimately only the judgments and actions of you, our readers, can measure our success. If you think this first issue is evidence of a worthwhile endeavor, you can contribute to its future success.

You can read our articles, suggest our articles them to others, and continue the discussion found in our articles discussions in your blogs , listservs, and listservs. You can also continue the discussion right here in the journal, as we’ve intentionally enabled comments on all of our articles, taking advantages of the unique affordances for multilateral communication in online publishing and communicationthemselves. We want every article here to be part of an ongoing conversation towards cooperative innovation among libraries.  You can submit articles to us, and when you run into a colleague with an interesting project or idea, you can suggest that they submit articles to us. We’re happy to accept articles and proposals at any time, although there will of course be cut off dates for particular issues. We welcome anyone interested to participate in the operation of the journal by joining our public discussion list for journal business [6]. At some point in the future, we will solicit more official members of the Editorial Committee too.