Changes

In This is a constantly decisive time for libraries. In the changing social and technological environment, libraries have a critical need to must adapt to fulfill their missions and satisfy their users. This pressure is acutely felt by those working with library technology. igital Digital services, content and tools have become a part of nearly every aspect of library operations. The "digital library" is here, and most of us work in one.

This mission of this journal is to cover "the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future." We plan to provide practical information to help the library community envision and achieve our technological future, to bring libraries' tradition of collaboration to bear on new challenges. We want the digital libraries of today need to be transformed into the digital libraries of tomorrow, providing quality information while meeting new and changing needs. We are at an exciting juncture, with new opportunities to face these 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 A course of rapid transformation has risks to undertaking a transformation of our technology and our organizations, there are even greater risks to but maintaining the status quobrings its own, greater, risks. In order to Libraries must take full advantage of these possibilities, libraries are increasingly realizing they need to step up to a leading role beside their vendors in the technological innovation towards our users’ needs, alongside our vendorsthat must accompany this needed transformation.

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 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 wanting to take a new look at the 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 throughout our various informal diverse professional networks (Code4Lib and others) and local organizations, increasing cross-pollination and collaboration among library technology innovators.

The Code4Lib Journal project is very in that sense 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—in other words, 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 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 ; proposals for particular issuesour third issue are due by DEADLINE HERE. We welcome anyone interested in participating in the operation of the journal to join 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.

Coordinating Editor (for , Issue 1),

 ===Code4Lib Issue 1 Founding Editorial Committee===