Editorial

Citation

Calvert, P., Gelfand, J. and Riggs, C. (2002), "Editorial", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919faa.001

Editorial

The authors of papers and reports in this issue of Library Hi Tech News come from both predictable and unexpected places. It is not surprising that we include the work of authors from the United States of America and the United Kingdom. It is less easy to predict that in this issue we would include papers from New Zealand and Sweden, and harder yet to know that we would feature papers by authors living in Malaysia and Thailand. This is a reminder to us all that the development of library automation is international in its spread, even though the development is far from even. Automation helps improve library services in places like Mahasarakham University in Thailand just as it does in the finest ARL institution in North America. The scale of the technology used is obviously different, and there are only a few countries in which librarians regularly work with technology from the leading edge, but all librarians must work with ICTs and many of the challenges depend upon understanding and evaluating the use of the technology for creating value-added service. I once had a fascinating conversation with the librarian of an ARL institution who told me that his recent purchase of an integrated software package for the library had cost US$1,000,000 and that he thought the price was fair. Considering the size and advanced development of the library in question it probably was a fair price, but that is not my real point. What made me wonder was that on that same day I was reading a paper from a librarian in a Nigerian university who had to run all their software off one PC – and not even a new model PC, either. Both those university librarians must deal with the challenge of technology and do it within finite resources; it is just that the challenges, the potential solutions, and the amount of available resources are different. Today I was grumbling to myself because I could not afford to bring broadband to my house and run our home Internet access at a much faster speed. Then I read an e-mail message from a university in Uzbekistan that said their Internet connection only came on for two hours each day. I counted my blessings and thought again. Library Hi Tech News has a part to play in bringing together information managers from all countries, rich and poor, and it has been a deliberate policy of the Editors to introduce more papers from non-traditional sources to the journal. We hope you appreciate the purpose of this policy, and what is more, that you enjoy the diversity of the content and will benefit from it.

Philip Calvert (philip.calvert@vuw.ac.nz)Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu)Colby Riggs(cmriggs@uci.edu)Co-editors