Editorial

Citation

(2006), "Editorial", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 23 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2006.23923eaa.001

Editorial

Summer is here and it is amazing how fast this academic year has passed. This is the midpoint issue for volume 23 and we have many professional conferences and interesting features lined up to finish out the volume. We look forward to offering another in-depth American Library Association Conference report and the full coverage on the upcoming Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) National Forum. We are excited to host a number of new authors in future issues of LHTN covering such engaging topics as:

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  institutional repositories;

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  developing web-based database applications;

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  new open-source technologies;

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  blogs, RSS and wikis; and

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  electronic resource management systems.

In this issue we have a number of important conference reports. There is an interesting conference report on the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in St Louis, Missouri in February 2006. We are fortunate to have past contributors Danielle Mihram, G. Arthur Mihram write for us again along with Caroline Gilson. They provide an in-depth overview of the seminars, symposia, workshops and presentations at the conference themed "Grand challenges, great opportunities".

We are proud to present an extensive conference report from the first Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference held in March 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia. This report covers many significant issues in the electronic resources environment inlcuding organizational change, access, electronic resource management, partnerships, consortia, usage data, workflow, licensing, resources and technology.

Finally, we have a report by Rebecca Marsh on the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) annual conference held in April 2006 at the University of Warwick. We believe Rebecca was able to capture the essence of this meeting expressed in her own words, "the open atmosphere and the willingness of delegates to engage in useful debate about issues affecting all parties in the serials information chain."

We have two special features which were contributed by our valued partners within the library environment, the library vendor community. Douglas Orr from Cogenta present their new online research tool, Research Director, which improves the way librarians discover, track and manage information on the internet.

Rebecca C. Walden from EBSCO writes about a unique new electronic book service where eBook packages are emerging as the new format of choice for monographs, book series and major reference works.

We are happy to also include in our features two new authors to LHTN. David P. Whelan reviews several new technologies which might impact library services. We all know with technology changing so quickly, it can be difficult to keep track of what is coming. David offers explanations of these technologies and how to apply these new technologies to services that your library can provide.

Misha Mueller describes how to deal with "technostress." She provides strategies to help us cope with the physical stresses caused by workstation ergonomics. She includes a description of exercises and preventative techniques to lessen the impact of "technstress."

We hope you enjoy this issue. Please know that we welcome your participation in covering upcoming meetings and emphasizing the technology focus of the meetings. What is happening, changing in your library environment? We would like to know what these things are. Please share your experiences and thoughts with us.

Julia Gelfand(jgelfand@uci.edu)

Colby Riggs(cmriggs@uci.edu)

Co-editors