Editorial

Citation

Gelfand, J. and Brown, M. (2007), "Editorial", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 24 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2007.23924faa.001

Editorial

The recent past months were conference-rich with an intense professional library circuit of conferences scheduled around the globe. We are very lucky to have many contributors share highlights and content that they found interesting and valuable from so many meetings. Each has its own merits, trying to attract new attendees and be relevant to a wider audience. Increasingly technology influences the changes being made in library infrastructures, organizations, collections and services and what expectations library users have of libraries.

Thus, in this issue you will glean insights from the following conferences:

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  Code4Lib Conference, second annual held in Atlanta, GA;

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  TechEd 2007 – held in Ontario, CA;

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  Learning Technologies Showcase at the University of Arizona, Tucson;

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  Evidence-Based Libraries in Practice Conference held in Chapel Hill, NC;

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  Society of Scholarly Publishing Conference held in San Francisco, CA;

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  Electronic Theses and Dissertations, ETD 2007 held in Stockholm, Sweden.

In addition there are two important updates and reports on the American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Forum and the American Library Association Legislative Days both held in Washington, DC in May. Reasons why these meetings are important is that they influence directions the US Federal government is taking in areas of library and information science, science and technology policy and cyberinfrastructure suggesting what the future holds at a national level and what some of the ongoing and new challenges will be for librarians as they continue to build meaningful and relevant library collections and services.

Science, technology and public policy continue to influence the intersecting and complex roles libraries must play in regard to scholarship, the archiving and stewardship of our collections and treasures, and making them accessible and available to our users and readers. These challenges are even more serious when we consider how electronic journals and serials are treated in developing parts of the world where resources are not as plentiful and connectivity is challenged. Themes related to these challenges are discussed by our colleague from Nigeria who explores the harnessing of eJournals in his country's libraries.

It seems that academic libraries are concluding that the "Information Commons" is an apt phrase that describes a more contemporary approach to how college and university students perceive library reading rooms and needs for technology support. Often part of a library or a reconfigured area that takes on the servicing of electronic and digital collections, promotes the connections between technology, pedagogy and learning, and encourages library users to engage in more collaborative and cooperative interaction as they study and work together, the Information Commons is a new, fresh, way of bringing these goals together in a special area. This issue takes our readers to the University of Kentucky Library in Lexington for a tour of the "Info Hub" presented by its interim director shortly after it opened this year.

We assume that you are in for a real treat of being introduced to new, new, new – corresponding to people introducing and showcasing their ideas, to products that have incredible potential in the marketplace and to individuals and library institutions that are doing some very clever and creative things to build and maintain community, an important theme in libraries worldwide today.

Have a great read – consider your involvement and how you can share with us and your colleagues what your library is doing. We welcome volunteers who want to be a feature in the "around the world" column landing at your library, and ideas to be included in our columns for New Books and Resources, New & Noteworthy and the Calendar of what our future schedule looks like.

A big thank you to all of our contributors and to our readers who share in different ways how they find this content useful – how they often follow-up with authors or people cited in the articles.

Julia Gelfand(jgelfand@uci.edu)

Mitchell Brown(mcbrown@uci.edu)

Co-edtiors, LHTN