Abstract
This issue marks the beginning of the 40th year of publication of IFLA Journal. When the journal was launched in March 1975, Herman Liebaers, former President if IFLA, wrote in a Foreword: “When the idea for an IFLA Journal was launched several years ago, I was one of the Board members who received it with some scepticism, believing that there were already so many professional journals.”
However, he concluded, “The new IFLA Journal has been designed as a means of communication between members of the library profession. But we hope, and it is our intention, that in its articles and reports a more positive image of the contribution librarians are making to our changing society will be presented to a wider audience.” 1
As long as the journal was published only in print format, its audience was, in all likelihood, limited to IFLA members and paid subscribers. Now that the full text of the journal is available online on the publisher’s website (http://ifl.sagepub.com/) from the first issue to the most recent, and on the IFLA website (http://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-journal) from 1993 onwards, it is indeed accessible to a wider audience, including more than 6,000 institutions which have access through institutional consortia or developing world initiatives – the latter at little or no cost. It seems clear that the journal is now reaching a much wider audience than that of IFLA membership alone.
This seems to be an appropriate moment to pay tribute to the untiring work of the members of the Editorial Committee, who, apart from providing general guidance on the future of the journal at their annual meetings during each year’s World Library and Information Congress, are also responsible for reviewing and evaluating papers submitted for publication – including the annual selection of WLIC conference papers – and thus play a key role in maintaining the quality of the journal’s content. With several changes taking place in the membership of the Editorial Committee this year, and the introduction of new terms of reference, we would like to say a special “thank you” to retiring members Christine Wellems (former Chair), Sanjay Bihani, Felipe Martínez, Ellen Namhila (who will now act as liaison between the Committee and the Governing Board) and Cristóbal Pasadas, all of whom served on the committee for several years. Thanks are also due to the five members who continue in office – Jerry Mansfield (Chair), Ben Gu, Omnia Sadek, Réjean Savard and Ludmila Tikhonova – and the four new members – Dinesh Gupta, María del Cármen Díez-Hoyo, Mahmood Khosrowjerdi and Rafael Ball – who were appointed recently by the IFLA Professional Committee, all of whom are listed in the preliminary pages of the print edition and on the publisher’s website.
All but the last two papers in this issue were originally presented during WLIC Singapore in August 2013.
The first, ‘A living, breathing revolution: how libraries can use “living archives” to support, engage, and document social movements’, by Tamara Rhodes of North Carolina Central University, won the LIS Student Paper Award 2013, sponsored by the IFLA Education & Training Section in collaboration with ekz.bibliotheksservice GmbH, and was presented at the 2013 IFLA conference in Singapore. The paper describes the #searchunderoccupy exhibit in the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center in New York City as a ’living archive’ that visually displays the creative and critical responses of the New School’s student community to the Occupy Wall Street movement. The exhibit is composed of videos, photographs, audio and performance projects as well as live feed tag clouds, posters, and blogs, and “presents a future library full of infinite possibilities”.
A similar project is described in the next paper, “Archiving Egypt's revolution: The “University on the Square Project”, documenting January 25, 2011 and beyond’, by Stephen Urgola of The American University in Cairo. The project, devised by a group of archivists, faculty, administrators, and students at the American University in Cairo, aimed to collect the tangible remains of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, such as banners, tear gas canisters and digital photographs and videos taken by observers and participants. An oral history component aimed to record the experiences of a wide range of participants in the uprising and the subsequent protest and political activity in Egypt.
The next paper, ‘TIB's Portal for audiovisual media: New ways of indexing and retrieval’, by Janna Neumann and Margret Plank of the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) describes the development of a web-based portal for audiovisual media which offers new methods for searching within videos enabled by automated video analysis with scene, speech, text and image recognition. Search results are connected to new knowledge by linking the data semantically. The portal optimizes access to scientific videos such as computer animations, lecture and conference recordings.
A different aspect of library work is dealt with in the next paper, ‘Who will serve the children: recruiting and educating future children’s librarians’, by Virginia A. Walter of the University of California, Los Angeles. The paper identifies desirable traits for children’s librarians and presents strategies for recruiting people to the profession. The limitations of current graduate library education in the United States are discussed and examples of professional development opportunities for children’s librarians are provides. The paper concludes with suggestions for actions to advance the education and ongoing training of children’s librarians that could be taken by the IFLA Section on Libraries for Children and Young Adults.
From California to Australia: the next paper, ‘Agile management: strategies for success in rapidly changing times – an Australian University Library perspective’, by Andrew Wells of the University of New South Wales, explores the concept of agile management, and discusses the extent to which innovations and developments in Australian university libraries reflect the application of agile management techniques. Changes at The University of New South Wales Library are examined as a case study in relation to agile management concepts.
The last two papers in this issue move away from libraries and library work altogether. In the first paper, Prithviraj K.R. of Kuvempu University, and B.T. Sampath Kumar, of Tumkur University, both in India, report on ‘Corrosion of URLs: implications for electronic publishing’. Their study aimed to analyze the accessibility, corrosion and half-life of URLs cited in the articles of Indian LIS conference proceedings published during 2001 to 2010. After examining nearly 6,000 URLs cited in 1,700 articles, the study found that slightly more than half of the URLs were not accessible at the time of testing. The estimated average half-life of missing URLs was 4.94 years. The authors conclude that there is a need to improve the various retrieval tools being used to recover vanished URLs.
The final paper in this issue, ‘Information culture in three municipalities and its impact on information management amidst e-government development’, by Proscovia Svärd of the University of Amsterdam, presents research conducted in three municipalities involved in e-government development in Sweden and Belgium. Efficient e-government requires effective information management if the municipalities are to attain their ultimate goal of high quality service delivery. However, the research showed that, despite investments in information systems, the information culture in the municipalities will have to change if this is to be achieved. The paper highlights some of the challenges caused by the attitudes of municipal employees, such as lack of information management skills, collaboration, information management systems and satisfactory information management architecture. Huge investments are currently being made in the development of e-services, but there remain soft issues such as these that need to be seriously addressed.