Editorial

Citation

Gelfand, J. and Riggs, C. (2003), "Editorial", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 20 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2003.23920jaa.001

Editorial

This final issue of Volume 20 wraps up a year of plentiful conferences and new developments and forces us to consider the changes in library technology that are taking place quickly and with many new applications that we want to bring to your attention in the next volume year. This is clearly the change in seasons, as we submit this issue we experience an extra hour as most of North America shifts from daylight savings time and we also know that the calendar year will also shift by the time you receive this issue.

As you turn pages or search the online table of contents or scroll down, you will find the following "good reads." We have a training report from IT@AGRILIBNET 2003, a rather intensive effort done in India by the recognized training arm for information science and library consortia, INFLIBNET. This most recent training effort reached nearly a hundred agricultural librarians from across India and it will be very interesting to see what results from an infusion of Web searching and design skills that were reinforced during this program. The annual LITA Forum, always a very important event for Library Hi-Tech News was held in October and we share with you elements from that ambitious and cutting-edge national event held this year in Norfolk, Virginia.

We have several features that focus on specific angles of some important issues that librarians around the world are challenged by. American Copyright Law in the print world is explored by Janice Kreuger. The changes that readers experience in having access to online newspapers and how the wire services, media empires, how libraries treat this access, and relationships to traditional print news is described by Shiva Kanaujia and Rochna Srivastava. The new range of information products, some free while others are by subscription reduce time, geographic and language barriers and give instantaneous news breaking coverage and value-added features online. The focus of this report is interestingly from India, where there is obviously a different thread than in a thoroughly western, highly literate population. LHTN tries to cover digital reference activities and developments as comprehensively as possibly and our next issue will contain reports from the annual Virtual Reference Conference held in November, but Diane Mizrachi concentrates her article on the promotions and marketing aspects of digital reference services and shares how the UCLA Libraries continue to grow their program.

This issue has terrific columns. Gerry McKiernan provides Part II of his anticipated trilogy on Open Archives Initiative Service Providers: The Social Sciences and Humanities. Even if this is the not subject area you work in, you are bound to learn some new and interesting resources and trends in alternative publishing schemes. Librarians need to track all the trajectories these days as the concept of scholarly communication is applied to a range of important collections and publishing activities. Howard Falk has lots of news in his E-currents column which reinforce the commercial realities of Gerry's work. The New Books column this issue offers sources of information from non-traditional sources that our profession is blessed to have due to the talents and commitment of many colleagues who make these resources possible. "Keeping in the loop" is the goal of LHTN and the New & Noteworthy and Diary Columns by Heidi Hansen and Zoe Marshall let us know what is happening and due to happen in our ever-increasingly complex professional lives we lead. Information Technology, however exciting is also more complex and there are more issues to consider.

With best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and New Year. There will be many new features in LHTN next year – we look forward to sharing them – the online version will be more robust and able to be searched like articles in other titles in the Emerald database. We are excited and hope you will follow us in 2004.

Julia Gelfand(jgelfand@uci.edu)Colby Riggs(cmriggs@uci.edu)Co-editors