I too think find the idea of a journal intriguing.
Without knowing a whole of the discussion, I would hope the journal
would be a lot like Ariadne or DLib Magazine. I think successful
journals establish a regular format over time. Some of these things
include introductory editorials, regular columns, the occasional
theme issue, a balance between theoretical/thought provoking articles
on one hand and practical information people can use on the other,
and an identifiable graphic design. As a techno-weenie journal I
would expect it to exemplify and put into practice "kewl" features.
Being a library journal I would expect rich meta-data, regular issues
and numbering, and decent indexing.
Editing a journal is time consuming. There soliciting articles.
Keeping authors on track. Editing. Graphic design and layout. Repeat.
Who has the time for this sort of work, and how will they continue to
be motivated? To get things started, I would suggest quite a number
of articles be front-loaded into a queue allowing the editor(s) to
work on issues many numbers of months (or quarters) out.
Finally, I like the idea of Code4LibJournal because I believe it is
necessary for the library profession to take more advantage --
exploit -- computers in order to do library work. This often requires
programming/scripting, and a journal might begin to raise the
knowledge of computer in libraries accordingly.
I don't exactly know how, but y'all can count me in for some of my time.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
|