On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 09:41:37AM -0500, Dorothea Salo wrote:

> It also means that Muhammad will have to go talk to the mountain. In
> librarianship terms, that means conferences (which code4lib has already
> pulled off), and a journal or something very like it. For all the violent
> "Library 2.0" handwaving, the bulk of my work colleagues barely tolerate
> listservs, do not read blogs, think wikis are weird, and are afraid to
> tinker with their software preferences. Journals they understand. Journals
> have ISSNs, can be catalogued and routed and indexed. Journals have
> stability (both actual and semiotic) that blogs often lack. Journals are
> an accepted library communications medium.
>

Dorothea, I totally agree with your assessment that a code4lib journal would need to define
its audience clearly, but I don't think that audience should be the people you describe above
(who a colleague of mine calls "analogue librarians"). If there are any accidental techs (or
potential accidental techs) who aren't already hanging out on venues like what code4lib
already is (i.e., oss4lib, /usr/lib/info, and a host of email lists, IRC channels, and tech
blogs, inside and outside of library land) then they'll probably remain happy with thumbing
through the existing diluted journals that librarianship is plagued with, and also remain
happy with the delusion (pardon me for saying so) that they are keeping up on what's happening
out in the world by reading them.

Sorry if I've misinterpreted your argument, but aiming code4lib at the hard core is an
opportunity that we shouldn't miss. I think the success of the conference (which I admit I
didn't attend but have heard nothing but good things about) validates that. BUT, if the
journal is to be taken seriously, particularly by promotion and tenure committees, then it
does have to be peer reviewed and have some  _semblance_ of conventionality.

Mark

Mark Jordan
Head of Library Systems
W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
Phone (604) 291 5753 / Fax (604) 291 3023
[log in to unmask] / http://www.sfu.ca/~mjordan/