D-Lib Magazine

November/December 2011
Volume 17, Number 11/12

Editorial

Two Years

Laurence Lannom
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
llannom@cnri.reston.va.us

doi:10.1045/november2011-editorial

I have been in the habit, in recent issues, of using this editorial space to summarize the contents of the current issue. We have a worthy issue at hand and I can certainly recommend the four articles, three extended conference reports, and extensive News and Events section. But as this is the end of my second full year as D-Lib editor I wanted to use the space to reflect on those two years and share some observations with whatever portion of our readership I am addressing in these editorials. For those who came here looking for a summary of the issue, I apologize and promise to return to my old habits next year.

Over the past two years we have published twelve issues, sixty-three articles and opinion pieces, fifteen extended conference reports, featured twelve special collections, and filled up many, many screens with news and events for the DL community. In counting those articles and skimming over those issues I was struck, forcefully, by the breadth of topics we need to consider in covering the area: one special issue on scientific data and another devoted to DL developments in China, articles on metadata, collection management, library education, social networking, electronic publishing, archiving, and information management technologies of all kinds, reports on conferences held around the world, notices of workshops, grants, awards, best practices, standards, legal issues, government efforts, private efforts, universities, publishers, gaming, virtual worlds, and every sort of event and issue that touches on the DL community's effort to organize and optimize the increasing flow of information that digital technologies and networking have unleashed.

Whether we have or have not done a good job of covering this forbidding array of topics you, the readers, must decide. To the extent that we have been of benefit to the DL community, much of the credit goes to the community, which of course is the source of most of the information that appears in D-Lib, one way or another. We sort it and organize it and in some cases edit it to make it as accessible as we can. Three of the four people on the masthead started off as librarians, so this is a familiar role for us. The support we receive from the community, including the all-important financial support from the D-Lib Alliance, is responsible for our continued existence and for that we thank you.

About the Editor

Laurence Lannom is Director of Information Management Technology and Vice President at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), where he works with organizations in both the public and private sectors to develop experimental and pilot applications of advanced networking and information management technologies.