High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine

 
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HEP Libraries Webzine
Issue 1 / March 2000

Editorial Issue 1

Finally, after much effort and a steep learning curve, here we are with our first issue of HEP Libraries Webzine. As the name might suggest, we aim to be a link on the Web for HEP libraries. In fact many things nowadays can be linked as originally outlined by Vannevar Bush in his paper in 1945. It took about 45 years to get there, and the rest is history as they say. 

Along the way we have seen many developments in information systems and technology from catalogue cards to punched cards, to Peekaboo systems, to punched tapes, through various forms of digital storage techniques, AACR and MARC, classification schemes, dumb terminals and not-so-dumb ones; and all that mainly for retrieval of basic catalogue records. 

Then came electronic publishing (with its own set of problems). It only remained to find a way of storing and linking papers. Now on the back of all that development and hard work on the part of librarians we see a whole industry and even a whole economy. 

We can now jump online from a reference in a journal article to the text of the cited article. It took a while for some publishers to realise that that was the only way to go. At the beginning of December 1999, a name was given to this new reference linking service ­ Crossref. Crossref will be run from a central facility managed by an elected Board and will operate in co-operation with the International Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Foundation. So we may at last achieve seamless linking between online content, wherever it resides. The interest of the users of scientific information is put at centre stage. 

Having published electronically though, life is not all that simple. The links have to be managed and maintained as described by Jean-Yves Le Meur and David McGlashan. 

Another important aspect of publishing on the Web is the mark-up of 'documents'. XML is described in Eric van Herwijnen's contribution. 

In the real world some of these problems have already been solved. JHEP is a challenge to traditional publishers and has been well received by physicists. 

Apart from these more esoteric movements in the world of publishing, there are still the nitty gritty everyday problems of running a library service with few staff and resources. The challenge can be met with lots of determination and co-operation as shown by Susanna Mornati's article. 

We are very grateful to the authors who took the time to write some interesting and thought provoking articles for our fist issue. Thankyou also to Jean-Yves Le Meur for setting up the procedures for publication. We are also grateful to Brian Kelly of Exploit Interactive for the use of their template. We were also inspired by Tietolinja. Christiane Lefevre produced our logo. Thankyou finally to members of the Editorial Board for their support. 

The opinions expressed are those of the authors. 

 
 

 
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Last modified: August 2000