High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine

Welcome to issue 10 of the HEP Libraries webzine. We apologise for our delay in bringing out this issue but internal changes at CERN have meant we have all been kept even busier than usual this year.

We’ve been on tenterhooks waiting to hear whether the UK Government would take up the suggestions from the recent House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report but just a few weeks ago were a lttle disappointed, like many, with the response. In May, CERN signed the Berlin Declaration and our own Publications Policy has been much debated recently so we were hoping for a lead from the UK in testing author-pays publishing so that we could potentially collaborate on this. Our own researchers are already required to submit their preprints to a preprint server but we are keen to test alternative financial models. We assume that there will be far more news on the report in the coming months so we will be keeping our ears pealed. In the meantime, David Prosser, SPARC Europe’s Managing Director, gives us a summary of the report for anyone as yet not up to date with its recommendations and has also added a last minute update on the Government's response and its reception in the UK. As most of you will know, SPARC is an advocate of OA and offers great support and advice.

Our full articles this issue deal with a diverse range of topics – with perhaps a single theme – revolution! Things are still exciting in the library world!

We’re extremely pleased to be able to publish a paper from three Cuban librarians who want to tell us about their support for Open Access and about their involvement in a number of projects associated with OA and archiving. Our thanks go to Antonella de Robbio who was able to facilitate the submission of their paper.

FRBR cataloguing is a topic that will probably become more widely talked about as time goes by. In some ways it is a return to the traditional methods of catalogue organisation, but with an electronic twist. Knut Hegna, from Oslo, let’s us in on the secret. In future, maybe we will wonder why we weren’t all “FRBRizing” years ago.

We also present a paper from Arturo Montejo Ráez, who recently left CERN with a PhD and who spent his time here developing a system to automatically index physics preprints. We have an experimental system in place now and are keen to see this developed. Manual indexing was abandoned when the number of submissions got out of hand and the automation of the process is complex so developments in this area are welcome and exciting.

We hope you enjoy reading these papers. As always, submissions are welcome on any subject associated with libraries – particularly with a science/physics/technological slant. And remember – we’re a fully Open Access journal so, once published, everyone can read your paper.

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