Editorial: Best papers from Milan

Abstract

In this issue of IFLA Journal we present the first group of Milan Congress papers selected for publication by the Editorial Committee from 26 papers recommended by Section Committees for possible publication. The chosen congress papers and the other contributions in this issue all focus on the digital environment from a variety of standpoints. In the first paper, ‘New journal models and publishing perspectives in the evolving digital environment’, Maria Cassella and Licia Calvi note that the functions and framework of traditional journals, and the publishers’ role, are fast changing under the influence of open access and Web 2.0 networking tools. The first part of the paper discusses new experimental journal models, i.e. overlay journals, interjournals and different levels journals, while the second part focuses on the role that commercial publishers could play in this ‘‘digital seamless writing arena’’, concentrating much more on value-added services for authors, readers and libraries, such as navigational services, discovery services, archiving and evaluation services. The second paper, ‘The Cataloging Cultural Objects experience: Codifying practice for the cultural heritage community’, by Erin Coburn, Elisa Lanzi, Elizabeth O’Keefe, Regine Stein and Ann Whiteside, examines the influence of the manual, Cataloguing Cultural Objects: a Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images (CCO) since its publication in 2003. CCO is a manual for describing, documenting, and cataloguing cultural works and their visual surrogates. While its primary focus is art and architecture, CCO also covers many other types of cultural works, including archaeological sites, artifacts, and functional objects from the realm of material culture. This paper presents three examples of the implementation of CCO, showing how emerging CCO cataloguing practice has resulted in a significant body of records from the museum and image library communities headed for library/archive/museum integrated access environments. The authors comment on how cataloguing decision-making (e.g. differing concepts about a ‘work’) may impact the convergence of records in these environments. In the third paper, ‘Content development in an indigenous digital library: A case study in community participation’, Elizabeth Greyling and Sipho Zulu present a case study in community participation in developing content for a digital library of local indigenous knowledge in a South African community. They highlight the interaction between the library, the community and the technology used, discuss the implementation challenges, results and lessons learnt and point out the benefits to the community. The authors conclude that, by providing an online, contextually-based information service to local communities, public libraries in Africa will ensure future-oriented access to cultural heritage resources through 21st century information communication technologies (ICTs). The potential to reduce the digital divide will be enhanced and African communities will be introduced to the global information society. We return to the field of journal publishing with the next paper, ‘Interactive open access publishing and public peer review: The effectiveness of transparency and self-regulation in scientific quality assurance’, by Ulrich Poschl. The author notes that traditional forms of scientific publishing and peer review do not live up to the demands of efficient communication and quality assurance in the world of science of today. They need to be complemented by interactive and transparent forms of review, publication, and discussion that are open to the scientific community and to the public. The paper discusses the principles, key aspects and achievements of interactive open access publishing and describes how the benefits and viability of this approach are demonstrated by the highly successful interactive open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and a growing number of sister journals launched by the publisher Copernicus and the European Geosciences Union. The author I F L A