Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
I really like Roy's idea of establishing nodes of activity around various ideas coming out of this discussion. In an attempt to create a node for formal publication, I've put together the first draft of a formal statement of purpose, format, and editorial policies for a code4lib journal. It's on the code4lib wiki: http://wiki.library.oregonstate.edu/confluence/display/code4lib/code4lib +journal+-+mission%2C+format%2C+guidelines Please take a look and make changes or add comments -- I'm hoping this process can be as open and democratic as the conference. There's a lot of room for building in some of the fantastic, innovative suggestions that have come up over the past few days. Alternatively, if you really hate the idea of a formal publication, start another node for whatever approach(es) you prefer. The important thing is that we get people engaged and get ideas out there. -- Jeff Davis Public Services Librarian University of Alberta Libraries [EMAIL PROTECTED] IM screen name: jd4v15 (MSN, AIM, Yahoo) -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roy Tennant Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 5:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal +1 I know there has been a lot of sentiment toward simply hacking on our web site, but as useful as that might be, it is still preaching to the choir. As Peter and others have said, if we want to broaden our reach we will most likely need to produce something that will get much wider notice -- that is, something more magazine or journal like. A publication gets broader notice in ways that putting up something on a web site doesn't. I'm not arguing against anything, I think everyone should participate in what they feel is most useful. Having said that, I know that creating a new publication is not trivial. But it can also be done if enough people want to make it happen. I've kept Current Cites going for almost sixteen years, with a monthly publication deadline. A magazine is much more substantial, but is also unlikely to be published on a monthly basis either. Perhaps it's time to move beyond debate and simply allow folks to coalesce around the activities that turn them on. Perhaps we could use the web site or wiki to establish nodes of activity around various ideas, and see who signs on/contributes? Roy On Feb 23, 2006, at 3:40 PM, Binkley, Peter wrote: One question is certainly, Who will this journal serve? The more I think about it, the more I think the main justification for a code4lib journal is to get our stuff noticed more. There are too many enthusiastic Library 2.0 bloggers who spend their time talking about non-library Web 2.0 services, and asking why we don't do cool stuff like that in our libraries. They should pay more attention to the people who are actually building the tools to do that, i.e. us. So the journal should serve the forward-thinking library community as a whole. Peter
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
On Feb 23, 2006, at 9:09 AM, Ross Singer wrote: I think a more important question, however, is What is it about Code4Lib that attracts you/makes you desire a published output of it? I believe that Code4Lib serves an otherwise under-served audience: The growing numbers of librarians who are also sys-admins / programmers / general geeks. I rarely find anything in the library journals that applies to what I do. I try to keep up with the open source press as well, but almost never do I see anything there that directly addresses libraries. My main source of information directly relevant to my job is reading the blogs of code4lib members. Unfortunately, when I need to make a budget request or ask my library to think about trying something new this guy's blog said it was cool doesn't carry as much weight as I might wish. Librarians are increasingly being asked to be hackers. We don't have the budget to call in a consultant... see if you can get it working anyway. Or ... People are asking for RSS feeds from our OPAC, but the upgrade that provides that won't be out for a year / doesn't work with our system / costs too much... can you get it working anyway? Or, best of all... Here' s a project that could easily consume a full-time software engineering design team. But we really need it! Can you give it a shot? This is not a complaint. I love my job, and I love what I do. But I, and the people I work with, rely almost entirely on informal information networks at this point: book recommendations, blog postings, the occasional conference. I can't help but think that I'm missing a lot, that many people are missing even more, and that we need some sort of systematized information distribution that addresses all the things that have been raised in this forum, as well as: 1. Is it worth it to pick up a new programming language like Ruby / flavor of the month? 2. How do I trick my OPAC into doing cool stuff? 3. How do I hire a library geek? 4. How do I mentor non-geeks into becoming geeks? 5. How can I pick up a crash course in software engineering, for those times when I need to design an application from scratch? Are there some design tools that might help this process? I can come up with many other questions, but you get the idea. I think blogs are fantastic, and I love #code4lib even though I rarely participate anymore, but I think we have more than enough material, and more than enough audience, to justify a journal. More than that, I think the emerging field of hacker librarianship needs such a journal if it is going to grow. Bess Elizabeth (Bess) Sadler Metadata Specialist for User Projects Digital Research and Instructional Services (DRIS) Box 400129 Alderman Library University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22904 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (434) 243-2305
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
One question is certainly, Who will this journal serve? The more I think about it, the more I think the main justification for a code4lib journal is to get our stuff noticed more. There are too many enthusiastic Library 2.0 bloggers who spend their time talking about non-library Web 2.0 services, and asking why we don't do cool stuff like that in our libraries. They should pay more attention to the people who are actually building the tools to do that, i.e. us. So the journal should serve the forward-thinking library community as a whole. Peter
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
+1 I know there has been a lot of sentiment toward simply hacking on our web site, but as useful as that might be, it is still preaching to the choir. As Peter and others have said, if we want to broaden our reach we will most likely need to produce something that will get much wider notice -- that is, something more magazine or journal like. A publication gets broader notice in ways that putting up something on a web site doesn't. I'm not arguing against anything, I think everyone should participate in what they feel is most useful. Having said that, I know that creating a new publication is not trivial. But it can also be done if enough people want to make it happen. I've kept Current Cites going for almost sixteen years, with a monthly publication deadline. A magazine is much more substantial, but is also unlikely to be published on a monthly basis either. Perhaps it's time to move beyond debate and simply allow folks to coalesce around the activities that turn them on. Perhaps we could use the web site or wiki to establish nodes of activity around various ideas, and see who signs on/contributes? Roy On Feb 23, 2006, at 3:40 PM, Binkley, Peter wrote: One question is certainly, Who will this journal serve? The more I think about it, the more I think the main justification for a code4lib journal is to get our stuff noticed more. There are too many enthusiastic Library 2.0 bloggers who spend their time talking about non-library Web 2.0 services, and asking why we don't do cool stuff like that in our libraries. They should pay more attention to the people who are actually building the tools to do that, i.e. us. So the journal should serve the forward-thinking library community as a whole. Peter
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
OK, folks, it's time for a comment from the peanut gallery. (Having had my 1st cuppa, I am brave.) Last night I pulled the first 3 issues of JOLA (yeah, I go back that far) from my shelf and took a look. Back in the late '60s, JOLA was reproducing images of Hollerith cards, tractor-feed print dumps, flowcharts, and formulae to illustrate some pretty detailed articles about really tech-y stuff pertaining to the mainframe environment in libraries. Compared to today's ITAL, the early JOLA was deeper into the guts of library code development. You are proposing to go back to that. I say, Yes! I like the idea of this being within the code4lib site, I like Art's idea re commenting, I like the idea of more formal sprinkled with shorter and faster. The topics are what you all have been cranking out anyway, but they will change as things move forward. Hey, you created a conference out of thin air; you can do this, and invent a new journal type in the process. (Don't forget the ISSN, please!) Although I may not know half the time what you're talking about, I scramble to keep up and enjoy every minute of it. I don't code, but perhaps I might speak for the lurking audience here that doesn't code. Incrementally, we learn every time one of you posts a new idea, or points in a different direction. We don't sit on and participate in the edge, where you are; but we are very close, and watch intently. And, we feed this stuff back into our own organizations to illuminate possibilities. Go for it! You have readership. Din. Donna Dinberg Systems Librarian/Analyst Reference and Genealogy Division Library and Archives Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** My own thoughts, of course, not those of my employer. **
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
On Feb 22, 2006, at 8:03 AM, Dinberg Donna wrote: Last night I pulled the first 3 issues of JOLA (yeah, I go back that far) from my shelf and took a look. Back in the late '60s, JOLA was reproducing images of Hollerith cards, tractor-feed print dumps, flowcharts, and formulae to illustrate some pretty detailed articles about really tech-y stuff pertaining to the mainframe environment in libraries. Compared to today's ITAL, the early JOLA was deeper into the guts of library code development. You are proposing to go back to that? I say, Yes! Me too. I am looking for code snippets, hacks, Javascript widgets gadgets, etc. I believe the inclusion of these sorts of things will set this journal off from the others. Think of writing code as a sort of poetry, and this journal is a poetry journal. ;-) -- Eric Lease Morgan University Libraries of Notre Dame
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Well, since I brought up the idea at code4libcon, I'm in favor of it :-). I'm not sure how the best way to handle the review process would be, but I do know that tradition blind peer review would: a) Be a lot of work b) Slow down the process (which is a problem with a journal such as ITAL) c) Not work because the community is so small, it would be pretty easy to figure out who wrote it (or at least limit it to a few possibilities) anyway, so it wouldn't really be blind. Someone (Ross?) mentioned we already have a few journals such as DLib, Adriane and ITAL. Well, that may be true, but when I look at them I see mostly big formal projects being written about. I think a code4lib journal could provide an outlet for small projects and hacks... Things that a single systems librarian in a smaller library setting can do in his or her free time between going to meetings and staffing the reference desk. For those who were at code4libcon, a good example of the type of articles I'm picturing is the Lipstick on a Pig presentation by Jim Robertson. I don't picture it only being articles like that, but I do picture that being an outlet for smaller projects like what Jim has done. I also like the idea of including code snippets and reports on failed attempts. Really, you can often learn more from reading what didn't work then reading about what did. I was thinking about a possible review process while/after talking to people at code4lib. One idea that came up was that the pre-reviewed articles can go up, and that anyone in the community can review them and make comments (sort of like Art's recipes that were passed around the small village) for a set period of time, and then the author(s) can make changes. It can then be given a go to be published or sent back for more review and/or revisions. Obviously, this would need to be hashed out much more. For example, what is the community, how exactly to submit comments, who gives the final go to consider it accepted, etc. But this is one possibility. Well, that is my two cents worth, Ed C.
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
I'm glad for Donna Dinberg's post, as it crystallizes my overnight thinking about code4lib and its currently-vaporware journal. This message may turn long and discursive, for which I apologize in advance. Code4lib started out as and in many ways still *is* a core group of library tech people, a group with history, in-jokes, and its own fiery small-group energy. Roughly half of what I see in this discussion boils down to a desire for code4lib to continue and expand upon its achievements, while essentially remaining a self-contained group. (Certainly a group that welcomes new members -- but still, a self-contained and self-defined group of people.) *If that is the desire*, then code4lib.org should fulfill the necessary communication functions admirably. I will go further: if that is the desire, a journal of any stripe is useless and may be actively detrimental. A journal (whatever its pretensions) *isn't really for* the members of an in-group. It's the in-group's vehicle for reaching outside itself. And that's what I see in the other half of this discussion, which turns upon broadening code4lib into a larger phenomenon within the library (and tech? not sure) world. This has implications for the small group. Like it or not, a small group that wants to become a movement within a larger one has to analyze, consider, and play to the larger group's ways of thinking, behaving, and communicating. Inevitably, this means some loss to the small-group culture; in-jokes don't scale. A couple of bumps and bruises that happened on the way to code4libcon suggest the kind of outer-directedness and circumspection that code4lib does not yet have, but *will need* if it is to speak out to the larger professions (both software development and librarianship, but librarianship especially). 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. Now, code4lib's core is, shall I say, hardcore. Real Developers. Definitely we don't want to lose that in a welter of shiny new IM toys and the latest hot end-user out-of-the-box app. Code4lib does not want to become Computers in Libraries, in other words. Nor, I'm fairly sure, does it want to go the ITAL/JASIST whee! theory! route. Nor does it have an exclusive focus on digital libraries -- it's broader than that, it's about code in libraries *wherever code happens*, and code happens all over the place in today's libraries. I agree that quite a bit of code4lib's ordinary output (on the channel and on member blogs) deserves wider dissemination in the library world. The question then becomes which parts of the library world need to listen? Donna's post suggests a criminally underserved population, one I think code4lib could profitably target along with its developer core: the accidental library tech. We are not developers. We have extremely limited formal training in computers when we have any at all. We tend to have pretty good technical aptitude, we may have one or two areas of genuine technical expertise, and we can talk to Real Developers without (often) sounding like idiots... but we rely on others to do the major-league coding and to haul us out of the fire when we break something. Some of us do grow up to be Real Developers, though, and I believe it behooves code4lib to think about how to make that happen more often. Barring Rachel Singer Gordon's excellent book, there is NOTHING out there for us. Nothing. ITAL and JASIST are too divorced from daily library practice and problems (aside from the occasional ITAL squib with a good hack in it). Computers in Libraries (both mag and conference) is too fluffy, and doesn't usually put us in touch with the Real Developers who can and are willing to lend us a hand. Library Hi-Tech is pretty good, but still not quite right (and not OA, either). Blogs are great, and we both read and write blogs, but blogs have limits, and aren't smiled upon by our managers and retention/promotion committees. We *do not have* a library-blessed communications organ. I frankly don't think such an organ needs to be peer-reviewed, even considering retention/promotion concerns, because enough of an aura clings to techie stuff in librarianship that nobody cares that D-Lib and Ariadne aren't; a publication in either one is still going to impress the committee. So. Summary. Code4lib needs to decide if its communications goals are internally or externally focused. If internally, then code4lib.org should continue
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Hello, I'm Ben Brophy. I'm a UI designer/developer at MIT, working on a federated search tool for slide libraries, and about 85% of the way through library school. I am an unrepentant lurker on this list. I think the journal idea is excellent. Some one asked who would read this journal, and I think there are a lot of people like me who can't hit the conference, and don't do IRC or even check the code4lib website much. But if there were an occasional distilled version of code4lib goodness I'd be all over it. http://www.alistapart.com/ might be a good model. They are formal enough to have issue numbers, an ISSN number and an editorial board, but not too formal. Ben
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
One potential model for a code4lib journal (or at least how we coded it good part of it) is the that of the methods journal found in the life sciences. Good examples include Nature Methods http://www.nature.com/nmeth/index.html and Biotechniques http://www.biotechniques.com/ Ed Sperr Digital Services Consultant NELINET, Inc. 153 Cordaville Rd. Suite 200 Southborough, MA (508) 597-1931 | (800) 635-4638 x1931
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Dorothea states elegantly what I implied (I guess I needed two cuppas): Donna's post suggests a criminally underserved population, one I think code4lib could profitably target along with its developer core: the accidental library tech. there is NOTHING out there for us. Code4lib needs to decide if its communications goals are internally or externally focused. The last statement is really important, and is compounded by what sort of publication this will be: formal/informal, peer review/not, etc. Walt Crawford's observations while reviewing the 10th anniversary edition of D-Lib Magazine in the latest _Cites_ may be useful. http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ6i4.pdf [Walt, commenting on the Bonita Wilson-Allison L. Powell article:] There's a good explanation of why D-Lib is not a refereed journal. The founders opted for quick turn-around from submission to publication over peer review... Despite its less formal status, D-Lib articles have been cited frequently, an average of nearly 118 citations per year. Perhaps, even though it's a magazine, D-Lib has enough of a journal's formality to discourage most reader feedback. [Walt, commenting on Amy Friedlander's article:] She explicitly thought and thinks of D-Lib as a magazine, not a journal. [W]e were freed from the canons of peer review to engage in speculation that might eventually feed into the formal process of juried results. So, who's your audience? How will you encourage feedback? What latitude do you want to have, and what influence do you intend? (Going to get second cup now.) Din. Donna Dinberg Systems Librarian/Analyst Reference and Genealogy Division Library and Archives Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** My own thoughts, of course, not those of my employer. **
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Responding to Mark Jordan: 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. There are (a whole lotta?) folks out here who don't peruse *anything* we pay attention to, but who still produce code in libraries. There are various reasons why they don't watch: no time, stuff of interest is too scattered, 1.0-level coder, etc. When I commented that those of us lurking here funnel stuff back into our (and maybe other) institutions, I was thinking specifically of funneling to those who do not watch. (Not watching is not new. Decades ago, I mentioned an article on experimental bubble memory to a senior and respected programmer; the response was basically Huh?. For those of you born after bubble memory peaked: http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/pc5000/bubble.html ) This might be the value of the formal aspect of a code4lib magazine or journal. Those who do not watch blogs, websites, etc. might spend more time on something more formal when a citation is plunked under their noses. And, they may find a peer group. Din. Donna Dinberg Systems Librarian/Analyst Reference and Genealogy Division Library and Archives Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** My own thoughts, of course, not those of my employer. **
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
If the delivery method is purely electronic, and it's a given that the intended audience would have tools to be alerted of new articles, why bother with a formal schedule? -Ross. Because that's how things get written, reviewed, and published. It's not for Them, it's for You. Just my 2 cents as a writer. K.G. Schneider
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Ross unleashed: Why does it have to follow /any/ traditional publishing model? I sort of like the idea that maybe 3 articles come out in a week, then nothing for a week or two, then another article comes out, and then one comes out every day for a 13 day span. If the delivery method is purely electronic, and it's a given that the intended audience would have tools to be alerted of new articles, why bother with a formal schedule? -Ross. While I was at the University of Arizona, we produced the Journal of Insect Science (http://insectscience.org) (now at the University of Wisconsin). While this is a peer reviewed journal, it took the approach not to produce actual issues, but to publish articles once they successfully vetted through the peer review process. For preservation and posterity, at the end of each year we would print out all of the articles and have them hard bound. The point is, Ross' suggestion is a good one, and I give it a hearty +1 -- jaf === Jeremy Frumkin The Gray Chair for Innovative Library Services 121 The Valley Library, Oregon State University Corvallis OR 97331-4501 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 541.737.9928 541.737.3453 (Fax) 541.230.4483 (Cell) === Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. - Emerson
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Jeremy Frumkin said the following on 2/22/2006 11:44 AM: Ross unleashed: Why does it have to follow /any/ traditional publishing model? I sort of like the idea that maybe 3 articles come out in a week, then nothing for a week or two, then another article comes out, and then one comes out every day for a 13 day span. If the delivery method is purely electronic, and it's a given that the intended audience would have tools to be alerted of new articles, why bother with a formal schedule? -Ross. While I was at the University of Arizona, we produced the Journal of Insect Science (http://insectscience.org) (now at the University of Wisconsin). While this is a peer reviewed journal, it took the approach not to produce actual issues, but to publish articles once they successfully vetted through the peer review process. For preservation and posterity, at the end of each year we would print out all of the articles and have them hard bound. The point is, Ross' suggestion is a good one, and I give it a hearty +1 I like the idea of taking a similar approach to what Jeremy describes the Journal of Insect Science as taking. I think it would be good to publish articles as they are approved, and then either once or twice a year (depending on the number of submissions), package them all as one volume. Ed C. -- jaf === Jeremy Frumkin The Gray Chair for Innovative Library Services 121 The Valley Library, Oregon State University Corvallis OR 97331-4501 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 541.737.9928 541.737.3453 (Fax) 541.230.4483 (Cell) === Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. - Emerson
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 08:44:08AM -0800, Jeremy Frumkin wrote: Ross unleashed: Why does it have to follow /any/ traditional publishing model? I sort of like the idea that maybe 3 articles come out in a week, then nothing for a week or two, then another article comes out, and then one comes out every day for a 13 day span. If the delivery method is purely electronic, and it's a given that the intended audience would have tools to be alerted of new articles, why bother with a formal schedule? -Ross. While I was at the University of Arizona, we produced the Journal of Insect Science (http://insectscience.org) (now at the University of Wisconsin). While this is a peer reviewed journal, it took the approach not to produce actual issues, but to publish articles once they successfully vetted through the peer review process. For preservation and posterity, at the end of each year we would print out all of the articles and have them hard bound. The point is, Ross' suggestion is a good one, and I give it a hearty +1 As for hybrid models, take a look at http://copyrightjournal.org/index.php/Copyright, which has a journal club (http://www.copyrightjournal.org/drupal/forum/7). This journal, with names like Lawrence Lessig as editors, uses OJS, Drupal, and MediaWiki on one site. Again, this is not an arguement for using any particular platform, but it's interesting to see how another site mashes things up. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] / http://www.sfu.ca/~mjordan/
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
I agree with Ed Corrado that the purpose of the peer-review process is to improve the articles, not to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down. How about making the review process consist of submitting an article into a wiki (with proper discussion page etc.) and letting it simmer there for a while before moving it to the more formal journal area? I think getting the dynamic-content part right will be the hard part. I'm always frustrated by the problem of comments in blogs: often they're as important as the postings, but how do you track them? Subscribe to a separate comments RSS feed (as you have to do on my blog)? Have the main entry appear as new in the main RSS feed every time someone posts a comment (as Art's blog does, I believe)? Neither of these really gets me engaged with the discussion the way I (sometimes) want to be. If the journal is going to be truly edgy, we need a better solution than anything I've run into. We seem to be forming a consensus that the journal would consist of different things, including: 1) formal articles, things that might otherwise have gone to D-Lib or Ariadne 2) short how-tos / lessons learned pieces, like lightning talks, ideally sparking a string of comments and additions like Art's shepherd's pie recipes 3) hacks: actual code How about demos? Should we aim to have the server-side capacity and facilities to actually show new stuff in operation? A lot of this would have a limited shelf-life (in that we wouldn't undertake to maintain the code), but it would be nice to have a single place where you could see some eye-candy. Peter Peter Binkley Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian Information Technology Services 4-30 Cameron Library University of Alberta Libraries Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2J8 Phone: (780) 492-3743 Fax: (780) 492-9243 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Sounds like a 'journal - portal - knowledge base' type-o-thing Whatever it will be, I KNOW it will be Bit-e-full! Beata Eric Lease Morgan wrote: On Feb 22, 2006, at 8:03 AM, Dinberg Donna wrote: Last night I pulled the first 3 issues of JOLA (yeah, I go back that far) from my shelf and took a look. Back in the late '60s, JOLA was reproducing images of Hollerith cards, tractor-feed print dumps, flowcharts, and formulae to illustrate some pretty detailed articles about really tech-y stuff pertaining to the mainframe environment in libraries. Compared to today's ITAL, the early JOLA was deeper into the guts of library code development. You are proposing to go back to that? I say, Yes! Me too. I am looking for code snippets, hacks, Javascript widgets gadgets, etc. I believe the inclusion of these sorts of things will set this journal off from the others. Think of writing code as a sort of poetry, and this journal is a poetry journal. ;-) -- Eric Lease Morgan University Libraries of Notre Dame -- Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we hear is a perspective, not the truth. - Marcus Aurelius Beata Frelas Technical Support Consultant/Analyst L002A Mahaffey Business Information Center Notre Dame, IN 46556 Phone: (574) 631-7176 Fax:(574) 631-6367 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web:http://www.nd.edu/~bfrelas
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
A few thoughts, followed by a summary of the discussion so far. Ed Corrado noted some problems with peer review in an earlier message, and I think those problems outweigh the gains of peer review -- which ultimately amount to a little more respectability, mainly for those seeking tenure. In that light, I like the open review process idea suggested by Ed and Peter Binkley (editors vet the article; it's made available for public comment for a limited period, perhaps in a wiki; the author revises the article based on the comments; and the final version gets published in a subsequent issue). Of course, this would require commitment to comment/review from the larger community -- hopefully not just current code4lib folks, either -- but I think we can pull that one off. If necessary, we could even have a designated, rotating group of reviewers/commenters (peer review lite?). You should also be able to post anonymous comments, for the same reason that peer reviewers are usually not identified. Regarding whether to publish as a formal journal: Some people on the list and in-channel have expressed reservations about issuing all the articles as issues (i.e. in regular chunks rather than as they are written). But there's no reason we couldn't publish finalized articles early, as pre-releases between issues, just so long as the final version eventually gets published as part of a regular issue. In fact, this would dovetail nicely with the editorial process described above. One approach would be to have a regular publication schedule with its own official release RSS feed, while any articles that are finalized before publication can also be released early via a separate as-ready feed. More generally, I think there are good arguments for having an ISSN, regular publication, and an established review process with clear and public editorial policies (whatever the process itself might be). These things lend legitimacy and authority to the project, and those are good qualities that we want to have. *** To add to Peter Binkley's summary of the emerging consensus, I think we've also agreed on the following: * The core audience for the journal would be the more-or-less-hardcore coders and developers, plus any accidental techs willing to participate in hardcore-type conversations. * The emphasis would be on the practical, with actual code and specific solutions to problems -- as Eric Lease Morgan says, code snippets, hacks, Javascript widgets gadgets, etc. This could be balanced by some higher-level feature articles as well. * Comments would be enabled on all articles. Dorothea Salo's I tried this and it worked! button would complement this nicely. * The journal MUST reach out to people beyond the current code4lib community. Several people have said this is a good argument in favor of a more formal structure. * There has to be a low barrier to participation. I think the shorter articles can serve this function, since they would have a fairly simple editorial process. It needn't be much more difficult than writing a substantial, rigorous blog post. The editors could even solicit articles from bloggers (Hey, that post was interesting -- want to get it published?). * Several people have offered to host the journal at their institutions using Open Journal Systems. If we want to be more informal or experimental than OJS will allow, the existing code4lib.org site would be a natural home. -- Jeff Davis Public Services Librarian University of Alberta Libraries [EMAIL PROTECTED] IM screen name: jd4v15 (MSN, AIM, Yahoo) -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Binkley, Peter Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 11:38 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal I agree with Ed Corrado that the purpose of the peer-review process is to improve the articles, not to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down. How about making the review process consist of submitting an article into a wiki (with proper discussion page etc.) and letting it simmer there for a while before moving it to the more formal journal area? I think getting the dynamic-content part right will be the hard part. I'm always frustrated by the problem of comments in blogs: often they're as important as the postings, but how do you track them? Subscribe to a separate comments RSS feed (as you have to do on my blog)? Have the main entry appear as new in the main RSS feed every time someone posts a comment (as Art's blog does, I believe)? Neither of these really gets me engaged with the discussion the way I (sometimes) want to be. If the journal is going to be truly edgy, we need a better solution than anything I've run into. We seem to be forming a consensus that the journal would consist of different things, including: 1) formal articles, things that might otherwise have gone to D-Lib or Ariadne 2) short how-tos / lessons learned pieces, like lightning talks, ideally
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Wow, lots of great ideas coming in on this. I wonder if fleshing out a test case would be useful for the class of materials that might have trouble finding a home in standard publications. For example, Roy's MODS-MPEG DIDL shootout. Let's say that Roy put a digitized book on the code4lib server (maybe one of his own :-), and enough descriptive metadata to kick things off. Roy then challenges the world to do something impressive with the results, maybe directly contacting some MODS and DIDL folks. Those of you who have ever seen Sun's blueprints know that this is sort of the intent behind their blueprint series, define what seems to be a agreed-upon problem and let the best of breed solutions emerge. So far, any of this could happen in either the lead-up to a traditional article (groundwork for a comparison of MODS and MPEG DIDL) or this kind of task could be described and offered out on any blog. Now a group like the folks working on Evergreen do a heck of a lot with MODS and maybe they decide to take up the banner for it. This leads to the first of a couple of TPMDPs (Traditional Publishing Model Departure Point): TPMDP #1: Some sort of step by step capturing mechanism kicks in for recording how the Evergreen folks approach the task and start to build a solution. Maybe something as low barrier as a link to their development blog. This needs to be unobtrusive but is an important layer. It always looks like divine design after a solution is presented, and Roy's right that no one ever wants to talk about the wrong turns they make in the path to a solution, but these are often the most instructive parts. TPMDP #2: A level of comments is made available for each step of the process. Peter's noted that comments are really hard to do well, and it would be great if this could be done in some sort of threaded RSS model. Jon Udell once wrote about a researcher trying to model network events as chirping sounds so that someone monitoring hundreds of systems would instantly notice when something was astray, and be able to instantly grasp which system it was by the chirp that had changed. So maybe we need a comment chirp plugin or something, but the smart money is still on an RSS comments feed for now. Still, it would be nice to see if comments could be layered in more elegantly than they usually are. TPMDP #3: An IRC bridge is made available. I once wrote a hook for IRC to snag insults from a supybot in cocoon so that a dynamic bit of content could appear in an S5 slide. I didn't realize until afterwards that supybots often have incredibly foul mouths and didn't do much with the results, but I am convinced there is something in the conversational model in IRC that could do a lot in other spaces. The koha folks do town halls with IRC, what if an article, or story posting, or whatever this thing is, shows who is online in code4lib and has some sort of entry point into the channel with a nick like reader_wants_to_talk_about_shootout or something similar? Or maybe the posting itself is some sort of bot that can be asked to record parts of discussion? Maybe there could be some sort of scheduling mechanism, so that someone could say discuss this solution with the creators at 10 am on Tuesday and a log of the discussion could be kept with the posting. Panizzi, Ed Summers' bot, could probably be convinced to do something like this. TPMDP #4: Some sort of presentation tools are always an option. Most projects have a point where you want to get some feedback before you proceed further or you suspect a quick reality check might save you grief later on. Again, this would have to be extremely low barrier, but it would be invaluable in understanding the information flow and final direction within a project. TPMDP #5: A spin-off traditional publication would still be possible downstream. A lot of people only want to find out more about the innards of a project after seeing its final results, so nothing precludes a more neatly packaged version at some point in the process and, in fact, this is where a lot of this would lead. But they key to me is that the messy bits would also be available if there was interest. art
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
This is intriguing, I really like the idea of a publication that would have a high level of technical content, even if only to inspire more folks to consider the IT side of libraries. I would really like to see a low barrier way of capturing the excitement and enthusiasm that came through in the lightning talks at the conference in a journal-like setting, I don't know if that's possible. I also wondered about the concept of a scenario of the month, some sort of technical challenge or problem, and providing a forum to describe some possible solutions with different tools. If you could give people like Dan Chudnov a whiteboard and Ed Summers a broader canvas for sketching out programming strategies in a journal format, that alone would instantly run circles around the other library tech publications out there. I think this is worth pursuing, and in true code4lib spirit, maybe it can push the boundaries of what is possible with a journal. For example, maybe podcasts and screen captures could be used in addition to text. Speaking as someone who can barely keep one blog active, has let another almost lapse into oblivion, and spends a lot of time cursing the whole notion of publishing these days. On the other hand, if you want to produce a version in paper and need it bundled with bailing twine... art
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Art, I think you make a point here that Rob Sanderson (I think) made in the IRC channel today. We have a Code4lib planet. We have Ariadne and we have D-Lib (and, as we learned last week, we have ITAL). Where would the market for this journal be? Who would read it? Would it just be the same people that read the planet? Dorothea made a good point about the publish-or-perish faculty track. I understand that. I'm just not sure that we need another niche journal. I don't really oppose something like this. I'm just not entirely sure I see the value. Art, you write more (word count /and/ content) in one blog posting to LibraryCog than my contributions in two journal articles. As a professional (ok, by virtue that I get paid for what I do, not how I conduct myself), I get more out of the timely blog postings I read than the journal articles that I occasionally read (although there's value in... what, 60% of those, too?). So... take this how you will. -Ross. On Feb 21, 2006, at 9:01 PM, Art Rhyno wrote: This is intriguing, I really like the idea of a publication that would have a high level of technical content, even if only to inspire more folks to consider the IT side of libraries. I would really like to see a low barrier way of capturing the excitement and enthusiasm that came through in the lightning talks at the conference in a journal-like setting, I don't know if that's possible. I also wondered about the concept of a scenario of the month, some sort of technical challenge or problem, and providing a forum to describe some possible solutions with different tools. If you could give people like Dan Chudnov a whiteboard and Ed Summers a broader canvas for sketching out programming strategies in a journal format, that alone would instantly run circles around the other library tech publications out there. I think this is worth pursuing, and in true code4lib spirit, maybe it can push the boundaries of what is possible with a journal. For example, maybe podcasts and screen captures could be used in addition to text. Speaking as someone who can barely keep one blog active, has let another almost lapse into oblivion, and spends a lot of time cursing the whole notion of publishing these days. On the other hand, if you want to produce a version in paper and need it bundled with bailing twine... art
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
Art, you write more (word count /and/ content) in one blog posting to LibraryCog than my contributions in two journal articles. Thanks Ross, but I still think of Mark Twain's apology for writing long letters because it was so much harder to make them short :-) Maybe journal is a misnomer, since I am not sure I am really thinking about a linear stream of textual objects packaged with a table of contents. Two thoughts come to mind: 1) when I was a kid in a small coal mining village, there was a tradition where recipes were sometimes shared by putting a meal name, like shepherd's pie on a sheet of paper and it was passed from house to house. Ingredients and cooking strategies were shared, but the most fascinating tidbits came from the marginalia (you know that's too much brown sugar, evaporated milk works better, never tried that, it might work, now I know why your oldest son is always at our house). 2) Dan Chudnov visited us in the spring and sketched out some of the ideas that would appear in COinS and unAPI on a whiteboard. It was amazing, I kept going back to the whiteboard every couple of days, and probably would still be doing so if the cleaning staff didn't decide to erase it. I guess I am looking for more recipe sharing, comments in the margins, and whiteboarding, I wouldn't want to break or detract from anything that is working now. All of this happens virtually at some level, but there's still some impedance when compared to lightning talks and physical gatherings, and sadly, there's a limit to how many conference events can be mounted. I am convinced it has to be low barrier, the only reason blogs probably produce more information flow than other platforms is because of the audacious efficiencies of incremental processing. Add a ponderous level, like an article submission to something like D-Lib, and the overhead clogs the throughput. No slight against D-Lib and Adriane and the rest, we need those too. So I dunno, but if there's a gap between what can be done now with technology and what can be achieved without over-engineering a solution, this would be the group to figure it out. And maybe this is as good as it gets, which is still better than it was (before irc and cool conferences and all that), if that makes any sense. art
Re: [CODE4LIB] A code4lib journal proposal
On Feb 21, 2006, at 11:27 PM, Mark Jordan wrote: In other words, http://code4lib.org/ could _be_ the journal but it could be a new type of journal. I'll second this. Four years ago we started /usr/lib/info for roughly this same purpose, and a number of these same people (usual suspects?) were involved in that. Back then things were different web-wise; the interspeedomushification of technorati and bloglines and such didn't exist or weren't what they are now, only a minority of our potential readership/contributorship was in the habit of posting comments to blogs, and this community wasn't what it is now. That all that's changed was made inarguably evident to me in the past month. Today's bloglines or whathaveyou tell you when somebody's writing about whatnot nearly instantly, comments on the new oss4lib.org have practically already surpassed what used to show up in the old one, and we're a strong enough community to pull off a kick-ass conference invented in near real-time. code4lib.org has nearly everything we need already, including the branding, whatever that means, and among us are plenty who know how to make drupal do what it needs or whatever we might invent a need for. So if /usr/lib/info was a fledgling librarians' first effort at transformation, our little community must already be founding that next special issue. All good things to those that write. (Hmm, okay, well, maybe hollywood serial killer wasn't the best motif to reference... you get the point, though.) I've been posting news and revisions of unAPI to code4lib.org because it's already simply the best place to put it. Where else would it go? Seems just about in line with where you're suggesting we head. -dchud
