Subject:	[LHRT Membership Listserv] Libraries & the Cultural Record
Date:	Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:17:21 -0600
From:	Bill Aspray <bill@ischool.utexas.edu>

The journal Libraries & the Cultural Record is changing its name to Information & Culture: A Journal of History effective with the first issue in 2012 (47.1). The scope of the journal will be broadened not only to include its existing interests in the history of libraries, archives, museums, conservation, and information science, but all of the history of information as broadly conceived. One way to understand the new scope is to say that if a topic would be a pertinent for teaching or research in one of the modern, interdisciplinary schools of information (such as at the journal's home institution, the University of Texas at Austin), then the history of this topic would be pertinent for Information & Culture.

In order to better cover the expanded scope of the journal, we have increased the size of the editorial board, retaining many people from the past editorial board and adding a number of people. The board listing can be found at: http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~lcr/about/editors.php

In order to increase the number of print pages available for articles, and to increase the number of book reviews and make them available in a more timely fashion, book reviews are going to appear only online, first on the journal's web pages and permanently on the Project MUSE web pages. Book reviews will be included in the journal's annual index.

The journal remains strongly interested in library history. Although there will be more pages for articles now that we are not printing book reviews, with the larger scope of the journal it is likely that a smaller percentage of the printed pages will be devoted to library history in the future. Thus we want to make every library history of the highest impact we can. To this end, Peter McNally has kindly agreed to chair an ad hoc committee on library history, which will include David Hovde, Hermina G. B. Anghelescu, Mary Niles Maack, and perhaps others selected by the chair. The committee will consider, perhaps among other issues:

(i) whether the journal is attracting the highest quality authors and articles (and if not, how to do so);

(ii) how strong the coverage is of library history of various countries, time periods, and subject areas;

(iii) what are the needs and opportunities for the field of library history and for the journal in this area in the next few years; and

(iv) how do we ensure that the journal will remain a major player in library history given that we are broadening our scope so that there will be some pages devoted to other information history topics that might otherwise have been devoted to library history.

Bill Aspray

Editor, Libraries & the Cultural Record

Bill and Lewis Suit Professor of Information Technologies, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin.