The first issue of the Code4Lib Journal is out. I have nothing more to say about than what I said in my editorial introduction, except to re-iterate that this project ended up taking quite a bit more time then I naively thought it would!
Update Dec 28. It occurs to me that the ‘qualification’ for an article to get into a standard scholarly journal might be “Is this reporting significant research?” In contrast, I hope the ‘qualification’ for Code4Lib Journal is “Is this article going to be helpful to others trying to improve library services?” You can have an article about really good research, and the article might accurately report that research—but it might not be very good at explaining to someone else what they can actually _do_ with it (to repeat it, or to act upon what they’ve found). This could be because of the way it’s written, or because of what’s left out. Personally (and I only speak for myself), that article would need more work before going in c4lj. On the other hand, there can be an article that isn’t about original research _at all_, but is incredibly helpful to others in innovating in their library, and that would be a shoe-in to c4lj, but probably wouldn’t qualify for a journal with a mission more traditional-scholarly.
Bibliographic Wilderness 