by Meghan Finch

Two issues ago, coordinating editor Carol Bean identified a focus on data, in our profession and in the Issue 30 articles, and also recognized that as information professionals, it goes beyond just the data to the conventions and standards necessary for working with data. [1] I’d like to offer a similar sentiment for Issue 32: it’s all about the technology, but it’s also about the people involved with the technology.

While all of the articles in this issue focus on technology and innovation, often through the development of tools or processes, several also discuss the personal experiences of those working through these efforts. In How We Went from Worst Practices to Good Practices, and Became Happier in the Process, French, Kayiwa, Lawrence, Gilbertson, and Lohrey address the personal satisfaction of their team members following the implementation of new practices by inviting each to share their impressions. Jimmy Ghaphery, Emily Owens, Donna Coghill et. al share the reactions of their team to an exploration of a rocky discovery layer implementation and their work toward improvement, both of the tool and the regard the team had for it, in Building Bridges with Logs: Collaborative Conversations about Discovery across Library Departments. Dianne Dietrich, Julia Kim, Morgan McKeehan, and Alison Rhonemus’s How to Party Like it’s 1999: Emulation for Everyone strikes the perfect balance of personal experiences and step-by-step exploration of emulation. Over half of the articles in this issue have four or more authors, and individual voices are given the opportunity to share as part of a larger experience.

Articles like Nick Ruest and Ian Milligan’s An Open-Source Strategy for Documenting Events: The Case Study of the 42nd Canadian Federal Election on Twitter explore the people involved in technology more broadly, capturing the voices of a nation (on Twitter) during an election, all while balancing the preservation of those stories with the privacy of participants. Alex Caro and Chris Markman’s Measuring Library Vendor Cyber Security: Seven Easy Questions Every Librarian Can Ask similarly addresses privacy, developing a guide for libraries of all sizes to review their technology infrastructure.

Even when we aren’t explicitly talking about the people, people are always present in our innovations. Ian Lamb and Catherine Larson’s Shining a Light on Scientific Data: Building a Data Catalog to Foster Data Sharing and Reuse supports the current efforts of scholars to share data and reproduce previous experiments, while Jonathan Bradley, Neal Henshaw, Liz McVoy et al.’s Creation of a Library Tour Application for Mobile Equipment using iBeacon Technology helps introduce students to the library while improving the maintenance process of the application for the library team involved.

French, Kayiwa, Lawrence et. al refer to the personal narratives they present as “‘feel good’ testimony”[2], but that does not diminish how significant it is that many of the articles that we share in this issue examine not only hard quantitative data and processes, but also look to find the happiness in those working on those projects. It’s a good reminder of why we keep innovating. For all of us.

Issue 32 Overview

An Open-Source Strategy for Documenting Events: The Case Study of the 42nd Canadian Federal Election on Twitter by Nick Ruest and Ian Milligan

How to Party Like it’s 1999: Emulation for Everyone – by Dianne Dietrich, Julia Kim, Morgan McKeehan, and Alison Rhonemus

How We Went from Worst Practices to Good Practices, and Became Happier in the Process by Amanda French, Francis Kayiwa, Anne Lawrence, Keith Gilbertson and Melissa Lohrey

Shining a Light on Scientific Data: Building a Data Catalog to Foster Data Sharing and Reuse by Ian Lamb and Catherine Larson

Creation of a Library Tour Application for Mobile Equipment using iBeacon Technology by Jonathan Bradley, Neal Henshaw, Liz McVoy, Amanda French, Keith Gilbertson, Lisa Becksford, and Elisabeth Givens.

Measuring Library Vendor Cyber Security: Seven Easy Questions Every Librarian Can Ask by Alex Caro and Chris Markman

Building Bridges with Logs: Collaborative Conversations about Discovery across Library Departments by Jimmy Ghaphery, Emily Owens, Donna Coghill, Laura Gariepy, Megan Hodge, Thomas McNulty, and Erin White

References

[1] Bean, Carol. Editorial Introduction: It’s All About Data, Except When It’s Not. http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/11072

[2] French, Amanda, Kayiwa, Francis, Lawrence, Anne, Gilbertson, Keith and Melissa Lohrey. How We Went from Worst Practices to Good Practices, and Became Happier in the Process. http://journal.code4lib.org/?p=11398