In this issue, you will find:

Jack O’Sullivan, Sarah Romkey and Karin Bredenberg, in their article Response to PREMIS Events Through an Event-sourced Lens, continue a conversation on the PREMIS data model begun by Ross Spencer in issue 56. They provide an interesting rejoinder to Spencer, and we welcome – and value – these dialogues which enrichen the conversation on data preservation. This work demonstrates that the Journal can be a useful home to conversations impacting our profession.

Sometimes the challenges of developing with and for open source projects are substantial. Emma C. Beck, Terri L. Holtze, Rachel I. Howard and Randy Kuehn share their travails working with early versions of Hyku in Customizing open-source digital collections: what we need, what we want, and what we can afford. Despite spending substantial resources to contribute to an open source software project, and in building their own in-house customizations, they found that the solution they ended up with was far from ideal. Their article describes some of the potential pitfalls when implementing an open source solution in a GLAM institution.

The cost of electronic subscriptions is an evergreen issue for many acquisitions and e-resources librarians. Having accurate data to inform these costs is essential for effective decision making about collections. Lydia Harlan, Kristin Buxton, and Gabriele Hayden describe their iterative process for harvesting COUNTER data in their article Cost Per Use in Power BI using Alma Analytics and a Dash of Python. These journeys into harvesting useful data will be relatable – and useful – to many librarians in many collections-facing roles.

Wilhelmina Randtke discusses the implementation of an intranet at Georgia Southern University Libraries. In Launching an Intranet in LibGuides CMS at the Georgia Southern University Libraries, Randtke describes some of the reasons for – and challenges inhering from – using technologies such as LibGuides and Google Docs as the building blocks for a library intranet. Randtke focuses on some of the organizational considerations that bear upon rolling out a successful intranet project.

In The Dangers of Building Your Own Python Applications: False-Positives, Unknown Publishers, and Code Licensing, Corey Schmidt describes an exploratory process of running into some of the sharp edges of developing desktop applications in Python. The article describes how the author met and overcame these hurdles, and provides the beginnings of a roadmap for anyone looking to build their own Python desktop applications.

Finally, Harry Bartholomew describes a conversion of Bliss classification to RDF, in Converting the Bliss Bibliographic Classification to SKOS RDF using Python RDFLib. Bartholomew’s work is being done at Queen’s College, Cambridge, but offers important new developments for other collections who may also be using Bliss. Offering a representation of Bliss data in RDF opens exciting possibilities.

Hannes Lowagie and Julie Van Woensel describe the creation of subject classification tools for the National Library of Belgium. Their Python-based approach forgoes two common AI strategies: large language models and self-trained models. Helpfully in their article, Simplifying Subject Indexing: A Python-Powered Approach in KBR, the National Library of Belgium, they lay out an alternate third way forward, one that is customized to their specific requirements and community needs.

Our thanks to past serving editors, and to everybody who helped pull this issue together, including our generous authors. My hope is that the Editorial Board can continue to aspire to the journal’s mission of ‘fostering community and sharing information among those interested in the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future’.