Editorial

I am delighted to announce that Kelly Thompson’s paper “More than a Name: a Content Analysis of Name Authority Records for Authors Who Self-identify as Trans” is the winner of the 2017 Edward Swanson Memorial Best of LRTS Award. The award jury selected this paper in recognition of how it addresses timely and relevant issues in our profession, and because it makes a powerful case that our name authority initiatives should respect a person’s agency. I concur, and believe that the topics it raises are just the beginning of a long process of change, and one for the greater good. It was my pleasure to work with Kelly, and the honor is well deserved. Kelly will be presented with the award during the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2017 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

Presentations and publications are natural outgrowths of our work and provide the opportunity to share our experiences (successes and failures) to benefit our colleagues. We work in a very collaborative profession where information is readily exchanged. I find solutions to challenges through ALCTS e-forums, discussion lists, reports in the ALCTS News and of course, LRTS papers. Consider submitting a paper to LRTS. Share your experience and knowledge. Information on the journal and submissions guidelines are available at http://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/lrts. Scroll down to the “For authors” section, which also includes a FAQ, resources for authors, a helpful guide on how to turn a presentation into a paper, and other helpful information. Potential authors are also encouraged to contact me directly to discuss ideas for submissions.

When papers are submitted to LRTS, I assign them to two reviewers from the editorial board, based on their expertise. The papers undergo a double blind review, meaning that the reviewers’ identities are unknown, even to each other. The same is true for the author’s identity. Papers are evaluated on criteria including relevance to the journal’s scope, documentation and sources of background information, research methods, and presentation. After reviews are complete, the author receives from me a summary of both reviewers’ feedback and a copy of the paper showing the reviewers’ feedback using Word’s “track changes” feature. Authors have an opportunity to revise and resubmit papers. In some cases, a paper might undergo a second round of review. In these cases, one of the original reviewers and a new reviewer are assigned to the paper.

Published paper are not limited to mainstream issues in technical services. Topics of published papers include revising cataloging standards to meet the needs of people with disabilities (volume 57, no. 1, 2013), using genealogist’s tools to identify the long dead and little known (volume 60, no. 4, 2016), and the use of digital images in North American dental schools (volume 52, no. 3, 2008).

In closing, I will provide a preview of the contents of this issue of LRTS:

• John Pell and Megan Huppuch detail their assessment of the information management practices of a large non-for-profit organization in the field of reproductive health and the development and implementation of an information management pilot for that organization in their paper “IGAPS: A Taxonomy and Facet Classification System.”
• Divergent practices in a shared bibliographic database can generate unexpected display issues that affect the user experience. This issue can be compounded when databases from multiple institutions are merged. In “Using Automation and Batch Processing to Remediate Duplicate Series Data in a Shared Bibliographic Catalog,” Elaine Dong, Margaret Anne Glerum, and Ethan Fenichel share their experience with the application of automation tools during a large scale series remediation project.
• In “Repositories at Master’s Institutions: A Census and Analysis,” Deborah B. Henry and Tina M. Neville used a population of Carnegie-designated Master’s institutions to attempt to quantify the existence of digital repositories at those institutions. Pathways of discovery were also noted.
• RDA implementation typically means that an organization will no longer include General Material Designations (GMD) in their resource description. James Kalwara, Melody Dale, and Marty Coleman detail how libraries may benefit from retaining GMDs in their catalog to support user tasks. In their paper “GMD or No GMD: RDA Implementation for a Consortial Catalog,” they detail the challenges the Mississippi State Libraries encountered when leading RDA enrichment for the Mississippi Library Partnership consortium.
• Book reviews courtesy of LRTS Book Review Editor Elyssa.