ARTICLES Ejournals in Education: Just Generating Excitement or Living up to the Promise? By Tirupalavanam G. Ganesh College of Education, Arizona State University Abstract The I nternet makes scholarly electronic journals an opportune global mode of communication for scholarly exchange, where national and international borders are erased. The American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group, Communications among Researchers (AERA SIG CR) lists over one hundred electronic journals i n the field of education that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text and accessible without cost on the world wide web (see http://aera-cr.ed .asu.edu/l inks.html) . Are these ejournals merely poor electronic imitations of print journals? Granted, the use of the Internet to publish peer-reviewed scholarship has the potential of democratizing access. But are such scholarly exchanges making effective use of the electronic medium? What innovative things can be done with new technology? How can electronic journals be preserved, used, and managed over time? Introduction I n December, 1 998, this author was offered the position of Editor of Current Issues in Education (CIE) (http://cie.ed.asu.edu) , a scholarly, online journal at Arizona State University. The journal was to begin its second year of publication in January, 1 999. After reading Glass ( 1 998) , ["The vision thing": Educational research and AERA in the 2 1 51 century-Part 4 : The future of scholarly communications], the author decided to accept the offer, against the advice of col leagues. The fascination of editing a scholarly electronic journal to a beginner academic was tremendous. The potential to use the electronic medium innovatively and the opportunity to facil itate its effective use in scholarly communication justified setting aside any uncertainties. In spite of initial enthusiasm, the Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 journal remains to a large extent, largely an imitation of a print journal . Yet two articles, Dugan and Behrens ( 1 998), and Leshowitz, DiCerbo, and Symi ngton ( 1 999), represent a departure from publishing articles that are just pla in text. Dugan and Behrens ( 1 998) used hypertext to facil itate instant and simultaneous access to multiple sources of information . The employment of frames allowed access to the raw data in their statistical study, and the reader had access to a variety of alternative models of data analysis without interruption to reading. Leshowitz, DiCerbo, and Symington ( 1 999) demonstrated the challenge of using multimedia appropriately, powerfully, and not for its own sake. They used video clips to provide readers a gl impse into the practices of a college 5 classroom. This fairly small number of articles in CIE that break ranks with the traditional scholarly communication is not trivial by any means-they represent the hope that ejournals in education wi l l begin to push the envelope in scholarly communication in thoughtful yet innovative ways. Ejournals in Education A number of electronic journals in education have appeared in the last few years, an assessment of these ejournals with regard to thei r use of the unique features of the electronic medium and issues related to thei r preservation are the subjects of this paper. The AERA Special Interest Group, Communications Among Researchers (AERA S IG CR) l ists over one hundred electronic journals i n the field of education that are scholarly, peer­ reviewed, full text and accessible without cost on the world wide web (see http://aera-cr.ed. asu.edu/l inks.html ) . Table 1 below l ists the quantity of these journals and country of publication in descend ing order. It is no surprise that 64% of the journals l isted here are publ ished in the United States of America. Researchers primari ly located in the geographical area of North America h,elped compile this l ist. The predominance of the U .S . in this area may be attributed to access to the Internet that American universities have enjoyed since the early 1 990s. Table 1 Ejournals in Education and the country of publ ication. Country Number of Journals USA 70 Austral ia 1 5 Canada 1 0 UK 5 Spain 3 Mexico 2 Argentina 1 Brazil 1 Germany 1 Italy 1 Portugal 1 Total 110 A quick survey of these journals indicates the following: Education Libraries Volume 2 6 , N o . 1 Summer 2003 • Seventy or 64% of the journals are published in the United States of America. • One hundred journals published in the Un ited States of America, Austral ia, Canada, and Un ited Kingdom are primarily publ ished in the Engl ish language with two or three exceptions, which also publish some articles in Spanish or French . • Eighty-seven (79%) of all journals l isted provide articles in full-text html (hyper-text markup language) fonnat, whi le 1 6 ( 1 5%) offer articles in full-text html and/or pdf (portable document format). I nteresti ngly, 7 (6%) provide articles only in pdf. • Two journals provide mirror-sites in other parts of the world . • Two journals offer d ifferent screen formats such as wide screen and multiple screen formats. The following refer to the one hundred journals published in the United States of America, Austral ia , Canada, and United Ki ngdom which primarily publish in the Engli sh language: • 58% offer word search capabil ity. • 28% are also available as print journals. • 42% have length l imits specified in terms of words or number of double spaced pages for the submissions. • 28% provide information on how to cite articles published in their journals. • Five indicate that their onl ine publ ications are indexed in databases. This number could perhaps increase if a careful assessment regarding indexing is made of the twenty-eight journals that are available as print journals with electronic versions as a complement or added value to their subscri bers. This i nfonnation simply provides quick status records of these electronic journals with regard to arbitrary descriptors that I selected . A discussion on how ejournals in education are making use of the unique features offered by the electronic medium may be of additional i nterest here. Unique Features of Electronic Media Web technologies have advanced in numerous ways, which should spark a transformation of the nature of scholarly communication in ways not feasible in the traditional print medium . One such s imple uti l ity is to provide ful l-text search capabil ities. Print journals also provide search aids, such as indexing; none, however, 6 matches the capabi l ities of ejournal search engines that facil itate searching the entire text of articles using Boolean logic. Full-text searching of ejournals as they continue their growth wi l l soon be a universal feature. Fifty­ eight percent of the English language ejournals provide readers with search capabi l ity. Size Limitations vs. Access to Downloadable Data files The potential to incorporate features that advance or surpass those traditionally used in print journals is yet to be realized by authors and publishers of ejournals. Web technology frees scholarly publications from size l im itations imposed by the high cost of printing and mai l ing. Yet, forty-two percent of the Engl ish language ejournals surveyed , which are exclusively web-based, impose length l imitations. One imposed a 1 ,000 to 3,000-word l im it. Lim ited resources available to the publ isher, scope of the journal , or target audience could be some of the factors i nfluencing such size restrictions. The Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment (JTLA), in its 2002 call for manuscri pts refers to one of the journal 's goals of providing access to primary data: JTLA adheres to the principles of transparency i n research. Authors submitti ng articles that present findings from original research are strongly encouraged to include the ful l data sets and the syntax used to analyze the data so that readers may replicate and/or extend analyses. When appropriate, authors are also encouraged to include any visual , audio, or software demonstrations required to convey one's point of view. [Ac- cessed August 28, 2002, http://www.bc.edu/research/ i ntasc/jtla/JTLA_submitting.shtml] The I nternet del ivers research data in a multipl icity of new formats. For example, in an analysis of autonomy in public and private schools, Glass ( 1 997) presents the entire data corpus comprising the full-text of thi rty-seven interviews, provid ing erifiabi l ity of assertions and confirmation of analytic integrity between researcher and reader. This mode of del ivery, by making the record of data publ ic for critical examination, fundamentally alters Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 our mechanisms for establishing validity of reported research. The existence of the interview transcripts in their enti rety allows the reader to function as a co-analyst with the researcher better and more critical ly than if one had to take the word of the author without ready access to the data. Mclean ( 1 997) utilized th is publ ic record to re­ analyze Glass's data, using strict i nterpretations of rules of qual itative research. Simi larly, space l imitations on quantitative research reports are an unavoidable real ity imposed by the print medium. Russel l and Haney ( 1 997) included all of the raw data on which their analyses were based in two formats; text and M icrosoft™ Excel spreadsheet. Dugan and Behrens ( 1 998) afforded extensive detail through the use of hypertext and frames, allowing the reader to assess criteria for establish ing validity of the analyses by avoiding data reduction. The employment of hypertext in the examples facilitates instant and simultaneous access to multiple sources of information. The employment of frames al lows access to the raw data, and the reader access to a variety of alternative models of data analysis without i nterruption to reading. Graphics, Audio and Video Increasingly, the Internet provides enhanced opportunities for use of multimedia elements such as graph ics, audio and video. Use of simple graphics alone could prove to be a chal lenge to publishers of ejournals. The Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy (http://www.umanitoba.ca/ publications/cjeap/), published at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, specifies in its "Notes for Contributors" the fol lowing: "Because of the l imitations of electronic publication, authors are asked not to include charts, figures or tables in thei r papers." Whereas, the Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal of Computer-Enhanced Learning (http://imej.wfu. edu), publ ished at Wake Forest University, North Carol i na, has the following goals: "to provide a peer-reviewed forum for innovations in computer­ enhanced learning , to serve as a model and test-bed for an electronic journal with a high level of multimedia and i nteractivity, and to advance the acceptance of electronic publ ication as a leg itimate and valuable form of academic discourse." 7 This journal makes extensive use of multimedia, requiring the use of an entire range of web software from Macromedia™ plug-ins to audio and video players. The journal supports the authors in preparation of multimed ia elements, experts fr?m the journal work with the authors. Extens1ve guidel ines for submission of multimedia elements are provided as wel l . These two journals represent two extremes in the use of emergi ng web technologies. In the field of education research, inroads to the use of multimedia elements are rare. It is useful , therefore, to examine how other fields have taken advantage of the multiple modes of data representation and information sharing afforded by web-based technologies The Journal of Seventeenth Century Music (http://www.sscm . harvard.edu/jscm) , for example, provides an early, albeit promising, use of I nternet technology to analyze aud io. Si lbiger ( 1 996) compared the music genres Passacagl ia and Ciaccona with text accompanying the written music and actual audio samples of the music (M ID I fi les) . The audio feature is unique to electronic journals and is an indispensable element in certain fields of study such as music. It provides readers with insights into the author's arguments and al lows one to make evaluations of the music. The comprehension of interviews, conversations in classroom research, and excerpts from field observation occasions may be enhanced by actual audio or video passages with accompanying commentary and analysis . Moreover, the inclusion of transcripts canl a l low the reader to assess the analytic methods and the ensuing assertions. (Middleton, 2000) As evidenced by the two submissions that make innovative use of the electronic medium in four­ and-a-half years of publication of Current Issues in Education (http://cie .ed.asu.edu), I surmise that writing for ejournals is chal lenging, and scholars have yet to take full advantage of the capabil ities that the medium offers. Most importantly, features unique to the ejournal should not d istract from the flow of the information; rather, these features should be used jud iciously to enhance the important issues related to the topic being addressed by the scholars. (Cesarone, 1 999) The use of multimedia elements must add to the message, not function only as a fascinating curiosity. Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 The challenge of using multimedia appropriately, powerfully, and not for its own sake, has to be thoughtful ly considered and addressed by authors and publishers a l ike . Nonetheless, concerns regarding the use of these elements range from the fairly simple issue of time to download to the complex issues of copyright and ethics in use of participants' static or dynamic graphic images, especial ly with regard to minors in classroom research. I n addition, these technologies imply that ejournals have to . face the di lemma of making innovative use whi le also ensuring equity and access to the seeing and hearing impaired. Publ ishers of ejournals themselves must be capable of applying modern technology and must facil itate these opportunities . Sequential Physical Publication and Scholarly Communication Ejournals can help break the bonds of sequential physical publication. E-text can always be reformed to place related texts in close proximity. They also offer the opportunity to include interactive exchanges that are not restricted by geographic distance and time. Steven Harnad of Southampton University (U.K. ) , a leader in explori ng new modes of scholarly communication, predicted about ejournals that they would "restore scholarly communication to a tempo much closer to the brain's natural potential wh i le sti l l retaining the rigor, d iscipl ine and permanence of the refereed written medium." (Harnad , 1 991 ) The time lag i n the abil ity of print publications to publish responses to research advances can range from several weeks to years. Electroni c journals offer a variety of means for scholarly communication, ranging from l istservs or other electronic d iscussion formats such as moderated or unmediated chat rooms, to simply al lowing the posti ng of comments, which can be open or reviewed. Reading Online (http ://www . readingonl ine.org) a journal of the I nternational Reading Association, USA, attempts to connect readers and authors by providing a d iscussion forum . While post­ publ ication discussion forums are on the rise, the open pre-print d iscussions that are an integral part of the peer-review process are certain ly unique. The Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) (http://www-j ime.open.ac.uk), published in the U.K. , has extended the idea of scholarly exchange espoused by Harnad as evidenced by the schematic in Figure 1 , reproduced from the 8 journal's website. The JIME uses two forms of review, closed and open, both of which utilize a threaded d iscussion format. The open-peer review during the "pre-print" phase raises interesting issues that I d iscuss later in this paper. This excerpt from the journal's website introduces several such issues: "In conventional j ournals, the point of publ ication is the beginning of scholarly debate. JIME brings this point forward by making submitted prepri nts accessible, but of course continues to support discussion about the revised, published article . . . . Thus, authors can post l inks to publications to point to subsequent work. Readers can post com ments and l inks to point to work which has not been referenced, or did not exist when the article was written . Authors, reviewers and anyone else who has subscribed to the article wi l l receive email alerts to new postings to its discussion forum." [Accessed August 28, 2002, http://www-j ime.open. ac. uk] Such use of web technologies provides for scholarly exchange that hitherto was possible only in symposia such as the American Educational Research Association's annual meetings and other scholarly society meetings. Conversations among researchers that occur in conferences at formal symposia and other i nformal forums al low for interactivity that is impossible to achieve in print. The written word in print journals has al lowed the d issemination of scholarship to many; however, this medium does not al low for exchanges between authors and readers of a kind akin to serious discussions. Yet, absent the web, such interactions are restricted to a specific geographical location , time, and the confl uence of people and interests. Figure 1 Life cycle of a Journal of Interactive Media in Education submission. Source: (http:/ /www-ji me.open.ac. uk) Reviewers Readers Authors submit I poet comments to article's website, and email any private build on review debate to which Authors revise Editor verifi�ision, and edits review debate to to Editor Clom Peer R(n'imv verifies relevance to joumal Publisher generates integrated document and review site (private URU 1 Authors respond i decides if article is broadly acceptable, If so, announces article's availability to relevant communities. If rejected, article is returned with comments and removed from site Editor threads editorial comments into review discussion specifying required changes, plus any private comm_ents to authors via email Publisher generates . final document site �/,h Authors � Ed' � 1tor �"-� Reviewers mill Publisher -Readers Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 • • • Published article and edited review debate remain open for further commentary and links. Authors, Re�and Readers who have (freely) 'subscribed' to this discussion receive email copies of new postings 9 Facilitating Electronic Peer-Review Most ejournals facilitate the peer review process electronically. Email has certainly assisted in the exchange of information from authors to editors and reviewers. Submissions received by Current Issues in Education (http://cie .ed.asu.edu) are prepared as a website and placed on the journal 's Intranet for reviewers. The Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) (http://www­ j ime.open.ac.uk), as portrayed in Figure 1 above, facilitates the review process entirely on the web. Add itionally, JIME has an i nteresting component, the open peer-review phase. The open peer­ review occurs in a very unrestricted place-the World Wide Web. Can reviewers during the open peer-review phase remain anonymous? The coat of anonymity at times provides reviewers opportun ities to be impolite. This novice editor, as any experienced with many years of service can confi rm, has had to edit out reviewer comments that border on personal attack. Without the cover of anonymity, could reviewers be expected to be polite? Publ ishers of JMIE offered the fol lowing with regard to issues related to authors , reviewers and readers: . Another issue is that contributors to the public debate Figure 2 may not wish to be identified for various reasons .. Whi le JIME prefers al l comments to be signed, anonymous contributions are also permitted . The wi l l ingness of both authors and reviewers to engage in thi s process depends greatly upon the professionalism and netiquette exhibited by contributors to the debate." [Accessed August 28, 2002, http://www-j ime.open.ac. uk] The American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Annual Meeting electronic proposal submission processing system on the World Wide Web (http://www.kl ick.org/aera) also assists program chairs in matching submissions with potential ·reviewers based on criteria that reviewers have specified. However, the reviewer names and affiliations are kept anonymous when the accepted proposals are made public. Scholarly journals and societies are yet to make progress at d issipating the shroud of anonymity . A Pre-Print Publication and Corresponding Open Peer-Review Source: .ac.uk/ PtePtinl. Under R�iew Affordances for learning in a non-linear narrative medium Oii.D.t.L.tlui!1,MatJbewS1CJtfold1,�2 .Lydia Pltr\'mliOl,�l 1rnet�ute or Education&! Tschno'ogy, Tht Open UnHareity, Walton . HiR, Mtllon Kliynes, MJQ 6AA. <(lU.IJ.Inllil.d. b1..£..S1albkl. J.Iirlcl) @open.ac.uk=- 2 School ofCognit� and Gcmputin 3 Sco\lish Covn'il for RtiUtch tn Educatkln, 15 S\. Jot-n Sllii&t, Edinburgh, EHa 8JR Abstract A mul'llmedla CO makes en impresSM! re90UICe forlh!! echoliHenarcher, bU1 stl.lder.ls unfamifi;u �h tha £UbJeCt·m.ll9r I wAh such a resocrce. Without any ' . Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 Rlvtlt,.,..IS 11\JIQitllil Blarnun (0. llt.nllh,UJ}, .lt.\' offers mirror sites in the Germany, and New Zealand. Teaching English as a Second Language or Foreign Language (TESL-EJ) , USA, (http://www­ writi ng. berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ), offers mirror sites in Germany (http://www.zait. unibremen.de/wwwgasUtesl_ej) , Japan (http://www. kyoto-su .ac.jp/i nformation/ tesl- 1 2 ej) , and Austral ia (http://www. l atrobe. edu.au/www/ education/cel ia/tesl-ej) . Examples of mirroring software include Mirror (http://www. sun site. org . u k/packages/m i rror) , free software for both the Windows and Unix based operati ng systems and Teleport Pro (http://www.tenmax. com/teleport/pro), shareware software for the Windows operating system. There are commercial and as well as freeware-shareware software available for purposes of m irroring. It is important to note that mirroring is merely a tool in creating a copy of digital materials for alternative access. All the same, the idea of digital archives with regard to preservation necessitates specific attention to elements of the d igital material , i n addition to i ndexing (Wil l insky & Wolfson, 200 1 ) and preservation of the material over time (http://www.dig l ib .org/preserve.htm) . Digital Archives As ejournals take advantage of the unique features of the electronic medium, the notion of an article as a single web page with plain text wil l begin to change. What is a digital document? Can it be seen? It is often not possible to get a feel for a digital document's span nor is it possible to just print it out. (Dempsey, 2000) Consider, Current Issues in Education's (CIE) Leshowitz, DiCerbo, and Symington ( 1 999) (http://cie .ed.asu .edu/volume2/number5), which incorporates v ideo cl ips. While the document is served from the CIE server, the video cl i ps are served from a separate server capable of serv ing real video. Users wi l l need to have access to the Real Networks ReaiPiayer G2 software (http://www. real .com) in order to view the cl ips. Therefore, i nformation could be distributed over multiple e-spaces. Users may interact with programs and underlying data to view dynamically generated reports or graphs. Researchers at the University of South Carol i na have created a web application entitled "Webstat." This free data analysis software tool is avai lable at (http: //www.webstatsoftware.com). The web-based appl ication , written using Java™ (http://www.javasoft .com) , al lows the user to load data from a website by pasting the URL to a data set and creating basic summary statistics and graphics. With a l ittle imagination , one can easily foresee the use of such technology in quantitative research reports to al low readers to verify for themselves the statistical computations used . Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 These examples barely begin to explore the notion of shared networl: spaces. Loosely defin ing digital preservation as the preservation of digital documents, it :5hould be noted that digital preservation as with dig ital technology ( in comparison with print) is quite fragi le, and is dependent on two basic elements. The first is the storage medium, which is usual ly magnetic or optical , both of which are suscepti ble to decay. The second is the digital information, wh ich is machine dependent; to be 'read' correctly it needs specific computer hardwa1·e and software both of which are prone to become• outdated or unusable. (Lynch, 1 999) What is a digital :Jocument or a d igital space? Do ejournals occupy mu ltiple d ig ital spaces? Who wi l l define what d ig ita preservation is? Who will decide what is to be preserved? Who wi l l archive what needs to be preserved? What types of technologies are needed for digital preservation? Who wi l l pay for it? These questions need to be addressed , if the scholarly work in ejournals is to be preserved for ·'uture generations. This begs the question whether a particular work is worth preservi ng. The Digital Li :>rary Federation (http://www. digl ib.org) , a cor sortium of l ibraries and related agencies, has en!�aged in articulating the complex set of issues sur rounding digital preservation by arriving at common minimum criteria for an archival repository of digital scholarly journals. Challenges related to digita archiving extend beyond the issues of the complex electronic medium. These challenges may E�ncompass the various elements of an ejournal article; they essentially relate to retrieval issues as wel l . Merely archiving for the sake of preserve�tion will not suffice; thoughtful consideration of how archived material wi l l be accessible for L se is equally important. With funding from the .1\ndrew W. Mellon Foundation , a select few major l ibraries are explori ng the design , creation , and implementation of a digital archive of electronic journals. Progress reports from grant funded institution:3 are available at the federation website. An in itial review of these reports indicates the complexity an:l variety of issues inherent to the task at hand. Conclusion As ejournals in education grow, thoughtful and innovative uses of the electronic medium have to be contemplated . Imaginative elements have to be used for clarification, explanation, and i l lustration 1 3 and not merely as a curiosity. Publishers of ejournals have to work collaboratively with scholars to explore original uses for digital spaces, as scholars have yet to take advantage of the unique features offered by the electronic medium and the I nternet. In the field of education, notions of traditional qual ity control of scholarly publ i cation are beginn ing to change, a lbeit slowly. The radical ly new digital medium has al lowed the l ikel ihood of far-reaching changes in the nature of scholarly communication, challenging age-old notions of peer-review. Nevertheless, the preservation of scholarly work ensues to be a timeless challenge as in the days of Alexandria , the greatest research center and perhaps the first major scholarly archive of its day, later destroyed by war, i nvasion, and fire. (Ganesh, 1 999) The preservation of ejournals in digital format is much more delicate than its print counterpart. Natural calamities are no longer a threat to the preservation of scholarly work in the new digital medium ; rather, the very nature of digital media and the inherent complexity of shared global digital spaces are the chal lenges. The domain of scholarly electronic publ ishing is complex and multi-faceted , and raises many issues that need further consideration and action. References Cesarone, B. ( 1 999). Writing for electronic journals. Early Childhood Research & Practice (ERCP), 1( 1 ) . Retrieved March 1 2, 2000, from http://ecrp .uiuc.edu/v 1 n 1 /cesarone.html Dempsey, L. (2000, January 1 2) . Scientific, industria l , and cultural heritage: A shared approach: A research framework for digital l ibraries, museums, and archives. Ariadne, 22. Retrieved Apri l 1 1 , 2000, from http://www.ari adne.ac. uk/issue22/dem psey /intro. html Dugan, J. G. & Behrens, J. T. ( 1 998, November). A hypermedia exploration of the classification problem i n special education. Current Issues in Education, 1(6) . Retrieved March 1 2, 2000, from http://cie. ed .asu.edu/volume 1 /number6/ Ganesh, T. G. & Jennings, T. A. ( 1 999, September 8). Editorial : Ejournals today-Forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium . Current Issues in Education, 2(1 ) . Retrieved April 1 , 2000, from Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 http://cie. ed .asu .edu/vol ume2/number1 I Glass, G. V ( 1 998, November). "The vision thing": Educational research and AERA in the 2 1 51 century-Part 4: The future of scholarly communications. Educational Researcher 27(8); 35-37. Glass, S. R. ( 1 997, January 6) . Markets and myths: Autonomy in public and private schools . Education Policy Analysis Archives, 5(1 ) . Retrieved March 1 2, 2000, from http://epaa .asu .edu/epaa/v5n1 .html Harnad, S. ( 1 990) Scholarly skywriting and the prepubl ication continuum of scientific inquiry. Psychological Science, 1; 342-343 (reprinted in Current Contents 45: 9-1 3, November 1 1 1 991 ) . Retrieved March 1 2, 2000, from http://cogsci .soton.ac. ukl-harnad/Papers/ Harnad/harnad90.skywriti ng .html Harnad, S. ( 1 99 1 ) . Post-Gutenberg galaxy: The fourth revolution in the means of production of knowledge. The Public­ Access Computer Systems Review, 2(1 ) , 39-53 . Retrieved April 1 2 , 1 999, from http://info. l ib . uh .edu/pr/v2/n 1 /harnad .2n 1 Leshowitz, B . , DiCerbo, K. E . , & Symington , S. ( 1 999, September 30) . Effective Thi nking: An Active-Learn ing Course in Critical Thinking. Current Issues in Education, 2(5). Retrieved March 1 5, 2000, from http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number5/ Lynch, C. ( 1 999, September). Canonical ization : a fundamental tool to faci litate preservation and management of d igital information. D­ Ub Magazine, 5(9). Avai lable: http://www.d l ib .org/d l ib/september99/091yn ch.html Mclean, L. , Myers, M . , Smi l l ie, C . , & Vai l lancourt, D. ( 1 997, June 1 0) . Qual itative Research Methods: An essay review. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 5( 1 3) . Retrieved April 1 3, 1 999, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v5n1 3/ Middleton, J. A. (2000) . Commentary: From manuscript to multimedia: How technologies transform education research. Current Issues in Education, 3(2). Retrieved March 1 5 , 2000, from 1 4 - http://cie.ed .asu.edu/volume3/number2/ Rudner, L. (2000). I nformation needs in the 2 1 st century: Wi l l ERIC be ready? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(44). Retrieved August 1 9 , 2002, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n44.html Russel l , M. & Haney, W. ( 1 997) . Testing writing on computers: An experiment comparing student performance on tests conducted via computer and via paper-and-penci l . Education Policy Analysis Archives, 5(3). Retrieved April 1 3 , 1 999, from http ://epaa.asu .edu/epaa/v5n3/ Si lbiger, A. ( 1 996). Passacagl i a and Ciaccona: Genre Pair ing and Ambiguity from Frescobaldi to Couperin . The Journal of Seventeenth Century Music, 2(1 ) . Retrieved April 1 3, 1 999, from http://www. sscm .harvard .edu/jscm/v2/no1 I Sil biger. html Wi l l i nsky, J . and Wolfson, L. (2001 , December) . The i ndexing of scholarly journals: A tipping point for publ ishing reform? The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 7(2). Retrieved January 14 , 2002, from http://www. press.umich.edu/jep/07- 02/wi l l insky. html Tirupalavanam G. Ganesh is a December 2003 graduate of the I nterd iscipl inary Ph .D . program in Education , Media and Computers, Division of Curricu lum and I nstruction , College of Education, Arizona State University. Email : ganesh.tg@asu.edu What management issues do edocation information professionals confront? • How are new professionals trained? • What new skills do seasoned professionals need, and how will those needs be addressed? • What efforts are being made for planning smooth transi t ions for personnel successions? • What tasks truly require professional preparat ion? • How are professional and paraprofessional staff coalesced? • How does collaborative instruction impact other library services and staffing scheduling? • How should serials be organized and ret rieved? • What impact do digital resources have upon management? • How should wireless services be established and maintained? What attention should be made to technical support , costs, and equity of access? • How should 24/7 services be managed? Should everyone be a 24/7 service provider? • How can budgets be shifted to align with priorities in an unstable economy? • What grantsmanship skills and efforts are successful? Why? There's lots of grist for the Education Libraries mill. Please send relevant manuscripts to Dr. Farmer at lfarmer@csulb.edu by March 30, 2004. Education Libraries Volume 26, No. 1 Summer 2003 1 5