Letter from the Editors (December 2023) Letter from the Editors Kenneth J. Varnum and Marisha C. Kelly INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | DECMBER 2023 https://doi.org/10.5860/ital.v42i4.17014 The journal’s Editorial Board has begun work this fall in two main areas, building on last year’s work on our diversity statement: an updated scope statement and exploration of content areas to match. If you have thoughts about how ITAL can better support your professional work and career development, please let us know. Additionally, we are working with guest editors Peter Musser and Joy Dubose on an artificial intelligence-themed special issue that will be published in 2024. We are excited about the articles in the pipeline for this issue and look forward to sharing more details about this issue and its contents next year. In this Issue In addition to those articles, we are pleased to present contributions from other voices: • There are three items in the Letters to the Editor section. • In our occasional Editorial Board Thoughts series, Editorial Board member Mary Guillory contributes “Drained-pool Politics Versus Digital Libraries in U.S. Cyberspace,” a discussion of book banning in digital environments. • Our regular Public Libraries Leading the Way column is by Ross Hanney, “Reorienting Collection Analysis: Cost Effective Item Level Analysis and Machine Learning in Public Libraries.” This essay highlights an analysis of how a small-town public library can save its community’s residents money. Peer-reviewed articles in the current issue are listed here: • “To Thine Own 3D Selfie Be True: Outreach for an Academic Library Makerspace with a 3D Selfie Booth,” by Alex Watson • “Towards an Open Source-First Praxis in Libraries,” by J. Robertson McIlwain • “Managing Your Library’s LibGuides: Conducting A Usability Study to Determine Student Preference for LibGuide Design,” by Julie Burchfield and Maggie Possinger • “Using Qualtrics XM to Create a Point-of-Use Survey to Assess the Usability of a Local Implementation of Primo,” by Matthew Black, Heather Ganshorn, and Justine Wheeler • “Reference Chatbots in Canadian Academic Libraries,” by Julia Guy, Paul R. Pival, Carla J. Lewis, and Kim Groome Help Keep ITAL Going If you are interested in contributing to Information Technology and Libraries, there are several ways for you to do so. The main one, of course, is through contributing an article. Our Call for Submissions outlines the topics of interest to the journal—basically, if the submission discusses the intersection of libraries/archives/museums and technology, it’s potentially in scope—and the process for submitting an article. For those of you who are interested in contributing in other ways, two opportunities will be available in the first part of 2024. A call for peer reviewers for ITAL and our sibling Core journals (Library Leadership & Management and Library Resources & Technical Services) will be distributed in January. For those interested in serving on ITAL’s editorial board, our annual call for volunteers will be distributed to Core members in April. Kenneth J. Varnum, Editor Marisha C. Kelly, Assistant Editor varnum@umich.edu marisha.librarian@gmail.com https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16988 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16987 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16987 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16987 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/15107 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/15107 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16025 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16473 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16473 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16475 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16475 https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/16511 https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/call-for-submissions mailto:varnum@umich.edu mailto:marisha.librarian@gmail.com In this Issue Help Keep ITAL Going