D-Lib Magazine
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The Magazine of Digital Library Research
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D-Lib Magazine

July/August 2012
Volume 18, Number 7/8
Table of Contents

 

Editorial

Science, Publishing, and Digital Libraries

Laurence Lannom
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
llannom@cnri.reston.va.us

doi:10.1045/july2012-editorial

 

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Our July/August issue is devoted to a single topic — making more effective use of traditional scientific publications. All of the eight articles this month have their origin at the 1st International Workshop on Mining Scientific Publications, held during JCDL 2012. The topics range from automatic metadata extraction for individual articles to automatically characterizing collections to automatic browsing hierarchy creation to innovative visualization techniques for navigating collections. Knoth, Zdrahal, and Juffinger, who organized the workshop, provide a guide to the articles in the Guest Editorial.

The effort to do more with traditional publications, by automating analysis and providing tools to help users navigate and get more out of large collections, is part of a larger trend. The steady and sometimes overwhelming increase in the output of science, both in publications and especially in data, is a great challenge and a great opportunity. The research and the library/publishing worlds are converging in the face of these great challenges and opportunities. The connection between publications and data is one obvious area where the two communities must collaborate (see our Jan/Feb 2011 special issue on this topic) but there is much more to be done. Providing simple access to enormous amounts of data is not sufficient. It is beyond the capacity of individual human beings to deal with enormous amounts of data, either in the form of numbers or words. Tools are needed and some of the tools described in this issue, and/or their successors, will be a part of the solution.

 

About the Editor

Photo of Laurence Lannom Laurence Lannom is Director of Information Management Technology and Vice President at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), where he works with organizations in both the public and private sectors to develop experimental and pilot applications of advanced networking and information management technologies.
 
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