Editorial

319

Does this sound like a song title to you? 
For some reason, Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps, 
and Thieves pops into my head. But no, it 
is the title of an upcoming article in our 
journal by Andy Revelle, Kevin Messner, 
Aaron Shrimplin, and Susan Hurst – all 
from Miami University in Ohio. It is an 
interesting study about how different 
types of academic library patrons (“opin-
ion types”) approach the acceptance and 
use of e-books. We accepted this article for 
publication almost a year ago, but it will 
not see official print publication until our 
next issue in September 2012. Why the de-
lay? C&RL, like most print based journals, 
has paper page limitations that allow us 
to print only about five articles per issue. 
We accept new articles at a faster rate, and 
over time a backlog develops, in our case, 
about a year backlog. 

We found a solution for making this 
backlog of accepted articles accessible 
by establishing an online preprint ser-
vice several years ago. Now accepted 
articles, like “Book Lovers, Technophiles, 
Pragmatists, and Printers: the Social and 
Demographic Structure of User Attitudes 
Toward E-books,” in its final manuscript 
form, short of only proof editing, sees the 
light of day shortly after its acceptance. 
You can find all the journal’s online pre-
prints – more than thirty-five of them – by 
going to the C&RL Web site at http://crl.
acrl.org/. I recommend bookmarking this 
web site and becoming familiar with its 
services. Not only will you find preprints, 
but online access to the current issue, all 

Book Lovers, Technophiles, 
Pragmatists, and Printers

articles back to 1996, and use-
ful alert service options. Set 
up RSS feeds or e-mail alerts to find out 
right away what new tables of contents, 
articles, and preprints are released by 
C&RL. It is easy to do. 

Right now the only thing you cannot 
find on the C&RL website is the print back 
file of the journal’s articles from 1939 to 
1995, but that is soon to change. Thanks to 
the good and generous effort of the Uni-
versity of Illinois Libraries, this C&RL print 
back file has been digitized, and within 
months will be available online. Then you 
will have complete online, open access to 
everything past and present from C&RL.

Soon, too, the print based nature of 
C&RL will change. Discussions and 
planning are underway by the journal’s 
editorial board and by our parent orga-
nization, ACRL, to move the journal to an 
online only journal. The target date for 
this transition is only a year-and-a-half 
away—the end of 2013. Then paper print 
limitations will go away, but so will the 
familiar and handy bi-monthly print issue 
of C&RL. How will we best connect with 
our readers in this totally online envi-
ronment? How can we make the online 
journal and its website more attractive, 
interactive, and richer in content? We 
welcome your suggestions. Send your 
ideas to me (joseph.branin@kaust.edu.
sa) or any members of our editorial team 
and board. Our names are listed on the 
journal masthead. You can also “contact 
us” from the C&RL website.

Joseph Branin
Editor