iNcoMiNG eDitor’s coluMN  |  GerritY   155

Bob Gerrity

G
reetings ITAL readers. I’m writing this in late 
September, as the Boston Red Sox attempt to 
back their way into the Major League Baseball 

postseason after blowing a 9-game lead over Tampa Bay 
in a major-league September meltdown of epic propor-
tions. [Red Sox fans are prone to hyperbole, but in this 
case no hyperbole is needed: this meltdown really is 
epic.] It’s down to the last game of the season, and like 
many Red Sox fans, I’m hopeful but not optimistic. The 
fate of the 2011 Red Sox will be old news by the time 
this appears in print, though: as I’m coming to learn, 
the wheels of scholarly publishing continue to turn ever 
so slowly, unless forced to do otherwise. Which brings 
me to why I’m taking on the role of editor of ITAL. On 
one hand, I’m fortunate to be taking on the editorship 
of a journal that quite clearly has been stewarded with 
care, dedication, and attention by my predecessors. I’ve 
spent quite a few hours recently in the Z678.9 section of 
my library’s stacks, perusing three decades of back vol-
umes of ITAL and its predecessor, the Journal of Library 
Automation. There’s an impressive body of scholarly and 
informational output on library automation and related 
topics, from the sublime (“To Boolean or not to Boolean?” 
September 1983), to the not-so-sublime (“The Effects 
of Baud Rate, Performance Anxiety, and Experience in 
Online Bibliographic Searches,” March 1990), to the sen-
timental (“Floppies to Pass the Billion-Dollar Level in 
’84.” September 1982), to the déjà-vu-all-over-again (“LS-
2000—The Integrated Library System for OCLC,” June 
1984). Overall, I’d have to say there’s a solid foundation to 
build on, plus plenty of good content in the pipeline, and 
it would be easy to continue on in the same vein.

But that’s not why I’m here. I’m fortunate to be 
taking on the role of editor as ITAL faces significant 
changes. In his inaugural editorial for ITAL in March 
2005, then-incoming editor John Webb articulated a 
number of worthy goals for ITAL, to both broaden and 
deepen the content of the journal and the demographic 
of the authors contributing to it. One goal in particular, 
though, strikes me (in hindsight of course) as problem-
atic: “I hope to . . . facilitate the electronic publication of 
articles without endangering—but in fact enhancing—the 
absolutely essential financial contribution that the journal 
provides to the association.” Anyone who has observed 

the struggles of the newspaper industry in recent years or 
been involved in the shift towards e-only in the world of 
academic/scholarly journals will not be surprised to learn 
that, in the intervening years since John wrote his column 
and ITAL has continued in print plus electronic form, 
revenues (primarily from subscriptions and advertising) 
have steadily declined while production and distribution 
costs have not, resulting in an increasing annual subsidy 
from ALA/LITA to support the publication. As a result, 
I’ve been tasked with exploring a new publication model 
for ITAL: open access and electronic only. Plans for—and 
the timing of — this transition are still being developed as 
I write this, but should be finalized before “my” first issue 
is published in March 2012. 

There is much about ITAL that will not change even if 
the publication format does. A primary focus of the jour-
nal will continue to be to solicit and publish high-quality, 
peer-reviewed papers covering a broad array of topics 
related to the design, application, and use of technology 
in libraries. Changes I would like to see include making 
ITAL more timely and more relevant to the day-to-day 
work interests of many of its readers. I’d like to add 
more topical, current, and informational content to ITAL 
without negatively impacting its traditional role as a pub-
lication vehicle for librarians in tenure-track positions. 
ITAL in an e-only format also needs to provide easy and 
transparent ways for readers to be informed when new 
content is published and to offer advice, criticism, and 
commentary to help improve ITAL. I look forward to your 
feedback as ITAL moves in a new direction, about which 
I’m both hopeful and optimistic.

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the outgo-
ing editor of ITAL, Marc Truitt, who has been both helpful 
and gracious during this editorial transition. Marc is 
passionate about ITAL and its legacy, and I hope he’ll see 
the future ITAL as a worthy successor to, rather than an 
unfortunate break from, the journal he’s stewarded for 
the past several years.

Incoming Editor’s Column:  
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes  
(turn and face the strain)

Bob Gerrity (robert.gerrity@bc.edu) is Associate university 
Librarian for Information Technology, Boston College Libraries, 
Chestnut hill, Massachusetts.