A
s I approach the end of my tenure as ITAL edi­
tor, I reflect on the many LITA members who 
have not submitted articles for possible publica­

tion in our journal. I am especially mindful of the smaller 
number who have promised or hinted or implied that 
they intended to or might submit articles. Admittedly, 
some of them may have done so because I asked them, 
and their replies to me were the polite ones that one 
expects of the honorable members of the Library and 
Information Technology Association of the American 
Library Association. Librarians are as individuals almost 
all or almost always polite in their professional discourse.

Pondering these potential authors, particularly the 
smaller number, I conjured a mental picture of a fictional, 
male, potential ITAL author. I don’t know why my fic­
tional potential author was male—it may be because 
more males than females are members of that group; it 
may be because I’m a male; or it may be unconscious sex­
ism. I’m not very self­analytic.

My mental picture of this fictional male potential 
author saw him driving home from his place of employ­
ment after having an after­work half gallon of rum when, 
into the picture, a rattlesnake crawled on to the seat of his 
car and bit him on the scrotum.

Lucky him: he was, after all, a figment of my imagina­
tion. (Any resemblance between my fictional author and 
a real potential author is purely coincidental.) Lucky me: 
we all know that such an incident is not unthinkable in 
library land. Lucky LITA: it is unlikely that any member 
will cancel his or her membership or any subscriber, his, 
her, or its subscription because the technical term “scro­
tum” found its way into my editorial. ITAL is, after all, a 
technology journal, and members and readers ought to 
be offended if our journal abjures technical terminology. 
Likewise they should be offended if our articles discuss 
library technology issues misusing technical terms or 
concepts, or confusing technical issues with policy issues, 
or stating technology problems or issues in the title or 
abstract or introduction then omitting any mention of 
said problems until the final paragraph(s).

ITAL referees are quite diligent in questioning authors 
when they think terminology has been used loosely. Their 
close readings of manuscripts have caught more than one 
author mislabeling policies related to the uses of informa­
tion technologies as if the policies were themselves tech­
nical conundrums. Most commonly, they have required 
authors who state major theses or technology problems 
at the beginnings of their manuscripts, then all but ignore 
these until the final paragraphs, to rewrite sections of 
their manuscripts to emphasize the often interesting 
questions raised at the outset.

What, pray tell, is the editor trying to communicate to 
readers? Two things, primarily.

First, I have been following with interest the several 
heated discussions that have taken place on lita­l for 
the past number of months. Sometimes, the idea of the 
traditional quarterly scholarly/professional journal in 
a field changing so rapidly may seem almost quaint. A 
typical ITAL article is five months old when it is pub­
lished. A typical discussion thread on lita­l happens in 
“real time” and lasts two days at most. A small number of 
participants raise and “solve” an issue in less than a half 
dozen posts. A few times, however, a question asked or a 
comment posted by a LITA member has led to a flurry of 
irrelevant postings, or, possibly worse, sustained bomb­
ing runs from at least two opposing camps that have left 
some members begging to be removed from the list until 
the all clear signal has been sounded.

I’ve read all of these, and I could not help but won­
der, what if ITAL accepted manuscripts as short as lita­l 
postings? What would our referees do? I suspect, for our 
readers’ sakes, most would be rejected. Authors whose 
manuscripts are rejected receive the comments made by 
the referees and me explaining why we cannot accept 
their submissions. The most frequent reason is that they 
are out of scope, irrelevant to the purposes of LITA. When 
someone posts a technology question to lita­l that gener­
ates responses advising the questioner that implementing 
the technology in question is bad policy, the responses are, 
from an editor’s point of view, out of scope. How many 
LITA members have authority—real authority—to set 
policy for their libraries? A second “popular” reason for 
rejections is that the manuscripts pose “false” problems 
that may be technological but that are not technologies 
that are within the “control” of libraries. These are out of 
scope in a different manner. Third, some manuscripts do 
not pass the “so what” test.

Some days I wish that lita­l responders would referee, 
honestly, their own responses for their relevance to the 
questions or issues or so­whatness and to the membership.

Second, and more importantly to me, LITA members, 
whether or not your bodies include the part that we all 
have come to know and defend, do you have the “­” to 
send your ITAL editor a manuscript to be chewed upon 
not by rattlesnakes but by the skilled professionals who 
are your ITAL Editorial Board members and referees? I 
hope (and do I dare beg again?) so. Your journal will not 
suffer quaintness unless you make it so.

Editorial: The Virtues of Deliberation John Webb

John Webb	 (jwebb@wsu.edu)	 is	 a	 Librarian	 Emeritus,	Washington	
State	University,	and	Editor	of	Information Technology and Libraries.

EDITORIAL  |  WEBB   3