LIBREAS. Library Ideas 13 (2 2008)

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Friendly Journals: Ikaros - Electronic Journal on Information Society

Name: Ikaros

Alternative journal title: Elektronický casopis o informacní spolecnosti [English translation: Electronic Journal on Information Society]

Website: http://www.ikaros.cz/

There rolls an Ikarus.
Digging our photo archive for something to associate with "Ikaros" we came across this image of a so called banana bus, made in Hungary and driven all over Eastern Europe. So the public bus transportation draws a somewhat line from Prague to Berlin's Dorotheenstraße, taking a imaginary detour via the Dunaújváros bus terminal. May Ikaros (as well as LIBREAS) stay online as long as Ikarus buses were built to be onroad!

Brief overview:

Ikaros focuses on the Internet as a medium, a specific communication environment and source of information. Articles which focus on theoretical and practical aspects of Library and Information Science (LIS) as well as book reviews and reports from various current events in the field of LIS are to be found in the journal. Content is mainly in Czech language with English abstracts and keywords from year 2006. It is published on a monthly basis. The editors of the journal also prepare special issues, especially issues containing online coverage from LIS events (e.g., INFORUM conference in Prague, Czech Republic).

The journal has started as a voluntary activity by students of the Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague (IISL, http://uisk.ff.cuni.cz/) in 1997 as a one of the first electronic journals with ISSN registered in Czech Republic and has always been available only in the electronic format. Since October 1999 the content of the journal has been made available at http:/www.ikaros.cz (previously, it was located at http://ikaros.ff.cuni.cz/). Since November 2000 the journal has been published by Ikaros, o. s., an NGO registered at the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic.

Ikaros belongs to the most influential journals in LIS in the Czech Republic with very high Page Rank. With a tradition of more then ten years, the journal can now be considered mature but it is also a welcoming place for student work. For example, a growing number of students who graduate at the IISL decide to publish selected parts of their theses in Ikaros. It is a win-win situation in which the young author gains a certain recognition in the professional community and, at the same time, Ikaros has a unique opportunity to become an integral part of an education process.

Content management system:

From a website containing only static pages (in the humble beginnings of its existence in 1997) Ikaros has changed into a dynamic website. First, a proprietary content management system (CMS) was used. Then, as the number of open-source CMSs has risen and their quality has significantly improved, a decision was taken to start using a new CMS which would offer new features and simplify the implementation of changes in the future. After a careful examination of currently available open-source CMSs (which took place in late 2005), Drupal (http://drupal.org/) was chosen. Roman Chýla, our webmaster, then prepared a special e-journal module for Drupal (it is now available for download at http://drupal.org/node/46485) and, in cooperation with the editorial board, made a smooth transition from the previous CMS to the new one. The first issue created in the new CMS was the issue published on 1st March 2006 (http://www.ikaros.cz/ejournal/1/112). Since then new features are being added and existing features are being improved. In this sense, we would like to emphasize that feedback from our readers continuously proves to be a wonderful source of inspiration for us.

Board:

What is unique about Ikaros is, among others, the way in which its editorial board operates. Although editors (currently seven people including the editor-in-chief) regularly meet in person, these meetings tend to be rather rare – they are organized usually about four times per year. In the meantime, the collaboration among editors is largely based on the use of information and communication technologies. After all, content management systems can be configured in such a way that the collaboration is even more effective than the use of standard tools like e-mail or chat.

Projects:

Virtual collaboration is also vital while working on projects with many stakeholders. For example, in 2005 Ikaros became involved in its first international project entitled Information Society without Borders: Re-Establishing and Development of the Cross-Border Cooperation within the Information Studies and Librarianship. In this project partners from four countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and, last but not least, Poland) joined their forces to create the outputs (articles and biographies of important personalities from LIS history) that can now be found at http://www.ikaros.cz/projekt_ivf. The project has also resulted in developing new friendships and contacts and we will be happy to continue in mutual cooperation on other projects in the future.

Special services:

In the past we used to publish conference proceedings online. Since 2001 each May when the Inforum conference (http://www.inforum.cz/) is held in Prague we run the live stream from the conference. We also provide our users with a continuous coverage of the conference events (especially pre-conference workshops and talks given at the conference) and we accompany these bits of news with photographs taken at the conference. Some special recordings from the last conference in 2008 – interviews with speakers and other relevant conference participants - are available online at: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=13B99DCE07623CE2.