The Electronic British Library Journal

A Foreword by Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library

Why should the British Library be introducing a new electronic journal? Why change the format of the old British Library Journal? I know that many, especially in the humanities, still feel more comfortable with the printed page. However, when they scroll through the eBLJ I hope the advantages of the new medium will at once become apparent to them and, consequently, the reasons why we have adopted it.

This transition is, in fact, an affirmation of the Library's continuing commitment to its core values. My great nineteenth-century predecessor Sir Anthony Panizzi, who more than anyone else established a national library for Britain in the form we recognize today, was insistent that this library should be 'inclusive' in every sense of the word - not only in the wealth of its collections, but in making them available to all who needed and could benefit from them. His words still speak to us across the years: 'I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, …of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdom'.

In Panizzi's day, such access was necessarily limited. For the last five centuries, it has had to be through print on paper. For millennia before that scholars had recourse to manuscript on papyrus and parchment. Today we have the web and the pixel. They present us with opportunities which I am sure Panizzi, a visionary but also a practical man of action, would have rejoiced in and used to the full.

As one of the great research libraries of the world, we are eager to work closely with the scholarly community and to play a significant part in promoting high quality research which exploits and publicizes our collections. The printed predecessor of this journal published the work not only of academics from many institutions in the United Kingdom and United States, but of scholars from countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan and The Netherlands. However, the number of readers who were able to consult the British Library Journal in many of those countries will have been strictly limited. Now, through the medium of the web, anyone anywhere, in Britain and abroad, will have immediate access to any article that has ever appeared in its electronic successor.

Though the scholar will benefit greatly, we are also seeking a much wider audience for the eBLJ. When, in 1975, he contributed a Foreword to the first issue of the printed British Library Journal, our then Chairman David Eccles reaffirmed the principle that it was a social duty for it to address as broad a readership as possible. From the beginning it was laid down that all articles should not only be scholarly but accessible, as, indeed, all good scholarship should be. I hope, therefore, that interested lay people and lifelong learners will use the eBLJ as a guide to the treasures that the Library has to offer and that teachers at all levels of education will find it an invaluable resource.

For these reasons, I take some pride in the fact that we are amongst the first great scholarly libraries to have our own electronic journal. I hope that very soon it will establish itself as a major gateway between our collections and the wider world, combining traditional scholarship with the latest technology. My aim is that, in the new eBLJ, the British Library should be launching a twenty-first century journal that is worthy of a truly twenty-first century Library.