Ariadne hits its 20th birthday, and its 75th issue.



Back in 1994 the UK Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) was set up by the JISC, paid for by the UK's funding councils. One of the many projects funded by eLib was an experimental magazine that could help document the changes under way and give the researchers working on eLib projects a means to communicate with one another and their user communities. That magazine was called Ariadne. Originally produced in both print and web versions, it outlived the project that gave birth to it. We are now at the point where we can celebrate 20 years of the web version of Ariadne.

Much has changed in electronic libraries and information systems over the last two decades and we have two articles considering these changes. Your current editor got together with several of the past editors of Ariadne to look back life in the mid-1990s eLib world, what has happened since, and some thoughts on where the process will go in the near future. The future is always difficult to predict, but JISC's Futurist, Martin Hamilton, considers how eLib influenced current services and what a future "moonshot" funding inititive might bring, with an interesting idea for long term archiving.

After looking back at eLib, we come right up to date with Tom Roper, Sam Burgess and Holly Case. They describe how they set up and run a Twitter chat for health library professionals called #ukmedlibs. Social media chats such as this are a great way of developing contacts within your field, discussing current hot topics and sharing knowledge.

Knowledge sharing is one of the aims of the Semantic Web. But what happens if the semantics behind words drift over time and how does that affect our ability to preserve, index and search information over time? Emma Tonkin delves into this topic, as well as considering the semantics behind particular communities and what happens when their resources disappear.

Ariadne has always been an Open Access journal. This means that it is free for both writers and readers. John Kirriemuir reviews the benefits of writing for such journals, and provides a useful list of such journals in the library field to consider.

We also have several event related articles. Marieke Guy reviews the QEN Event: Embedding Digital Literacies, whilst Gary Brewerton describes what happened at Figshare Fest 2015. Meanwhile Lorna M Campbell introduces the OER16: Open Culture event that is going to take place during April 2016 at Edinburgh University.

To round up our reviews, we have a book review by Gareth Cole of Kristin Briney's Data Management for Researchers. Organize, maintain and share your data for research success.

We hope you enjoy our 20th anniversary issue, and we look forward to the next 20 years with your continued support.

