Editorial

The Coburg Committee was formed one frosty morning in November 2004, over lattes at the Coburg Coffee House, by a group of six students from the School of Library and Information Studies. This group was challenged by the unique position of their school within the Faculty of Management, and was dedicated to making an imprint on the academic community at Dalhousie University. This uniqueness was perceived to be particularly important, as September 2005 will see the four schools together in the new Faculty of Management building.

This original group of six students established that the best way to promote the skills developed during their studies at Dalhousie University, within an academic forum, while developing relationships between the four schools in the Faculty of Management, was to create an electronic journal which would provide a forum for discussion and a creative outlet for collaboration between students across the four schools.

Thanks to the enthusiasm of our colleagues from the School of Library and Information Studies (now the School of Information Management) we have achieved the first goal of creating a web-based, student run journal which will showcase the diversity of the academic achievements of students from the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. Our next goal, and one which we hope this first issue will facilitate, will include bridging the gap between the students in the four schools by way of this creative and academic enterprise.

Our efforts to contact the student executives from other schools to invite them to participate in the planning process elicited no response, but we remain steadfast, with the hope and plans for future action, we will garner the support and partnership from students in the other schools.

Alternatively, we received an overwhelming response from students within our program, and the Coburg Committee membership grew from six to eighteen students. We held our first meeting in January 2005 and promptly set up working groups, which would be responsible for the various aspects of the journal. Throughout the course of the winter term, we met as a group twice a month, logged several hours emailing ideas and addressing the many issues that arose surrounding the creation of this journal, including copyright issues, format and in spite of an aggressive marketing campaign in the Faculty of Management, the lack of submissions which caused us to push back our original deadline of February 20, 2005 to March 01, 2005. Due to limited number of submissions, the committee decided to showcase a completed prototype in an effort to gain momentum for next year.

Our plan was to showcase and present this journal to the Faculty of Management for many reasons. First, we wanted to give recognition to the many students who put in their time and effort into making this journal possible. We wanted to have everyone on hand to answer questions about the various challenges they faced in creating this journal and we wanted them to be able to answer for themselves, why they chose to participate in this project. Finally, we wanted to encourage students from the other schools to see what we have accomplished, in the hope that they would join our efforts in the coming years.

Short and long term goals

Our short-term goal was to have a prototype of the electronic journal in place by March 18, or a full issue depending on the number of submissions. This date was selected to coincide with an exciting event at the School of Library and Information Studies exploring the future of education in our field. In spite of a well-executed advertising campaign, we had a limited number of submissions, and were able to put together a prototype, rather than publish the first issue. The first official issue, we hope, will be published in the fall semester of 2005. The goal is to publish semi-annually, having Fall and Winter issues. Our long-term goal with this electronic journal is that within five years, we would like to develop a solid working relationship with the other schools in the Faculty of Management, so that this journal may truly benefit from and reflect the collegiality of the Dalhousie University academic environment. We aspire to becoming a nationally recognized scholarly electronic journal.

Working groups

Design and Development Working Group

The design and development was formed by a few of the many volunteers from the Dalhousie School of Library and Information Studies. It is comprised of a diverse array of technical and creative talent. Its members are David Burke, Ken Allan, Heather Ludlow, Jennie Castleton, Jessica Larocque and Emily Porter. The design and implementation of the site that carries the Dalhousie Journal of Information and Management is a stylistic amalgamation of elements associated with the Dalhousie web site and our own visual identity, including our own logo. We had to decide on a way to provide access to the publication that would be attractive, easy to download and easy to archive. For this reason there is both an HTML and a PDF version of each article being published. Also included is a short biography of each author being represented in the Journal and a short history of the Coburg Committee. Once these elements were decided on, a navigational structure was designed to facilitate informative and enjoyable access to our publication. We were able to get space on the Dalhousie School of Library and Information Studies server to display our work with the help of Dr. Haidar Moukdad, a Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies, and Judy Dunn, the Graduate Coordinator for the School of Library and Information Studies. We are very proud of the work we have done with this project, and hope to provide a reliable and dynamic web site to carry this growing publication that will have a significant presence in the world of Information and Management education. – David Burke

Editorial Working Group

The editorial committee was made up of Melissa McCarthy, Catherine Dean, Carolyn Harris, Stephanie Downs, Rebecca Bartlett, Amy Dietrich, Jen Dumond, and Emily Porter. It's been a lot of work to try to formulate policies, since we've all been floundering around in the dark, but at this point I think we've got something that can serve as a workable framework for next year. We managed to overlook some important things, but everyone's worked really hard and we feel that we've accomplished something. We're hopeful that next year we'll have more submissions because we'll have the rules published, not to mention the prototype itself, and people will see what a great thing we've got here! Anything more would have to come from the editors; they're the ones who've been doing the real work. – Melissa McCarthy

Advertising Working Group

The students involved in this campaign, Virginia Pow, Denise Corey-Fancy and Jill Forbes, initially contacted all of the other management schools through email to try to solicit participation. They also created a poster campaign soliciting submissions to the journal, and later to advertise the event on March 18, 2005, which would showcase all of our efforts. The group decided on bright and inviting colors, and placed posters in the library, the management building and the School of Resource and Environmental Studies building. In addition to the poster campaigns, an email campaign aimed at students, faculty and staff in the four Schools of Management, they also designed and created a pamphlet to hand out at the March 17th Future of Education in Library and Information Studies event, as a means of cross-promoting. – Virginia Pow

Conclusion

In conclusion, this project would never have come to ground without the dedication and vision of the working group chairs: Heather Ludlow, Melissa McCarthy and Virginia Pow. We would like to extend a heartfelt and sincere thank you to the Working Groups Chairs, but equally also to the SLIS students who volunteered their time and ideas to this project. Thank you Coburg Committee Members: Catherine Dean, Denise Corey-Fancy, Carolyn Harris, Jill Forbes, Stephanie Downs, Rebecca Bartlett, Amy Dietrich, Ken Allan, David Burke, Emily Porter, Jessica Larocque, and Jennie Castleton. And finally, we have sincerely appreciated the moral and caring support of SLIS Faculty: Dr. Black, Director of the School of Library and Information Studies; Judy Dunn, Graduate Coordinator and Dr. Moukdad, technical advisor.

Sincerely, Holly James and Ewa Piorko
Co-Chairs Coburg Committee 2004-2005

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