Editors' Page
Kathy Clarke, co-editor and Business Librarian

Starting is always hard.  The idea of a library newsletter was a great idea, but I had no idea about where to start.  I soon discovered, this wasn't the first library newsletter project.  

The articles in  the Madison Memorial Library Quarterly 25 years ago are similar in theme to the issues the library deals with today.  In October 1976, a card catalog conversion was underway, the library instruction program was promoted as a method to instruct students on best research methods, and collection development relationships between the library and the faculty were touted as a good way to ensure that the Madison Memorial Library met the needs of students and faculty.  In 1976 the library worked on collecting quality materials, organized the collections to make access easy and taught students and faculty the skills necessary to efficiently do research.  

These days, the work we do now has roots in the good work that went before us.  Just recently, our web site was redesigned and new features were added.  The journal review process improved our collection by eliminating unused materials and freeing funds for new services and new journal titles. This newsletter is a new effort to reach out to the JMU community to let them know what new initiatives we're pursuing, so we can  continue to inform our community.   So today, we still collect, organize and instruct, now we do so through the web with digital collections and technology classrooms to reach a larger and diverse constituency. 

In future issues, we'll cover new information sources, trends and issues in information literacy, and initiatives the JMU Libraries are pursuing to further our mission of connecting students and faculty to ideas. 

Many thanks to all who contributed to this issue.  If you have specific issues you'd like to see addressed in the Edge.  Please contact me, Kathy Clarke, or my co-editor, Johlene (Jody) Hess.  **

**The editors wish to make clear that they were elementary school students when this issue of the Quarterly was published.