This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the original Library History journal, and this is an event that will be commemorated more fully in an issue later in the year. This first issue of 2017 is my first as editor of the journal, and I look forward to working with our research community in the coming years to continue to produce a journal that is not only of an exemplary standard but also truly international in its scope and ambition. By far the most important task that I have as the incoming editor is to pay very warm and very genuine tribute to my predecessor, Dr. Mark Towsey of Liverpool University. Mark served as editor of Library & Information History between 2013 and 2016 and contributed enormously to the development of the publication both in terms of its scope of coverage and the calibre of the contributions. Furthermore, Mark has always been extremely encouraging towards all contributors, both established researchers and those in their early stages of their careers. He has been a truly dedicated and supportive editor and has demonstrated a very real passion and enthusiasm towards the fields of library and information history.
I very much hope that I am able to follow in Mark's footsteps and to maintain the enviably high standards that are a hallmark of the journal. I would personally like to thank Mark for all his guidance as I took over the role and also extend my thanks to our North American editor, Dr. Melanie Kimball, and to our book review editor, Dr. Karen Attar, both of whom have helped me enormously in these first few months. My own research work has often been published in this journal and has ranged across many aspects of library history over the years, and as I look back on some of those articles I am reinforced in my sincere belief that library and information history has much to offer in understanding of wider social and cultural issues and how they have affected individuals, communities, and society. There is tremendous diversity in our library and information history scholarship, and the journal has a very creditable record in publishing articles on a wide range of subjects. Maintaining this diversity is a key part to the enduring success of the journal.
The diversity of scholarship in our field is apparent in this edition. Although we will mark the fiftieth anniversary later in the year, we have an article in this edition by Edward A. Goedeken, which begins to set the scene for that anniversary by exploring how the publications of our journal have influenced scholarly discourse and historical narratives elsewhere, both in monograph and journal forms. Marek Sroka's article explores the postwar role of the American Library Association in the cultural reconstruction of East Central European countries. It is an example of that point alluded to above, that through library and information history we are often afforded a distinctive insight into other, sometimes wider, aspects of social, political, or cultural history. The third article, by Brendan Luyt, is a study of information and knowledge history in the Bureau of Forestry in the Philippines and explores knowledge projects and knowledge systems during the first part of the twentieth century. Three different, distinctive, and extremely informative articles present discussion of very different issues from around the world.