Dear Members of the Organization of Teacher Educators in Literacy (OTEL) and Readers of Literacy Practice and Research–On-Line (LPR-Online)

We are delighted to welcome you to the inaugural issue of (LPR-Online), an open access journal. Converting the LPR journal from print to an online format enables literacy practitioners, university literacy educators, and literacy researchers to connect globally. Over the years, technology has revolutionized our lives, placing resources and useful information at our fingertips. We want to be part of this technology revolution and ensure that we keep up with innovations, knowing that literacy encompasses print-based, digital, visual, numeracy, and many more literacies.

Thus we seek diverse article submissions from scholars and practitioners in the United States as well as from varied international contexts. We plan to print three issues annually. (Please refer to Article Submission Guidelines in this issue). We will print opinion pieces, research articles, reviews of newly published literacy texts, informational pieces, and other submissions of varying content. The number of pages for each submission will vary because we have no page costs. We also seek those worldwide who wish to serve as article reviewers. We envision connections in which partners in various global contexts work together to review submissions and thus, bring knowledge, scholarship, people and cultures closer together. Please send your reviewer qualifications to JRichards@usf.edu. In addition we seek cover art created by children and adults worldwide. We thank the OTEL Board and OTEL members for supporting our vision and we look forward to hearing from literacy practitioners, educators and researchers everywhere. We also thank those from Florida International University who helped us with the journal conversion, especially Dean of the Libraries Anne Prestamo and Institutional Repository Coordinator Jill Krefft. We could not have accomplished this job without them.

We wish you all good health.

Janet Richards, Senior Editor, (LPR-Online)- JRichards@usf.edu

Joyce Fine, Associate Editor, (LPR-Online)- Joyce.Fine@fiu.edu