Editorial: “Reinforcing interdisciplinary and futures-oriented thinking”

As we open the 2026 volume of Digital Library Perspectives, we find ourselves at a pivotal juncture in the evolution of information science.The "Digital Transformation" we once spoke of in future tense has matured into a complex reality, driven largely by the pervasive integration of artificial intelligence (AI).To meet the challenges of this era, I am delighted to announce a significant strengthening of Digital Library Perspectives editorial leadership.Starting with this issue, Emanuele Bellini joins us as Associate Editor.Emanuele brings a distinguished background in Cybersecurity and Resilience of sociotechnical systems, he is the initiator of the Cyber Humanities initiative and serves as Chair of the IEEE SMC Technical Committee on Cyber Humanities.His appointment is a strategic move to reinforce the Digital Library Perspectives's commitment to interdisciplinarity and future-oriented thinking.In an age where AI reshapes how information is created, shared, and used, and the emergence of hybrid and sophisticated threats affecting the cultural heritage domain in general and the digital library domain in particular, the intersection of technical security, humanistic inquiry, and library science is no longer optional -it is the very foundation upon which the next generation of digital libraries must be built.The journey of digital libraries has been one of constant transformation.We have moved beyond the early phases of catalog automation and the mass digitization projects of the early 2000s.Today, we are immersed in a phase where AI does not merely assist in discovery but actively participates in the curation and generation of knowledge.At the same time, the hybridization of knowledge infrastructures has expanded opportunities for reuse and access while also increasing exposure to cyber threats.This technological shift, however, raises critical concerns surrounding AI ethics, algorithmic bias, and the long-term preservation and protection of the integrity of digital cultural assets.By integrating cybersecurity expertise with the cyber humanities perspective, we aim to address the "AI readiness" of our field holistically.As recent research has highlighted, readiness is not a binary state but a multidimensional spectrum involving leadership, governance, ethical frameworks, professional competencies, and institutional infrastructure.Emanuele's vision will help us navigate the risks of this transformation while harnessing its potential to enhance information equity and democratic access to knowledge.A core argument of this new editorial phase is the recognition of digital libraries as sociotechnical systems embedded within dense networks of relations with other systems and agents forming a Networked Ecosystem of Ecosystems (NEoE).Thus, rather than constituting isolated ecosystems, digital libraries operate as critical nodes in a broader web of interdependencies with other nodes, recently defined by the literature as Cultural Cyber-Critical Ecosystem (C3E).Within this ecosystem, digital libraries are not merely assemblages of hardware and software; they function as dynamic institutional nodes where technologies and human communities interact in tightly coupled ways to fulfill a shared mission of preserving, protecting and mediating trustworthy digital heritage.This perspective demands that we ask different questions.Rather than "What can this technology do?" we must ask "How does this technology serve our communities?"and "What problems can we solve together?"The sociotechnical lens reveals that every technical