Tom Roper's Weblog

Oral evidence to HoCSTC inquiry

The first session of oral evidence to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee inquiry into scientific publications is now available at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/uc399-i/uc39902.htm
Robert Campbell, President, Blackwell Publishing , Richard Charkin, Nature Publishing Group , and Dr John Jarvis, Senior Vice President, Europe, Managing Director, Wiley Europe Limited gave evidence.
There was also a session on 8th March, which isn't up yet, in the Thatcher Room (!) where Julia King, Institute of Physics , Sally Morris, Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) , Martin Richardson, Oxford University Press , Nigel Goddard, Axiope , Harold Varmus, Public Library of Science (PLoS) and Vitek Tracz, BioMed Central gave evidence.

L'affaire Fallon

My readers doubtless expect me to say something about this. I think I need to run whatever I say past my inner lawyer, but it seems to me that, while Kieren Fallon's ride on Ballinger Ridge was not the sort of thing one expects from the champion jockey, the comments he's supposed to have made before the race about the beast's chances were no more than the truth. If he was engaged in anything crooked, surely he would do it somewhere more lucrative than a minor race on the all-weather at Lingfield?
He has a reputation as no respecter of persons (I remember the course vet at one racecourse telling me about an exciting encounter he had with KF) and that includes the Jockey Club. In charging KF with bringing the sport into disrepute, rather than just the bad ride on Ballinger Ridge, the JC will be thought to be trying to settle old scores.

BMJ: US universities threaten to cancel subscriptions to Elsevier

Tomorrow's BMJ reports on the drive, mentioned in this blog before, by US universities to cancel subscriptions to Elsevier titles. The article concentrates chiefly on Stanford, whose Senate passed a resolution threatening cancellation and calling on faculty to publish in open-access journals.
US universities threaten to cancel subscriptions to Elsevier journals
BMJ 2004;328:543 (6 March)

BMJ: US learned societies to defy ban on editing articles from embargoed

The BMJ reports that a group of American scientific societies is planning to defy a recent US government ruling that has prevented their journals from publishing work by scientists from Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, and Sudan, all countries subject to US trade embargoes.
US learned societies to defy ban on editing articles from embargoed countries
BMJ 2004;328:543 (6 March)

Once more on today's selections

Not bad: a 4/1, 7/1 and 5/1 treble. But as I write, the rugby doesn't look too good from an English polnt of view. Ireland very impressive and 9 points ahead.

Today's selections: Doncaster and Newbury

Tote Scoop6 Grimthorpe Handicap Chase 235 Doncaster: Grey Abbey
Vodafone Handicap Hurdle 255 Newbury: Midland Flame
Vodafone Handicap Chase 330 Newbury Exit Swinger
Irish Stallion Farms EBF Novice Handicap Steeplechase Final 400 Navan Rockspring Hero
Tote Exacta Premier Kelso Novices Hurdle 405 Kelso Paddy the Piper

An accompanying thought: how cheering it is as the time of the last race gets later and later. A far surer sign of spring than daffodils or lambs.

Bloodstock in the FT

Rachel Pagones, bloodstock editor of the Racing Post, seems to be making a habit of writing a column in the FT. Today she looks at the National Hunt bloodstock industry, drawing attention to the low stud fees that obtain here. For example Rooster Booster, favourite for the Champion Hurdle (though I shall be investing elsewhere), was by Riverwise out of Came Cottage. In that year, 1993, Riverwise covered a handful of mares for £100 a time. The same year Sadler's Wells, whose progeny were to include High Chaparal and Galileo, was charging £200,000.
Best Mate cost 2500 Irish guineas in 1995 as a foal and Moscow Flyer was by Moscow Society (sired by Nijinsky) out of the only mare the breeder Edward Joyce owned. The most active stallion might cover 300 mares a year but even at that level of activity would only earn about 4.5 times the money Sadlers Wells could command for a single session.

Patrick Hamilton in print

Further to my post on Lynne Truss's Times article I went away and had a look to see how much of Patrick Hamilton's oeuvre is in fact in print. I used the BookFind database, which is not infallible, but should be reasonably accurate.
The following are currently in print:

Gaslight : A Victorian Thriller in Three Acts
Constable & Robinson 0-09-450830-5
1975

Hangover Square : A Story of Darkest Earl's Court
Penguin Books 0-14-118589-9
2001

Impromptu in Moribundia
Trent Editions 0-905488-33-4
1999

Rope : Play
3rd ed, Constable & Robinson 0-09-450860-7
[s.d.]

The Slaves of Solitude
Constable 0-09-458720-5
1972

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
Vintage 0-09-928865-6
1999

I'm hampered by not having a scholarly bibliography to hand (is there one?), but using the British Library's catalogues it would appear that the novels out of print are:

Monday Morning (1925)

Craven House (1926)

The Gorse Trilogy, which consists of the West Pier (1952), Mr Stimson and Mr Gorse(1953) and Unknown Assailant (1955)

The plays out of print are John Brown's Body (1930), Money with Menaces (1939), The Duke in Darkness (1942) , The Man Upstairs (1954) and Angel Street (1966)
Maybe the centenary will inspire the publisher to bring out new editions. My priorities would be Craven House and the Gorse Trilogy.

Information literacy for health: LKDN/SCONUL/UMSLG joint workshop, 1st

I went to the joint workshop on information literacy for health organised jointly by the Library and Knowledge Development Network (LKDN), the Society of National and University Libraries (SCONUL) and the University Medical School Librarians Group (UMSLG).

Times 28th Feb: Lynne Truss on public libraries

Writing in last Saturday's Times, Lynne Truss writes about the new Brighton public library , prompted by a item on the Radio 4 Today programme by Deborah Moggach. I missed this, part of the price of the long journey to work I do, (but not thank heavens for much longer) being that I don't listen to the radio in the morning. Ms Moggach was discussing what Ms Truss calls the "mixed media library". Ms Truss makes the point, familiar to any librarian who has had served in the trenches against architects, that those designing the splendid new building in Brighton had no idea how many books it was intended to house.
The more interesting point she makes, at least for me, is that, preparing a radio programme about Patrick Hamilton, the centenary of whose birth takes place this year and is to be marked at the Brighton Festival , she sent her producer to an unnamed public library. Hamilton was a fascinating writer whose work I admire hugely. Ms Truss claims that "nearly all his novels are out of print" and I shall check this, but believing this to be the case her producer went to the public library to find what they held. She says that no one had heard of him. This is perhaps not as shocking as the article claims. Hamlton, though excellent, is not one of the major twentieth century novelists, so it is not reasonable to expect an unqualifed library assistant to have heard of him, (though I deplore the supermarket tendency of some in my profession to treat collections as if they were no different from a freezer-full of fish fingers). What I find more worrying, though the piece is not explicit, is that no one seems to have offered to find out where his books might be found. If this was a London library, the Metropolitan Joint Fiction Reserve could have been suggested, if outside London other interlending schemes could have been used, local university library holdings could have been checked through COPAC and will admit bona-fide researchers. The British Library itself could have helped as a place of last resort. Why, if the account is correct did no one try to help her producer any further?
Truss, Lynne Shhh! If only you'd shut up you'd hear the books screaming
Times 28 Feb 2004 p 29