Tom Roper's Weblog

D-Lib on RSS

The Role of RSS in Science Publishing: Syndication and Annotation on the Web.
Alerted to this in the latest issue of D-Lib, by  the people who do Nature's feeds

CILIP Presidential election result

Nothing on the CILIP web site yet, but I hear unofficially that Bruce Madge lost, by 34 votes. A shame, he would have made a very good president, especially with his non-standard (that is not public/academic library) background, his involvement with informatics, MLA and IFLA. I hope he stands again.

Mince Pie Ten Mile: official results

Official times now up: I was 145th at 1:25:19.

Mince Pie Ten Mile

i ran the Seaford Striders Mince Pie Ten Mile this morning and in spite of being at parties on Friday and Saturday my watch says I did it in 1:25:17. I await the official time.

Scientific Publications Open to All: MP replies

I've had a helpful reply from my MP, Norman Baker, to a letter I wrote to him.
He says that he will take up the issue with Ian Gibson, the chairman of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, who is fighting for a better government response. Norman Baker comments on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)'s bias in favour of big business and says his party, the Liberal Democrats, would abolish the DTI if elected. I'm dubious about whether this would solve anything but I'm grateful for his interest in the issue and his willingness to take action.

New Library Junk

I was amused by the behaviour of the Mac OS X mail client yesterday, It's supposed to filter out spam intelligently. I subscribe to table of contents alerts from a number of journals, including Emerald who publish several librarianship titles.
Yesterday i had five alerts which came more or less at the same time. For some reason Mail decided that the one for New Library World was junk, but none of the others. I've looked at the content, but can't see anything about penis enlargement, cheap software, bogus MBAs in this issue.

Selections for Cheltenham

240 bonusprint.com Gold Cup:Thisthatndtother
315 totesport Bula Hurdle: Inglis Drever
345 Brit Insurance Novices' Hurdle : Brewster

Images in typelists

Sharp-eyed readers of this blog will have noticed the inconsistencies in the TypeLists I display in the side columns, in particular the list What I'm Listening To. There seems to be no rhyme or reason why some of these display an image of the CD cover and others don't. TypePad fetches these from Amazon.co.uk, and at first I thought it was just because the music I was listening to was not entirely mainstream. But they all have images in Amazon, with the exception of the Peace Not War compilation.
Typepad are, as usual, very helpful, but have no answer. I hope they don't mind if I reproduce their advice:
"There may be a number of reasons why the cover images don't appear. There may be a problem with the Amazon web services so that the cover image appears properly on the Amazon website but isn't available through Amazon web services. The cover image may also be temporarily unavailable at the time that you're attempting to view the page. I've noticed on my own Reading TypeList, which pulls from Amazon.com that sometimes not all the images will show up, but then later they will."
So I watch and wait.

Varsity match 2004: Oxford 18 Cambridge 11

To Twickenham today for the Varsity match, (this link still shows last year's match details there at time of writing) jaunt organised by the Old Perseans. Not an entirely satisfactory result, and as always I'm uneasy about the atmosphere of these things, hangover from love-hate relationship with organised games of a self-consciously over-sensitive schoolboy: Triumph of the Will, I always think. And there's the enormous number of drunken people, the over-excited school parties,  the vile smell of hot-dog and burger vans and the pestering by the touts.
But it was an enjoyable day out, and sitting in a pub full of drunken rugger fans on one's own reading Henry James gives an satisfying sense of superiority over those who can do nothing except drink and chatter pointlessly to one another.
 

Transcript of CILIP oral evidence now up

The uncorrected version of the transcript of oral evidence given the Culture, Media and Sport Committee Inquiry into Public Libraries by CILIP, the Audit Commission and the Advisory Council on Libraries is now up on the Committee's web site.