Tom Roper's Weblog

iTunes for journals?

An intriguing idea in the BMJ letters this week. Nicholas Moore proposes an iTunes-like model for pay-per-view access to single electronic journals articles.
Moore, N D Online music model could work for journals BMJ 2005;330:1391 (11 June)

An error

I am sorry, several people have pointed out to me that Michael Gorman is not a Dean of a library school, as I suggested through ignorance in a previous post. I apologise, and look forward to hearing his thoughts at Umbrella.

WiFi at the British Library once more

Heather Brooke, aka Secret Squirrel, who's been campaigning about the excessive charges for WiFi access at the British Library, has now been given copy of the Service Agreement for public wireless local area service between British Library and Building Zones (BZ), after lodging a Freedom of Information Act request.
She is also encouraging people to write to their MPs; I shall certainly do so. There's a pledge at PledgeBank (whihc is itself an intersting social netwroking thing I hadn't come across before) .

The ruins of West Pier

Taken on a wet and windy Sunday

Seaford half marathon

It was the Seaford half marathon today. For details see the training blog and for photos see the running photo album

Gorman and Googleprint

A coda to my last post: Michael Gorman is sharply critical of Google Print. I'm not sure why: can't Google Print and the collections of print and electronic material that we traditionally assemble and look after coexist?

Blog people in Manchester

It seems de rigeur for Deans of North American library schools who came from the right side of the Atlantic to denounce blogs and bloggers. First Michael Gorman, then Blaise Cronin. Is it simply a public relations ploy to generate publicity for their schools?
It's unfortunate that some bloggers have responded in kind and Professor Cronin provides a catalogue of insults sent his way.
Professor Gorman will be one of the speakers at our Umbrella conference at the end of the month and there's a profile in the latest CILIP Update, which refers in passing to to the Blog People controversy, quoting his statement that he "doubts if any of the blog people are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts". I look forward to his speech and, tempting as it is to sit prominently in the front row wearing a Revenge of the Blog People t-shirt, blogging on my Powerbook on one side, with a print copy of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on the other, it would be discourteous to a guest. I do hope there's a chance to debate the proper place of blogging in librarianship and in culture generally.
I wonder how many other delegates will use blogs to record their conference experiences and contribute to Umbrella? What use will CILIP, having discovered RSS feeds, make of them at Umbrella?

Derby Day

Epsom 200: Evolution Ex
Epsom 300: Stream of Gold
Epsom 330: Hidden Dragon
Epsom 420: Gypsy King

JISC questions and answers on open access

JISC (why the strange habit of calling them "the JISC" I wonder...always sounds odd and pretentious to me) have published some questions and answers on open access and repositories