Tom Roper's Weblog

The unemployed need not apply

In the latest Library and Information Gazette, Nicola Franklin of Sue Hill writes, while discussing salary levels, as follows:
"The best candidates are, by definition, usually employed in other work....The agency is therefore left with he less outstanding candidates, either out of work or on low salaries, as the only candidates they can offer you."
Thank you, Ms Franklin, for giving such an encouraging view of my job prospects. This is utter nonsense: there is no reason why the best candidate for any job has to be in work, though some employers may have irrational prejudices. It is worrying that someone senior in a recruitment agency, who candidates trust to find them work, should encourage such views.

Irresponsible brilliance

If anyone has not yet discovered the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, yesterday's Today's life gives reason enough. On George Digby (1612-1677), second Earl of Bristol, it concludes as follows:

"George Digby remains one of the foremost English examples of irresponsible brilliance. He possessed apparent exceptional talent as a politician, administrator, courtier, soldier, and scholar, and failed as all of those, a pattern which may be related to three defects. One was an inability to keep friends: during the civil war he already saw himself as 'single against all the world' (PRO, SP 16/510/74). Another was his constant tendency to choose the most flamboyant, sensational, and risky course out of every political and military problem, without the skills needed to steer such courses to success. The third was an ingrained carelessness in planning actions and observing discretion. He was and remained remorselessly self-destructive, with a proportionate tendency to destroy all those, including monarchs, whom he carried along with him. In this sense, he was one of English history's most dangerous men."

I hope they write something similar about me one day. The online DNB is among the resources to be made available to public libraries through the Reference Online service

Vicarious conference experiences number 2

And as well as HC2006 in Harrogate, in Washington DC there's Computers in Libraries 2006
Technorati searches for them here:

HC2006
Computers in Libraries

HC2006 blog

HC2006, the conference of the British Computer Society Health Informatics Forum, have set up a conference blog run by, inter alia, Rob Ward of Informaticopia.
The conference starts tomorrow.

Public libraries and books

Richard Morrison, the Times music critic, has been airing his views on public library book stock. His column provoked letters from Mark Field, the shadow culture minister (not the former CILIP employee) and from John Dolan of the MLA. Dolan rightly points out that modern public libraries carry a wide range of resources as well as books.
I think the public library Morrison had in mind is Hendon, where I worked in the early 1980s; the book stock in Hendon and in the London Borough of Barnet generally was savaged by a series of cuts by the philistines of the then-Tory council, so it is perhaps a little rich of Morrison and Field to shout too loudly.
According to the LISU Annual Library Statistics 2005 public library bookstock fell by 16% from 131.7 million items to 110.1 million items over the ten years from 1993-94 to 2003-2004, a period that saw a huge increase in publishing output. Of course public libraries provide all sorts of resources, and always have. When I worked at Hendon it had a music library second to none, so, properly resourced, why should they not provide an excellent book stock as well? Dolan says, "you have, as ever, a national network that delivers books from far away". Pubic libraries should make this more widely known; it's a long tail phenomenon, the ability to find an item from a network of libraries anywhere in Britain or even abroad. Recently when I asked in a local public library how I might order an item that wasn't on the catalogue I was told, "you can't". "Yes, I can," I replied, but a non-librarian user might have taken this unhelpful answer at face value.
This could be how public libraries beat the Waterstones and others who pile it high and sell it cheap. Public libraries can offer something more interesting and challenging than ephemeral best-sellers, and the national library network, up to and including the British Library, ought to be able to satisfy everyone's interests, no matter how recondite. Instead, driven by the tyranny of the popular, they have distorted their stock buying and discouraged readers from exploiting the interlibrary lending services.

Leaving BSMS

I have now left BSMS and am unemployed, I hope not for very long.
I shan't say much here about leaving the best job I ever had; I tried, not very coherently, to express what I felt about it at a leaving party on Friday.
There are some photographs, mostly taken by Martin Hayden, at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomroper/tags/tomsleavingparty/

Potential employers, please note I've revised my cv.

HSLG Kilkenny

Today I leave for the  Health Sciences Librarians Group conference in Kilkenny.  I've tagged in del.icio.us some resources  I may refer to in my presentation.

John Dolan in the Guardian

Today's Guardian carries an interview with John Dolan, Head of Library Policy at MLA.

Reference Online in English public libraries

The MLA (the English one, not the US Medical Library Association) has just announced an "offer" to public libraries of a bundle of major electronic resources.
Public libraries will have to find the money to buy these, so it will be interesting to see how many take advantage of it. But it's a splendid collection and includes Grove Music Online , the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of National Biography

See their press release: Call to action for Public Libraries-Save time and money with Reference Online.
But in passing, why are MLA's URL's so convoluted? For example: http://www.mla.gov.uk/webdav/harmonise?Page/@id=82&Document/@id=23868&Session/@id=D_K2vEpMYxNmalvvyTucD9&Section[@stateId_eq_left_hand_root]/@id=4289
Is it their content management system?

Brighton Jubilee library's first birthday

Hot on the heels of Ariadne's 10th comes news that the prize winning Brighton Jubilee library is to celebrate its first birthday with a programme of birthday events.
They are compiling a public scrap book and you can send birthday greetings to be included by e-mail to: [email protected]