Tom Roper's Weblog

Lebrecht.live on libraries

This isn’t an attempt to record the whole discussion, only those parts referring to libraries. And I shall paraphrase like anything. By way of background, Norman Lebrecht (NL) introduced the discussion by saying that the aim was to discuss how soi-disant anti-elitism was damaging universities, libraries and the arts. He though it was chiefly an Anglo-American problem; the French, Germans or Russians had no such movement. He introduced the panel, Michael Bogdanov (MB), the theatre director, John Eatwell (JE), President of Queens’ Cambridge, chairman of the British Library Board and board member of the Royal Opera House, Deborah Jacobs (DJ), City Librarian of Seattle (blessed with both a superb Rem Koolhaas building and a Libraries for All programme), Frank Furedi (FF), sociologist from Kent University (in my time there the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, but that was a long time ago), the philosopher A. C. Grayling (ACG) and the theatre director and newly appointed Director of the South Bank Jude Kelly (JK). I use initials hereafter to identify the contributors.

Librarything

I fear librarything is going to be my downfall. There are lots of things wrong with it, things that make the cataloguer in me shudder, but its also tremendously interesting. When will the British Library be a source (the Library of Congress already is)

World Summit on the Information Society

I went a week ago to Brighton's Jubilee library for a briefing meeting organised by CILIP's Career Development Group on the World Summit on the Information Society addressed by Debby Shorley and Jill Martin, CILIP's President and Director of Knowledge & Information respectively. IFLA made an impact at the Geneva round of WSIS and hopes to influence the second phase of WSIS, which culminates in the Tunis summit in November 2005. The British government has shuffled responsibility for WSIS between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The key points Debby and Jill made were:
• that British librarians should inform themselves about WSIS using the materials on CIIP's site
• and submit success stories to IFLA's database. I stumbled upon another library success site, Library success: a best practices wiki. It might be helpful if some sort of relationship could be established between the two.
Debby and Jill were realistic about the probable results of WSIS. The best we can hope for is that the final statements will mention libraries. But that in itself is an achievement, and on the way there, a number of politicians and dips may have gained a better understanding of the potential of libraries. As Debby pointed out, libraries are everywhere and offer a ready-made way of implementing the fine words of summit resolutions.
Internet governance, which looks as if it will be the major issue at the summit, is currently being debated at the preparatory meeting, or PrepCon, which takes place in Geneva until the end of the month (see InfoWorld's report).
From a health librarian's point of view, it seems to me we had a lot to contribute, not least because one of the priorities for WSIS is  "to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases"; and knowledge is, I'm told, the enemy of disease .
Both Debby and Jill deplored the debasement of the English language that international meetings indulge in. Jill offered a particulary fine example involving ramps on the information highway. I shall scour the WSIS site for it.

Libraries on lebrecht.live

Yesterday evening's lebrecht.live on Radio 3 was on the theme why is elitism a sin?
This is a slightly provisional account, as I was roasting a leg of pork while listening. I'm going to listen again, and post something more considered.
Libraries came up from time to time, with Tower Hamlets attracting some criticism for renaming their libraries Ideas Stores and closing the Whitechapel library (partly from Michael Bogdanov whose father had been librarian there).
But the case for the modern library, giving its readers the best of print and new media resources, was eloquently made by Deborah L Jacobs, City Librarian at Seattle Public Library. She was excellent (though could they not have found a British librarian; sad if the programme makers thought they couldn't, sadder still if they looked and couldn't find one). John Eatwell, Chair of the British Library Board. also spoke, though, as Frank Furedi pointed out, the British Library is atypical. Frank Furedi cited the difficulty of borrowing sheet music, a fair point. When I started in public libraries, the branch where I worked held the borough's vocal score sets, and I would be sent into back rooms in search of Stainer's Crucifixion or Elgar's Dream of Gerontius: how many libraries still have such a collection?

Remote conference blogging

Having previously held forth about conference blogging and how, in general, it enhances the conference experience, I find myself frustrated not to be in Brazil at ICML.
I have very fond memories of the 2000 ICML in London, where we ran the 3rd International Conference on Animal Health Information (ICAHIS) as a stream within ICML.
But I can console myself by vicarious blogging. So far the only blogs to mention ICML are the redoubtable T. Scott Plutchak's and Oliver Obst's but I have set up a Technorati watchlist and will feed its results into these pages.

Leslie Morton commemorative issue of Health Information and Libraries Journal

The latest issue of Health Information and Libraries Journal came yesterday, and with it the commemorative issue in honour of Leslie Morton who died in February 2004. It includes a review of his final, posthumous publication, the third edition of A Bibliography of Medical and Biomedical Biography which he produced with Robert J Moore. The commemorative issue also includes a bibliography of Leslie's work, personal reminiscences and eight original articles, plus a report on the Leslie Morton Memorial Conference which took place at the Royal Society of Medicine in February this year.
There's lots of good papers: Steve Pritchard and Alison Weightman on the history of MEDLINE in the UK, Bruce Madge and Scott Plutchak on the globalisation of health librarianship, but one in particular struck a personal note. By Caroline Sawers, it charts the history of medical libraries in the old Thames Regions (North-East, North-West, South-East and South-West, which covered London, the home counties and beyond) using the Medical Library Bulletin of the Thames Regions as a source, a publication Leslie edited. When I entered health librarianship in 1991, into the North Thames regions of the NHS, first at North Middlesex Hospital, a new library designed as a multidisciplinary library, and then at Edgware General Hospital, both libraries and archives of this bulletin, which was an invaluable introduction to the region, and indeed to medical librarianship for someone pne whose background consisted of some time in public libraries and sojourns with the British Council and Hawker Siddeley Group plc.
Sawers, Caroline
The way we were: health library life seen through the pages of the Medical Library Bulletin of the Thames Regions, 1974-94
Health Information and Libraries Journal 2005 22 Supp 1: 31-37
Single copies are available from the publishers.

A new blog of distinction

I am delighted to see that Ian Snowley, Director of Information Services at the Royal Society of Medicine, leading force in CILIP and man-about-town, has launched himself into the blogosphere at http://snowley.typepad.com/.

ALA: Hurricane Katrina: latest news and where to donate

The American Library Association has a page of Hurricane Katrina library related news and details of how to donate. The Medical Library Association has a special issue of MLA-Focus but it's not on the website yet.

Link directly to an ISBN/ISSN [OCLC - Open WorldCat program]

This is the answer to my prayers for some way of linking to books other than sending people to Amazon.
Link directly to an ISBN/ISSN [OCLC - Open WorldCat program].
It has limitations of course: there seem to be very few UK libraries taking part. So using OCLC's example search for the Da Vinci Code (though I'm sure no reader of this blog would want to), it only found a copy in one library,  at US Air Force Europe, RAF Lakenheath, which I suspect is not open to the public.
But if there were to be wide participation in this, particularly by public libraries, it could be useful beyond words. When the database includes sufficient useful UK libraries, I'll set about changing my sidebar typelists to use thsi rather than Amazon.

National Library for Health - RSS Directory

The NLH has revealed a prototype version of theirRSS Directory.