Tom Roper's Weblog

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants: Back To The Future Of Health Librarianship

This looks fascinating, not least because of the collaboration between  HLG and MLA.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants: Back To The Future Of Health Librarianship

 

Friday 25 February, 2005

at The Royal Society of Medicine,

London

 The Leslie Morton Memorial Conference organised in association with the CILIP Health Libraries Group and in collaboration with the Medical Library Association (USA)

The British Library and Wireless

Lorcan Dempsey comments on the BL and wireless; but here's an opportunity missed. Why does our national library use such an odd way of giving wireless to its visitors? Apart from the level of charges, which I've commented on before, why do they need to charge at all? They don't charge anyone connected to their wired LAN on their computers. And sorting out all the bits you need to do to connect took  a good five minutes on a recent visit, though my PowerBook can detect a wifi network and connect to it in seconds, without the artificial, bureaucratic and financial barriers the Bl put up.

CILIP ballot result

Overwhelmingly in favour of the flat rate:

• Total number of votes cast: 5022
• Votes in favour of option 1 (flat rate with concessions by 2008): 3880
• Votes in favour of option 2 (income-related system with inflation increase): 1124
• Spoiled papers: 18
• Percentage voting in favour of subscription reforms: 77%

Turnout : 28.6% which is pretty good compared to the percentage who vote in Council elections (when the seats aren't uncontested)

Firefox plugin for Athens

This is rather good: a plugin for Firefox that allows users of British universities authentication system Athens to see resources they're entitled to use from the toolbar.
On the Mozilla Extensions page

There's hope yet... OCLC Top 1000 [OCLC - Research]

OCLC Top 1000 shows the top 1000 books owned by libraries participating in their scheme. Dante at number 4 and Homer at number 5. Not a Catherine Cookson to be seen. Hooray. On the other hand Lord of the Rings comes in at number 10, so perhaps I should temper my joy

Inquiry into public libraries

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee has announced an Inquiry into public libraries to consider:
whether the accessibility of local libraries, in terms of opening hours, location and community-wide appeal, meets the current demands of the public;
what can be done to increase the public’s use of local libraries;
the funding of local libraries and the balance of spending between the various means of providing information (including the traditional investment in books);
new models of provision and new policy demands (such as tackling social exclusion);
the effectiveness of the legislative, strategic and administrative framework within which local libraries operate;
recruitment and training of library staff;
the role of institutional and specialist libraries and their links with local libraries;
the performance of the “People’s Network” in providing universal internet access and its future development; and
other issues that may arise in the course of gathering evidence

Whatever happened to the MLA event at Labour Party Conference?

Reminded by a post on Sheila Webber's Information Literacy weblog of the event MLA organised at the Labour Party conference. Sheila had a slightly more optimistic view of the event's openness than I did.
But then it struck me that no account of the event appears anywhere, at least that I can see. I can understand the security reasons for restricting access to the event, though it did seem a bit odd in the light of the event's title; but I can't see why what happened there needs to be kept quiet. Unless no one turned up?

Hairdressing training launched amongst well coiffured stars

I shouldn't mock, as hairdressing training is very important (as anyone who's ever had a bad haircut will testify) but this did raise a smile. On the other hand, it illustrates quite well the richness of learning resources in the modern world.
Hairdressing training launched amongst well coiffured stars

Scholarly Journal Prices: Selected trends and comparisons

Latest report on journal price inflation Scholarly Journal Prices: Selected trends and comparisons

Wine Librarian's Association

Anyone for a UK chapter of this organisation? Wine Librarians Association (via catalogablog)