Tom Roper's Weblog

THES on European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH)

Today's THES reports that the Arts and Humanities Research Council is proposing a Europe-wide citation index. The database is being put together by the European Science Foundation, though there's nothing about it on the AHRC website, apart from a contact name.

Technorati Tags: citations, rae

Once more on public libraries and books

How's this? I was holding forth about public libraries and books: here's an example of how good public libraries can be. On Saturday I went into my public library branch, Seaford library. I wanted to reserve a new title, Julia Kristeva's, Murder in Byzantium. I'm not generally a fan of detective novels, but if written by post-structuralist philosophers and psychoanalysts, then I make an exception. (By the way, Professor Kristeva has a blog at http://kristeva.blogs.com/).
It was not on the catalogue, but a helpful member of staff looked it up and said they would contact t the stock section to ask if it could be ordered. On Monday I had a phone call from the same member of staff: yes, they were ordering it, and I would be first on the list. No need to fill in a reservation card, asking readers to catalogue the book they want, as someone once described it, and they'll let me know when it comes in.
Only one thing could improve this excellent level of service, and that would be to offer it through the library web site, so that readers can request items not already in stock remotely.

Technorati Tags: publiclibraries

HigherEd BlogCon

HigherEd BlogCon has already started but next week (10 April onwards) is deveoted to Library & Information Resources.
It will include Paul Miller on Upon the Shoulders of Giants – Building Library 2.0 Together, From the Platform Up.

Del.icio.us import from browser bookmarks

The news that del.icio.us now allows users to import bookmarks from other browsers is excellent stuff. The import tool evens applies tags and leaves imported bookmarks as unshared, for editing before they appear in public. One enhancement: if it could also validate the bookmarks that would be even better. I've discovered a lot of dead links among mine.

Chemistry at Sussex: HOSTC session

The uncorrected transcript of evidence of Monday session of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is now available

Fontwell: Southern National

Not only is racing in that strange period of duality in which the jumps season moves towards its end with the Grand National and the flat season begins, but most meetings have been cancelled today and tomorrow, because of the weather.
So I am left with Fontwell, perhaps I should be there.
255: Precious Bane
400: Lewis Island
430: Ballez
505: Papillon de Iena

CILIP National Councillor election results

The results are up. A high turnout, 26% and the candidate with the most votes, Tony McSeán, has forthright views on CILIP's recent difficulties.

Swicki

I've just added a swicki to this blog; the best definition of a swicki I can find is on the OSS4lib site. Mine is a little crude, but may develop. I was torn between Eurekster and ZoomClouds, but went for the former in the end: Zoom Clouds does the tag cloud, but not search, as far as I could tell.
Post scriptum: I've taken it of for the time being. The Eurekster version seems to require to be populated manually, rather than build it organically from the blog, tags and searches. Also it slowed the pages down no end.

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.

Thirteen digit ISBNs

Yesterday I bought my first book with a thirteen digit ISBN:
Williams, Hugo
Dear Room
London: Faber, 2006
978-0-571-23037-2
A defining moment, indeed