Tom Roper's Weblog

Location Register of 20th-century English literary manuscripts and letters

Location Register of 20th-century English literary manuscripts and letters. This looks good. I searched for Patrick Hamilton and found collections at Cambridge (letters to Christopher Hassall), the Society of Authors, the BBC Written Archives Centre and the Bodleian (letter to to J. L. L. Hammond). Nothing for Bruce though. The main archive is in Texas.

CILIP Annual Election 2005

Further to an earlier post, the election candidates' manifestos (though not photos, which might look better on the screen than in print) are now on the CILIP website. Thanks to Alan Cooper of the CILIP web team for alerting me to this.
Bruce Madge is my favoured presidential candidate.

Michael Kennedy on medical history

A lunchtime lecture today given by Dr Michael Kennedy of the University of Southern California, author of A brief history of disease medicine and science: from the Ice Age to the Genome Project Asklepiad Press 2004 0974946648. He's in Britain to speak on medicine and the American Civil War, and on Harvey Cushing, Osler's biographer. He described how at USC they had brought medical history into the undergraduate medical curriculum, pioneered the use of actors in teaching clinical skills, (California. like Brighton, has a plentiful supply of resting actors and actresses) and the use of creative writing in medical schools.
Brief notes: Hippocrates: (he showed a page from an 1822 trilingual edition open at the aphorism ars longa, vita brevis (I can't work out how to put the Greek Ho bios...in here, if I can I will) US army doctors in 1918-19 flu pandemic applied Hippocrates knowledge on draining empyema Osler: innovative bedside teaching Cushing: Osler's biographer, went to war with the Harvard Ambulance and flouted the army regulations which forbade keeping a diary and owning a camera, publishing the diary after the war Roentgen: he had a description of Roentgen's work the year before the discovery of X-rays. Billroth: pictures of the Operating Room at Bellevue in 1885 and 1890, showing the changes in Billroth had brought about, not without resistance. Banting: Leonard Thompson, first diabetic patient to be treated with insulin the daughter of Charles Evans Hughes (who was the unsuccessful 1912 republican presidential candidate against Woodrow Wilson) and diabetes Interesting discussion as well what did Hippocrates get wrong, to which the answer was anatomy. Though Dr Kennedy was uncertain about Greek burial practices, something which I'm sure I can find out. Controversial point: he thought Roy Porter better on early medical history, than later. Not sure I agree. At the end the discussion touched on an area that used to trouble me in my veterinary days, the relationship between the gentlemen and the players, in other word the academic historians and the enthusiastic, often retired, amateur practitioners who develop an interest in medical or veterinary history.

Our Hidden Lives: Publishing Everyday Diaries

I attended Wednesday's event organised by the University of Sussex's Centre for Life History Research, Our Hidden Lives: Publishing Everyday Diaries.
Bob Malcolmson, Professor of History at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario spoke on his work on the diaries in the Mass Observation diaries, in particular that which led to the publication of his  book co-edited with Peter Searby, Wartime Norfolk: the diary of Rachel Dhonau 1941-42 Norfolk Record Society 2004 and his forthcoming Malcolmson, Robert W. (ed): Love and War in London: a Woman's Diary 1939-1942, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004. He was utterly fascinating, describing the motivation of the diarists whose work he had read. He had a lot to say about the nature of diary writing, its immediacy, its transience and the way it can capture moods, which struck a chord with my perceptions of blogging. He was also interesting on the way that  diarists sometimes capture things not noticed or recorded anywhere else. He also described some of the problems involved in editing diaries for publication, the issues of selection, confidentiality
Simon Garfield: hugely entertaining, began with reading from his work on British professional wrestling, once a staple of Saturday afternoon commercial television, but apparently killed off by one Greg Dyke when head of ITV sport, who felt that the audience it attracted were insufficiently tempting to the advertisers. His new work, Our Hidden Lives: The Everyday Diaries of a Forgotten Britain  covers the post-war period. Simon wrote a piece on blogging in the Observer, which I commented on, long before I knew I was to appear on the same platform as him. I hope I was not too rude; looking back I think I may have been.
Who do diarists write for? One diarist in the audience said that she would be describing today's meeting in her diary, which was for her eyes only until after her death; this account on he other hand is published to the world 
My presentation seemed well-received. L'esprit de l'escalier struck though. I thought afterwards of several things that I had meant to say but forgot. I think the most important was some discussion of the things that are perhaps slightly peripheral to blogging, the way that blogs expand to include other sorts of media, for example photographs, and things like FOAF and other social networking tools.
I said something about the need to preserve and archive blogs for historians in years ahead. Some questioned the amount of time it takes to blog; no longer than keeping a paper diary I thought, and yes it does take time. I wonder what the psychological profile of the typical blogger or diarist is? Are we more neurotic and self-obsessed than the general population?

St Cecilia's Day

The soft complaining flute,
In dying notes, discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.

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)

Sussex National

Selections for Sussex National day
Cork 150: Whatareyouhaving
Plumpton 230: French Executive
Navan 240: Liscannor Lad
Aintree 245: Silver Birch

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.

A letter to my MP

Here's a letter I've written to my MP, Norman Baker, on the government response to Scientific Publications: Free for All?. I'll post when he answers.

Download NormanBakerMP.pdf

CILIP election manifestos

My voting papers have arrived for the annual election of  CILIP's President-elect and national councillors. I and all other right-thinking people will be voting early and often for Bruce Madge as president-elect
Most of the candidates have provided photographs, but these have been miserably reproduced. If I were one of the candidates I would be livid. No chance of seeing them on the web either, as http://www.cilip.org.uk/election doesn't work.
I suppose it matters little what they look like, but if they go to the trouble to submit a photograph, it seems rather unprofessional to reproduce it in such a slovenly way.