Tom Roper's Weblog

HoCS&TC Inquiry into Scientific Publications reports...or perhaps not

The press notice says: "The Science and Technology Committee will publish its Tenth Report of Session 2003-04, Scientific Publications: Free for all? (HC 399), at 0001 hours on Tuesday 20 July 2004".

But is it there? No and it's now 7.57, BST. Good job I didn't stay up for it.
However Peter Suber, who must have had an advance copy as he submitted evidence, has put a summary up on Open Access News

Leslie Morton

Have now traced the (print-only) CILIP update obituary.
Leslie Morton
Update June 204 3(6): 44
Michael Carmel and Shane Godbolt, with Robert Moore, Daphne Sutherland, John Symons and Richard Osborn

Tolpuddle

Just back from Tolpuddle. Some photos are up, and a longer account of the event will follow when I have time

Some recent obituaries

I've been saving these up, but I must mention that of Jana Kodicek, who lived near my mother in Cambr idge. My late father would give her old newspapers for her animals.
Times obituary
Cambridge Evening News
Others whose passing should be recorded include Agnes "Sis" Cunninhgam, Robert Quine, guitarist to Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Carl Rakosi and Peter Barnes, but the Times only allows free access to content for seven days, so most of these are no longer accessible. But a quick google will find lots more, especially in the cases of Agnes Cunnigham and Bob Quine.
I must also mention Leslie Morton, doyen of British medical librarianship. Leslie died a while back, on 17th February 2004.
Here's a quick list of tributes I can trace in the LIS journals . I'll try to make this more definitive.

Leslie Morton 1907–2004
Health Information and Libraries Journal June 2004, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 142-144(3) [by Michael Carmel and Shane Godbolt-TR]

Leslie T. Morton, 1907–2004
J Med Libr Assoc. 2004 July; 92 (3): 385–387
Shane Godbolt and T. Mark Hodges

I'm sure there was one in CILIP Update, but can't locate it right now.

UMSLG 2004

These come a little after the event, but my vision of blogging between sessions a la MLA was thwarted by the non-availability of network connections and by the nature of the programme, which, with two session spread over an afternoon and a morning, didn’t offer as much time between. As for York, the campus is pretty, though infested with ducks and geese, and the accommodation spare, though not as primitive as Sussex’s East Slope where I spent three hellish weeks last summer. But no wireless access in the study-bedrooms, or indeed anywhere else as far as I could see.

Brian Kelly at Sussex

I’m rather behind with my blogging, which runs against the spirit of the medium I'm afraid, but since I found it so interesting, I offer here my appreciation of a talk given last week at the University of Sussex by Brian Kelly of the UK Office for Library Networking. His overheads are on the web, so it would be futile to repeat them, and he covered a lot of ground, including use of SMS, the convergence of mobile/handheld technologies but he made me realise the potential of FOAF for more or less the first time, as well as instant messaging. I’ve signed up to several IM services, but as nobody I know uses them, so there never seemed to me to be much much point. Most interesting too, were his suggestions about integrating RSS feeds into electronic leaning environments.

Why can't doctors be more scientific? Hugh Pennington in LRB

Hugh Pennington writes in the last London Review of Books on MMR
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n13/penn01_.html

Petrarch on Radio 3

I was much impressed by Sunday's Radio 3 feature on Petrarch, it being the 700th aniversary of his death. Although it included statements from Clive James, Germaine Greer and assorted Petrarch scholars, the finest point for me was made by Vito Terribile Wiel Marin, professor of pathologic anatomy at Padua, involved in the attempts to reconstruct the poet's face which failed when they discovered that the head buried in Petrarch's tomb was in fact that of a woman (see the Guardian's account). At the end Weil Marin said that he had reconstructed more than 70 bodies and mummies, and carried out over four thousand autoposies, but "it is still a sad thought, of a great man and what remains." It was also notable for t for the interpolation of Monteverdi settings of Petrarch: I'd never realised the author of the words was Petrarch.
It made me resolve to seek out the Canzoniere, and I was lucky enough to find that the University of Sussex library has a parallel text, the Italian and an English translation side-by-side:
Petrarca,Francesco,1304-1374
The canzoniere (rerum vulgarium fragmenta)/ [by] Francesco Petrarca/translated into English verse together with the original texts, introduction and notes by Frederic J. Jones 2v
Market Harborough:Troubador,2000
Petrarch's Italian looks simple, though this may be a trap, but with the aid of the translation and my tourist/culinary/musical and operatic Italian, I may get by. As there are 366, I can to read a poem a day for a year.
So here's the first:
Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono,

del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.

Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me medesmo meco mi vergogno;

et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.

HoCS&TC report imminent

Yesterday's Observer suggests that the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry is about to report.
And so it is: there's a press notice here

Selections for Ascot and John Smith Cup at York

Ascot 200 Michael Page International Silver Trophy: Tillerman
Ascot 230 Totesport Heritage Handicap: Dorothy's Friend
York 350 John Smiths Magnet Cup Handicap: Promotion