Tom Roper's Weblog

TLS on University of London libraries

Apart from the British Library, discussion of library policy is unusual in British literary journals, so I was surprised to see in the latest Times Literary Supplement an article by J.A. North on Senate House library, or University of London Research Library Services to give the federation of the libraries of Senate House and the School of Advanced Study its proper name.
It doesn't appear to be in the online version:
North, JA
Senate House rules: the University of London in search of a new role
Times Literary Supplement June 8 2007 5436: 14-15
I must declare an interest: I applied for a job in the reorganised ULRLS two years ago.

Derby Day

What weather for Derby Day! I cannot read the hyperbole about Authorized without some suspicion. Therefore I have backed Eagle Mountain. which seems to me the best chance of Aidan O'Brien's eight entries. I take one of Dettori's mounts, Bond City, for the earlier Dash Stakes,
Epsom 200: Zaham
Epsom 300: Blythe Knight
Epsom 330: Bond City
420: Eagle Mountain

Irish 2000 Guineas

320 Newmarket: Makshoof
340 Haydock: Regal Parade
345 The Curragh: Duke of Marmalade

Year of...? It's complicated

My recent foray into the world of Facebook prompts me to write a hommage to Lynne Quist's excellent blog on the differences between  American and British English, Separated by a common language. There was a very useful post there on  differences in American and British educational terminology and school year nomenclature, but it didn't answer a question Facebook's terminology raises. My school and university were listed, so I could add myself, once I had realised that I should enter my university as my school and my school as my high school. But I was baffled and defeated by the requirement to describe myself as year of NNNN.  Is this the year I left, or the year I started my so-called education at those  institutions?
Other irritatingly alien features of Facebook include the choices available to describe one's politics, restricted to 'very liberal', 'liberal', 'moderate', 'conservative', 'very conservative', 'apathetic' or 'libertarian'; these categories  might make sense in the USA, but not elsewhere.
Wisely, unlike the UK Census, the Facebook programmer's have left the many varieties of superstition well alone, so  the religious views or lack of them may be described in  free text.   
More positively, I found the relationship status amusingly flexible. Options are: 'single', 'in a relationship', 'in an open relationship', 'engaged, 'married', and 'it's complicated'. I wonder how many people choose the latter. I see I can also choose to describe myself as looking for 'friendship', 'dating', 'a relationship', 'random play' or  'whatever I can get'.
I can't imagine that I will make much use of Facebook or of LinkedIn, which I also recently joined.

Google toolbar

I installed the new version of the Google toolbar in Firefox, in order to use the web history feature. I was fascinated to see that, listed as it should be, first on the list of blog buttons I could add is that of the Abergavenny Petanque Club.  Here is true fame.

D.J.Taylor on Patrick Hamilton in the TLS

The TLS reproduces D.J. Taylor's introduction to the forthcoming reissue of the Gorse trilogy, under the title, "the lost worlds of Patrick Hamilton". His phrase, "the laureate of the saloon bar", sounds derivative to me, and the jibe that Hamilton was a "doctrinaire Marxist" is unnecessary; I have never read a less doctrinaire Marxist writer, but otherwise Taylor is worth reading.
Black Spring's edition is due for publication on 7 June, according to their website, though Amazon announce it for the 21st of the month .

Panorama on wireless

I look forward to widespread panic after tonight's Panorama which will claim, misleadingly, that the use of wifi carries health risks. See here for a counterblast from the Guardian or this Pubmed search.
For myself, I wish wifi networks were stronger.  I am fed up with AirTunes cutting out when I try to play my music  and I have totally failed to get my son's laptop to see the network at all.
Wearing chain mail underpants while using wifi seems to me a small price to pay. Does anyone remember when Panorama used to be a programme of repute?

Survey on the future role of the modern public library

Via Petrona's blog, I see that Love Libraries are running a survey on the future role of the modern public library, though there's no link to it on the Love Libraries website. Indeed LL's whole PR effort seems a little half-hearted: they have issued no press releases between 12 July 2006 and 4 May 2007.

CILIP subscriptions

More than once, Tim Coates's Good Library Blog has claimed that large numbers of public library authorities pay CILIP subscriptions for their staff. He, and one or two commenters on his posts, claim that if this were not the case, libraries would have plenty of money for resources. Further, they imply that the underfunding of public library services  under the current and previous governments is a figment of the imagination, that public libraries are in fact well-resourced, but that the money is wasted on salaries and CILIP subscriptions for overpaid professional librarians.
There is  a good case to be made for employers  supporting their staff's professional memberships.  But Tim's claims are wrong.
I and others have asked Tim for evidence. I have worked in libraries for 29 years, in a variety of sectors of the profession, and have never had my CILIP, or before 2002, my Library Association or Institute of Information Scientists, subscription paid for me. It emerges he knows of "more than two" library authorities who pay CILIP subscriptions, but  he declines to identify them. Over at Michaels's 025.04 blog*  he has set up a poll. So far 231 people have voted, and only 4% have a CILIP subscription paid for them by a public library employer.

* The name, 025.04, is a librarian's joke, it being the Dewey Decimal classification class number for library operations.

Blotter

Seeing it on UKWebFocus, I thought Blotter looked interesting. Here's a graph for this site which will become more useful over time.

And here's one for the running blog