Tom Roper's Weblog

Beachy Head Marathon

Normally running posts are kept strictly segregated but in this case...yesterday I finished the Beachy Head Marathon in an unofficial time of 4 hours 51 minutes and 54 seconds. More here

CILIP Member's day part II

There was no wireless at SOAS so my wish for live Members Day blogging did not come true.
The high point was Debby Shorley's Presidential address; some important ideas delivered with wit and a light touch. She looked at the organisation from the point of view of a tourist browsing the Rough Guide to Cilipia.  Her slides are in the Presidential area of the CILIP website.
Fellowships and Honorary Fellowships were awarded, and it was good to see health librarians well represented, at least in the former category.
The AGM, apart from some gripes about subscriptions, was mostly uneventful. But CILIP now has legal advice on how members should handle approaches from the police and intelligence services for access to library users records; and on a similar theme we and others have written to Charles Clarke, Home Secretary, expressing concern about the implications of the Terrorism Bill for libraries. The text won't be made public until Charles Clarke has replied, but there's a press release on the CILIP web site.
Pat Beech gave an outline of progress in the review of CILIP Special Interests Group.
I missed Chris Smith: he was delayed so didn't speak till 7

CILIP Members' Day

I'm at CILIP Members' Day. I'm not sure whether the technical infrastructure at SOAS will support live blogging. We shall see.

The year of not attending conferences

I missed some important conferences this year: MLA, ICML, but chief among them must be Internet Librarian which is just ending (the UK event always seems a pale shadow of this one). Fortunately there are a number of delegates blogging it, which allows for me to participate albeit vicariously and passively.

Lord Sainsbury on open access

Thanks heavens for Peter Suber's Open Access blog for through it, and the magic of a Technorati search, I find that Lord Sainsbury, in his appearance last week in front of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, touched on open access, though he ranged widely, over nuclear power, industrial R&D and strategic science provision; the press only picked up his comments on avian influenza.
He said that RCUK's position needed some "development", he thought it put the onus on researchers to negotiate with publishers; but he said that discussions between RCUK and publishers are taking place. Asked about institutional repositories, he repeated the government's laissez-faire line. He claimed, on what evidence I'm not sure, that there was a falling-off in enthusiasm for open -access, and in answer to a question about learned societies seemed to support publisher embargoes. Read all about it in the uncorrected transcript at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/uc490-i/uc49002.htm

Peninsula Medical School

Yesterday I went to Exeter to visit the Peninsula Medical School. There are some photos on Flickr.

Eastbourne

As I was in Eastbourne yesterday, I captured though the magic of digital photography some pictures of the area where next year's HLG conference will take place, including some of the conference hotel.
My daughter and I enjoyed a splendid ice-cream in Favoloso's (vanilla chocolate chip for her, mango for me). I look forward to soothing my vocal chords with one next summer.

LibraryThing, AudioScrobbler usw

My sidebars are out of control. At the last count I had the following:
Reading: a CiteULike link (papers I'm reading or have read)
LibraryThing which provides a random feed from my collection (cataloguing just started, so only 122 so far)
On my Bookshelf, a TypeList of things I'm reading right now, mostly library books
Music: Audioscrobbler, which links to my Audioscrobbler profile (shows what I've been playing in iTunes and the iPod)
Photos: at the moment I have two links to my Flickr photos, one to the whole library and one that shows the most recent ones. This needs trimming. I also have TypePad photo albums and some .Mac ones as well, but Flickr is where current material goes.
Then there's the archive links, the RSS feed etc etc. So I've just done a quick rationalisation. I hope it makes things clearer.

RSS in Update

There's an idiot's guide to RSS in the latest Update, though oddly not in the online version.
All very good, as far as it goes, but concentrates on how to read feeds, not on what library and information services could do with them. Apropos, I hear a worrying story form a London public authority for whom I worked a long time ago. Staff started a blog to keep readers up to date with library developments, but some myopic petty functionary in the town halls communications department stopped it, on the grounds that all communication between the council and residents had to go through them. So I suppose the overdue notices will have to go through them as well.

Racing Post Trophy day

330 Doncaster: Septimus
345 Newbury: Day Flight
405 Doncaster: Marcus Andronicus
420 Newbury: Short Dance
440 Doncaster: Malapropism