There's a London showing of the Hollywood Librarian, organised by Cilip in London and SLA Europe: http://www.cilip.org.uk/branches/byregion/london/events/Hollywood_Librarian.htm
These metropolitan sophisticates have to be coaxed to the showing by the offer of a champagne draw. We needed no such inducements for the Sussex première in February.
Today's Times Higher Education carries a report of a telephone survey of twenty university libraries' enquiry services. Repeating a survey carried out by the Polytechnic of North London in 1987, journalists rang up and asked four questions. Alarmingly, only two of the twenty could give the correct boiling point of ethanol, 78.32°C, the others using Wikipedia which at the time of the survey gave a wrong figure. But even worse, several libraries, six in the case of the ethanol question, refused to answer the enquiry at all.
I'm afraid I can't summon up much sympathy for Antonia Fraser and others who are complaining about undergraduates being let into the British Library reading rooms. I use the BL from time to time, but have never failed to find a seat. And some of the criticisms about frappuccinos in the reading rooms are incorrect: coffee is emphatically not allowed in the reading rooms, though anyone can use the cafés. Odd though, that the BL website makes no reference to the debate. I fear they don't understand the 21st century world
I think there is a fundamental principle here: should publicly-funded libraries exclude any citizens? It might help if applicants for readers passes were interviewed and referred elsewhere if the materials they needed to consult were easily available in public or university libraries.
There's a supplement to Guardian education today, called Libraries unleashed. It's biased towards higher education, and features some of the usual suspects, but has some interesting articles. The supplement is part of JISC's Libraries of the future programme but, though JISC is usually careful to include the further education sector as well as the higher, this time they seem to have forgotten us.
I'm indebted to Chris Keene for this, which he found in the slough of despond that is the JISC website.
"Dire need to embrace web 2.0 and to get OPACs out of the 90s". I should say so...
' Whilst the richness and variety of information resources and digital collections that are made available on the Web have contributed enormously to the higher and further education community, for the average user, accessing information that spans multiple sources is increasingly a messy process involving a plethora of different systems, catalogues and interfaces. For those increasingly used to the ease-of-use of search tools such as Google and Yahoo this new and highly fluid environment can be a considerable barrier to accessing information from digital libraries and online collections.
This JISC TechWatch report argues that rectifying this problem requires above all the acceptance of the importance of metadata and the need for standardization and integration within the library community.'
Looking for RFID suppliers to ask to come and weave their magic for me, I e-mailed one, SB Electronic Systems, using the list for CILIP's 2007 RFID in Libraries conference.
But the link given there took me to http://www.sbelectronics.com/ who politely pointed 0ut that they have been making capacitors since the war, but have never made, nor do they intend to make, RFID equipment. The link should be to http://www.telepen-barcode.co.uk/, who use the brand name SB Electronic Systems. I have pointed this out to CILIP, who say they will amend the page.
I forgot to mention that I now have a handbook from the agency employing me which enjoins me to keep facial jewellery to a minimum. I certainly shall, unlike those at the Modified Librarian, sadly not updated since 1999.
Librarything Local is wonderful, though there seems to be a bug with the' favorite this venue' link. I've added Seaford, Lewes and the University of Sussex libraries. No Lewes bookshops are listed, yet.
In the case of libraries, it would be good if there was the possiblity to link to online catalogues, or clumps of catalogues
The National Review of NHS Health Library Services in England has published its report: http://www.library.nhs.uk/aboutnlh/review with no fewer than fifty, count them, fifty recommendations.
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