Tom Roper's Weblog

The informationist again

To add to the references I gave for Scott Plutchak's Bishop-LeFanu lecture, John Hewlett has posted the latest Current Literature column for the edition of the Health Libraries Group Newsletter of 2004 December, vol.21, no.4 to lis-medical, including two articles on the informationist:

Cunningham,D.J., Kronenfeld,M.R. The informationist: a debate. Journal of Hospital Librarianship 2004; 4(1): 1-15.

Burdick,A. Informationist? Internal medicine rounds with a clinical medical librarian. Journal of Hospital Librarianship 2004; 4(1): 17-27.

Also significant as this is John's valedictory column after 23 years of keeping UK health librarians up to date.

The Knowledge Society: open to all?

An announcement goes to the MLANews Jiscmail list about a fringe meeting they're holding at the Labour party conference in Brighton under the title The Knowledge Society: open to all?. They want to "broaden[...] access to the wealth of
knowledge held in museums, libraries and archives across the country".

As I live and work nearby and have both a personal and a professional interest in this subject, I think of going. But it says in the message that the meeting, in the Metropole Hotel, is inside the secure area. I e-mail back to find out what this means. and get a helpful answer from MLA. But it tells me that only delegates can get into the secure zone, that to register as a delegate costs over £100 and security clearance takes over 24 hours. Open to all? Perhaps I should join the Countryside Alliance: they seem to be able to get in.

Selections for Ascot

Today's selections
Ascot 155 Hackney Empire Royal Lodge Stakes: Perfectperformance
Ascot 230 Meon Valley Stud Fillies Mile: Maid's Causeway
Ascot 300 GNER Diadem Stakes: Pivotal Point
Ascot 335 Totejackpot on Saturday Heritage Handicap: Funfair
Ascot 410 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes: Soviet Song

Posting these late, but never mind

Dictionary of National Biography

Tremendously excited by the launch yesterday of the DNB online, which seemed to be freely available yesterday, though the shutters have come down today.
Even a quick whizz through was enough to be able to tell what a fantastic tool this will be.
I had a look at the late Linda Warden's contributions (after her retirement she wrote a number of the veterinary biographies for DNB) and, searching by contributor, found a dozen of hers on people such as Spooner, Saint Bel, etc

WiFi on the train

This is outstanding; got on the train home from Falmer to Seaford, booted up my PowerBook and it found a WiFi signal, quite strong, all the way home. At first I couldn't believe it at first so I started up MacStumbler which confirmed it. The network was called Nomad and it seems they're putting WiFi into trains. I couldn't connect to it, but I'm sure that can be resolved. Now there will be no need for me to get off the train, I can simply stay on it all day and work away as I shuttle between Seaford and Falmer, except when they close down the track. Seems this is old hat, as the press releases on the Nomad site are dated last year, but I've been travelling on trains daily with a WiFi-enabled computer since long before that, and this is the first time I've got a signal

Currently playing in iTunes

MarsEdit, which I've just started to use with the beta of version 2 of NetNewsWire, has many splendid features, but one that I'm using simply because it's there is a script which automtically generates a post to show the world what I'm playing in iTunes, thus Currently playing in iTunes: Psalmus: Nisi Dominus by Monteverdi

ECDL in medical schools

Interesting discussion on the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) and its applicability to undergraduate medical education on the LTSN-01 list

Booker Prize 2004

Perhaps I shouldn’t encourage them, and literary prizes have not very much to do with literature, but the Booker (or Man Booker as they seem to want us to call it) still exerts an odd pull, though I long for the good old days when it was a little exciting, as when John Berger won with G and donated the prize money to the Black Panthers. Of course I haven’t yet read any of this year’s short list. The Times quotes prices from Hills and Ladbrokes this morning as follows, and I found BlueSquare offering prices as well, so I list them in that order, but no prices with Paddy Power, Victor Chandler or The Tote:

Achmat Dangor Bitter fruit 12/1 10/1 8/1
Sarah Hall The electric Michelangelo 10/1 10/1 8/1
Alan Hollinghurst The line of beauty 5/2 3/1 7/2
David Mitchell Cloud atlas 5/4 Evens 11/8
Colm Tóibin The master 4/1 4/1 7/2
Gerald Woodward I’ll go to bed at noon 10/1 10/1 6/1

The difficulty is that form has little to do with who wins the Booker. The team of judges changes from year to year, so one can’t look for patterns in their decisions, and the novelists themselves can hardly be said to run to form; and if that is so, it’s nonsense to try to look for value in any of the prices on offer. With those caveats, I’m inclined to avoid the favourite (for no good reason other than that it's too obvious) and back Alan Hollinghurst or Colm Tóibin

ISBNs

Hard to believe that ISBNs or EANs are becomng exciting, but they are, as this post from Catalogablog demonstrates.

Swiss Cottage Library

Sunday’s Observer carried an article, though it doesn't appear in the online edition, on Swiss Cottage Library, recently refurbished. Observer Magazine, 19 September 2004: pp 40 - 41
Swiss Cottage is one of Sir Basil Spence's buildings, as is Sussex University where I now work (part of the time) and it's very good that Camden have restored it, though a pity that they did not do the same for the swimming pool. I have fond memories of both, though in the time I knew it I think Spence's achievement was rather taken for granted:
a) when first in London in the late seventies, a favourite Sunday morning activity was to go by bus from Temple Fortune to Swiss Cottage for a swim in the pool, followed by a liquid lunch in the Crown, or Crocker's Folly, though we would be thrown out at 3, this being in the dark days before all-day opening
b) the statute of Freud by Oscar Nemon that stood outside the library (apparently moved in 1998), marking both the Freudian connections of the area (I remember childhood visits to some Freuds, friends of my mothers who lived north of Regent's Park) and the fact that the library held psychology under the LASER subject specialisation scheme for public libraries in London and the South East.
c) it was here that I went to consult what seemed to be the only copy in a London public library of the English translation of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (Большая Советская Энциклопедия) (now online in Russian only), sadly lost when Camden destroyed the best public reference libraries in London.
It seems to be the season for library refurbishments, for the London Borough of Barnet's Hendon library, the second library I ever worked in, is about to reopen. It has a place in history as the library where Eileen Colwell did her pioneering work with children.