Tom Roper's Weblog

World Summit on the Information Society

I went a week ago to Brighton's Jubilee library for a briefing meeting organised by CILIP's Career Development Group on the World Summit on the Information Society addressed by Debby Shorley and Jill Martin, CILIP's President and Director of Knowledge & Information respectively. IFLA made an impact at the Geneva round of WSIS and hopes to influence the second phase of WSIS, which culminates in the Tunis summit in November 2005. The British government has shuffled responsibility for WSIS between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The key points Debby and Jill made were:
• that British librarians should inform themselves about WSIS using the materials on CIIP's site
• and submit success stories to IFLA's database. I stumbled upon another library success site, Library success: a best practices wiki. It might be helpful if some sort of relationship could be established between the two.
Debby and Jill were realistic about the probable results of WSIS. The best we can hope for is that the final statements will mention libraries. But that in itself is an achievement, and on the way there, a number of politicians and dips may have gained a better understanding of the potential of libraries. As Debby pointed out, libraries are everywhere and offer a ready-made way of implementing the fine words of summit resolutions.
Internet governance, which looks as if it will be the major issue at the summit, is currently being debated at the preparatory meeting, or PrepCon, which takes place in Geneva until the end of the month (see InfoWorld's report).
From a health librarian's point of view, it seems to me we had a lot to contribute, not least because one of the priorities for WSIS is  "to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases"; and knowledge is, I'm told, the enemy of disease .
Both Debby and Jill deplored the debasement of the English language that international meetings indulge in. Jill offered a particulary fine example involving ramps on the information highway. I shall scour the WSIS site for it.

Open Access: the Salvador Declaration

T. Scott Plutchak reports on the Salvador Declaration on Open Access: The Developing World Perspective, passed at the closing session of ICML.
Full text here.

Libraries on lebrecht.live

Yesterday evening's lebrecht.live on Radio 3 was on the theme why is elitism a sin?
This is a slightly provisional account, as I was roasting a leg of pork while listening. I'm going to listen again, and post something more considered.
Libraries came up from time to time, with Tower Hamlets attracting some criticism for renaming their libraries Ideas Stores and closing the Whitechapel library (partly from Michael Bogdanov whose father had been librarian there).
But the case for the modern library, giving its readers the best of print and new media resources, was eloquently made by Deborah L Jacobs, City Librarian at Seattle Public Library. She was excellent (though could they not have found a British librarian; sad if the programme makers thought they couldn't, sadder still if they looked and couldn't find one). John Eatwell, Chair of the British Library Board. also spoke, though, as Frank Furedi pointed out, the British Library is atypical. Frank Furedi cited the difficulty of borrowing sheet music, a fair point. When I started in public libraries, the branch where I worked held the borough's vocal score sets, and I would be sent into back rooms in search of Stainer's Crucifixion or Elgar's Dream of Gerontius: how many libraries still have such a collection?

Queen Elizabeth II Stakes Day

Newmarket 200: Miss Providence
Market Rasen 210: Football Crazy
Newmarket 305: Alexandrova
Market Rasen 315: Ladalko
Newmarket 420: Rakti
The most beautiful time of the racing year, autumn combines the climax of the flat season with the stirrings of the jumps. The trees start to look pretty too.

Free DNB

One of the things I will miss dreadfully, if I have to leave is access to the online version of the Dictionary of National Biography, which is disgracefully amusing and addictive, in spite of the inaccuracies that have been pointed out.
But I am pleased to see that. to mark their first birthday, they're offering three days free access.

Remote conference blogging

Having previously held forth about conference blogging and how, in general, it enhances the conference experience, I find myself frustrated not to be in Brazil at ICML.
I have very fond memories of the 2000 ICML in London, where we ran the 3rd International Conference on Animal Health Information (ICAHIS) as a stream within ICML.
But I can console myself by vicarious blogging. So far the only blogs to mention ICML are the redoubtable T. Scott Plutchak's and Oliver Obst's but I have set up a Technorati watchlist and will feed its results into these pages.

JISC Response to RCUK Position Statement on Access to Research Outputs

A postscript to my earlier post on the joint CILIP/SCONUL/CURL statement. JISC have  now published their response.

CILIP, CURL and SCONUL response to RCUK on access to research outputs

I'm a little late in spotting this in the CILIP RSS feed, but its significance is not diminished by the passage of a few days. Library bodies unite in response to Research Councils UK Consultation" They urge RCUK to strengthen their position to ensure that potential loopholes on copyright agreement clauses on deposition in e-print repositories and on embargos on deposit of articles. They propose an amendment on the latter question to say "as soon as possible but no later than three months after publication".

Roy Porter bibliography

I stumbled on this, a bibliography of the late Roy Porter's works.

Mobile Music Workshop 2006

Over my head, I should think, but I was interested to see that the University of Sussex will be the venue for  Mobile Music Workshop 2006.