Tom Roper's Weblog

Ascot

No errors in transcription this time, I hope, PG.
230: Almiqdaad
305 Rainbow View
340 Al Muheer
415 Henrythenavigator

One million years BC

Like the annoying schoolboy I used to be, particularly in Latin lessons when I would offer over-elaborate, often incorrect, translations, I put up my hand and said, 'please sir, please sir, I know, pick me', when Lorcan Dempsey asked recently if anyone could remember what OSI was. I could, as I had heard him speak on the subject a long time ago.

This set me thinking about some other meetings of that period. I'm not sure if any documentary evidence exists of one I attended somewhere in central London, possibly UCL, where, in around 1991 or 1992, someone, I think from the British Library, made us gasp in wonder. I think the meeting may have been organised by UKOLUG, now the UKeiG. He demonstrated, perhaps using traceroute, if that existed then, how TCP/IP packets went from one place to another. We were all beside ourselves with excitement when he showed us, on a character-based interface, how some data travelled from our location to North America by way of Iceland.

A lot has changed, though some of us have difficulty keeping up with it. I was recently alarmed to come across a lecturer in a British library school who, according to a handout, is still sending students off to BIDS to perform literature searches. I last used BIDS around the time when we used to ask users not to bring their sedan chairs into the library. BIDS, the Bath Information and Data Service, innovative in its time, still exists at least formally. There is a website at http://www.bids.ac.uk, with an annual report for the academic year 1999-2000, and a what's new section whose most recent item is dated 2002. BIDS started in 1991, but was killed off more or less when it lost the ISI citation databases in 1999.

On public libraries and wrestling

There's some correspondence in Monday's Times:

• a letter from Caroline Moss-Gibbons, Leader of CILIP Council. When did Council stop having a chair and start having leaders?

• one who questions why the public library in Bath ran a wrestling event.
  Not so odd after all; it was in the public library, in the children's section of Cambrridge's old central library, at the rear of the townhall opposite the Corn Exchange, that I first read classical myths and those great wrestling matches, Hercules and Antaeus, for example, or the funeral games in Greek and Latin epic.

CILIP | FE Toolkit

I expected more fanfares, but here it is, the Self-Assessment Toolkit for Learning Resource Services in Further Education Colleges in England

Ayr Gold Cup and Newbury

220 Ayr: Danehill Destiny
235 Newbury: Gallagher
310 Newbury: Rose Street
330 Ayr: Confuchias
345 Newbury: Moorhouse Gold

A couple here. Danehill Destiny and Gallagher, look nailed on. But in the big race, the Ayr Gold Cup, there's a big field and a hard selection to make. I go with Confuchias who will enjoy the heavy going.

More than noise and food: public libraries in the Times

A superficial third leader, and a news report in this morning's Times manage to muddle some serious issues about public libraries, such as the closure of forty branches last year, the fall in money spent on books, and the loss of qualified librarians' posts, with trivial issues like noise and food, and some untruths: 'early libraries were associated with the church', for example. There were few churches in Babylon, or in the first Ptolemy's Alexandria.

By contrast, through Lorcan Dempsey's blog, I find the US Council on Library and Information Resources No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century, which, though discussing a different sector, is a much more serious treatment.

Update: can you spot the deliberate mistake? Maninder Kaur did (see comments)

DCMS review of public libraries

The news from the Bookseller that the Department of Culture Media and Sport plan a new review of public libraries has sent some commentators into a lather.

I'm less excited. It seems unlikely that this government will survive much beyond the announcement of the review, rumoured to be at the Public Library Authorities Conference in October, still less last long enough to bring it to any conclusion.

Neither DCMS's website, nor that of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, have any further information, but they are both noticeably light on real content.
[From theBookseller.com]

Grove on Pink Floyd

There is endless fun to be had browsing Grove Music Online. Prompted by some email discussions of Rick Wright's death with the erudite and witty Guy Robinson, I looked up the entry on the Floyd. It ends with the savagely accurate observation, 'although Gilmour's ringing guitar and their songs' generally slow pace help their style retain its identity, it has long since lost its psychedelic and experimental edge, acting as a voice for a middle-aged, financially successful British audience for whom it evokes exciting memories'.

Torelli, Torelli and Torelli

Research in Grove (now Oxford Music Online) to find out more about the composer of the trumpet concerto that stayed with me for so long finds, as is so often the case, more than one composer of that name. The composer in question is Giuseppe Torelli, 1658-1709, born in Verona, whose early career was spent in Bologna. In 1696 he moved, perhaps spending some time in Berlin, and certainly some in Vienna and Ansbach. He returned to Bologna in 1700, where he lived and worked until his death.

But there are also two earlier Gasparo Torellis, one fl 1593-1613 and another fl 1602, to say nothing of a stage designer, Giacomo, 1608-1678. I wonder which surname has the most entries in Grove? The smart money would be on Bach, but I might be surprised.

Two St Legers

Both the Yorkshire and Irish St Leger's take place this afternoon and I expect Aidan O'Brien to score a double. There's no one to touch Septimus at the Curragh, while at Doncaster Frozen Fire can win against the chief rival, Look Here
135 Doncaster: Westphalia
235 Doncaster: Utmost Respect
310 Doncaster: Frozen Fire
335 The Curragh: Septimus