Tom Roper's Weblog

CILIP 2.0 and subversion

It seems superfluous to write a post about the CILIP 2.0 discussion at an open meeting of CILIP Council on Wednesday. There's such rich material out there already: Phil Bradley's and Brian Kelly's presentations, Caroline Moss-Gibbons' reflections, a live blog by Matthew Mezey of Update, and of course the twitter streams, aggregated here by Dave Pattern. And there's a follow up wiki: http://cilip2unofficial.wikispaces.com/

I twittered throughout: curiously TweetDeck and the CILIP wifi didn't like each other, but I managed very well with Twitterfall. I'm sorry I didn't reply to questions or points made to @tomroper. I was too busy trying to get the sense of the next remark being made in the debate to answer.

Some said there needed to be more research in to how the profession uses and could uses Web 2.0 tools. In fact research results are already finding the way into the literature, but there is not better way to promote further work than by providing the practice on which theory can be developed, which means doing exactly as Phil and Brian were advising us: use social software, try it out, develop what works, discard what doesn't. We can't wait for the grant proposals to be approved and the project officers to be appointed.

The deficiencies of existing tools: our monolithic website, the Byzantine authentication processes for CILIP communities and so on were well-rehearsed. I had spent that very morning trying to update the pages for CoFHE LASEC, which I have to do through a third party.

In the end, the point is not to use these things because they are fun or fashionable. It's because they offer the chance for the membership organisation whose concerns, perhaps more than any other in the the country, are intimately connected to the networked world, to build its organisation, to talk to and listen to members, and to reach new audiences in new ways.

I leave the last word to Edward Dudley, retired lay-about, former head of the library school at North London Polytechnic, once editor of New Library World and still a columnist in Update, who recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday. We spoke briefly at the end. He pointed me in the direction of Brian Vickery's memoirs on the web, of which more in another post, and then we started to talk about the meeting. What did I see in all this, he asked? I made some vague and semi-coherent noises about how I was interested in the aspects of Web 2.0 which seem to offer greater opportunity for democracy. He thought briefly. 'Yes,' he replied, 'and subversion'. I trust we will all be as subversive as we possibly can .

CILIP 2.0

This afternoon CILIP council holds a special open session on how we might exploit Web 2.0 to better serve the members and build the institute. Phil Bradley and Brian Kelly will both be speaking, and then there'll be an open discussion. Both speakers have already posted versions of their presentations: 
Phil's presentation
Brian's presentation
I'm one of the 'official' twitterers and you can follow the debate using the hashtag #CILIP2. A lot of people will be using Twitterfall. I have Tweetdeck installed, so will use that.

Piped music in libraries

Piped music in libraries may encourage young people in, but it risks forcing older readers out

Marcel Berlins adds his voice to the piped music debate in today's Guardian. I'm surprised that Gloucestershire should introduce something so passé; haven't they heard of the iPod? Those who want music while they browse can have their own, without disturbing anyone else or the library staff having to overcome the difficulties of reconciling differing tastes.

I would be annoyed by piped music in a lending area. On the other hand, as a boy I used to visit the gramophone library in Cambridge public library, which played an important part in the development of my musical interests. The music section was divided from the lending section by glass doors and they would play records to browsers. I was often intrigued by what I heard and would ask the staff what it was and if I could borrow it. Thus I discovered Janáček, among others. It seems unlikely that Gloucestershire were planning to play On an Overgrown Path.

Public libraries, Brighton and more

It's hard to keep up these days, with so much happening in the public library world: Gloucestershire libraries attract some criticism for playing music to browsers, Frances Hendrix has found out that the MLA wanted to deny a platform to their critics and were unwise enough to minute it, though they are hardly alone in that: the voice of local campaigners going unheard at the Hampshire conference, and Rachel Cooke returned to the fray with a follow-up to her previous Observer article.She notes Andrew Burnham's decision to intervene in the Wirral but rightly questions what on earth Burnham means by saying he wants libraries to be ‘like Facebook 3D’. A generous reading of this phrase might be that he means that libraries are places where activities analagous to online social networking can happen face-to-face. But Facebook is a poor analogy here, being proprietary, advertising funded, and its ability to connect the user with useful information very mnch connections limited by who your friends are. If libraries are to be thought of as analogous to online social networks, we are probably closer to something much more open and free.
She denounces 'modernisation...[as...] exactly that little trend which has left libraries in places such as Brighton with insufficient shelving (books being so very old hat)'.But the new library in Brighton, the Jubilee library, of which I am a user, is not an example of excessive modernisation. On the contrary, it is not modern enough. Thus:

• there is no wifi, this in the town where you can even sit on the beach and use freee public wifi thanks to the Pier-to-Pier network
• the RFID issue system is antiquated and excruciatingly slow
• the library's web site is short on information and interactvitity and lives at the counter-intiuitive domain of http://www.citylibraries.info/
• there is no library Twitter feed, Facebook group, use of delicious, Flickr or any other attempt to use social networking to bring the library's services to readers' attention or enrich their ecxpereince
• the catalogue, an obscure system called Spydus, is primitive: it lacks any element of personalisation, such as the ability for readers to tag or review items, it cannot make suggestions ('readers who borrowed this, also borrowed that'), and there is no facility to search other library systems’ catalogues, or request items not already held

There are good features, apart from the impressive building: the stock, much criticised, is perhaps not as poor as some make out. Recently I needed copies of Cicero's De Oratore and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, to follow up Quentin Skinner's lecture on Hobbes in which he described the education in rhetoric Hobbes and other Oxford undergraduates of his time would have received. I was delighted to find that Brighton had both, though they fail the Andromaque test. Reservations are free, which is good: forcing readers to pay to reserve material is a tax on the purposive reader.

Of course it needs better book-stock, and longer opening hours, particulary in the mornings, when it does not open until 10 at the earliest, and in the evenings when it only opens til 8 pm one night and 7 pm another. When I started in public libraries our central library was open till 8 pm Monday to Friday and when we younger staff complained about losing our evenings, the old hands would tell us how, when they started, they had to work till 10 at night.

What no one, Rachel included, will admit is this is the entirely logical consequence of the PFI arrangements under which the new library was built. And, for all the qualities of the building, it is PFI too that is responsible for the library being surrounded by dull and drab chain-restaurants and supermarkets. Why not have one of Brighton’s excellent independent bookshops next door? Because they could never afford the exorbitant rents. The PFI 'partners' are deterined to milk the site for profit for as long as they can.

Mary Beard: What's the point of library fines? Or have librarians got nicer?

Mary Beard, in her excellent blog A don's life, turns her attention to library fines.

She concludes by wondering if 'perhaps the real truth here is that librarians have just got nicer.[From What's the point of library fines?]

Handel on the piano

To the gentleman who e-mailed Radio 3 this morning to complain about the presenter playing a recording of some Handel played on a piano as part of Handel week:

Dear Sir,

You understand nothing of the national culture, one of its chief components being Handel played on the piano, badly, by infants' school music mistresses at the beginning and end of assembly. This has nothing to do with authentic or inauthentic performance, but is a precious childhood memory. And Handel's music seems to have survived the treatment rather well.

With best wishes,

Libraries of the Future

I have taken my time writing my account of the JISC Libraries of the Future 09 event, to the extent that the future is now with us And, as JISC themselves provide a good account of who said what, and videos, and if you read Bruce Royan's account, and the Twitter feeds, you have as good a grasp of the event as can be had without attending. I took no notes, as I twittered instead, the results of which can be seen here.

PS John MacColl's account, Libraries of the future, plurality and multi-scalarity, while difficult to pronounce clearly if you have drink taken, is worth a read

I left beautiful Oxford in evening spring sunshine, and tried to work out what it all meant for the less attractive environment I inhabit, a South London further education library. It was a puzzling event: there were some very good contributions, but some that retrod ground that we have passed over and over for the past ten or more years.

• It seemed to me that many times when speakers were trying to define the future, they were talking about the present, describing what is current practice an event, not only in a few advanced libraries but in many institutions
• The library of Alexandria came up from time to time. It's an interesting case, not least because of its ability to attract scholars, so the library had a central place that modern libraries in educational institutions lack; but people should remember that the library was destroyed, not in a single cataclysmic event, but as a result of the antagonism to pagan learning of religious fundamentalists, and through plain neglect.
• Few speakers seemed to have understood the effects that the slump will have, generally and on on library developments. Ritual incantations of the need for 'new models' and 'partnerships' with the private sector sound a little thin in this crisis.
• Ken Chad make a scathing attach on libraries failure to aggregate.
• The one interesting point made by the Google speaker, Santiago de la Mora, was that the idea of Google book search predating Google's attempt to be a universal library; there is probably a good article to be written on the history of the concept of the universal library
• Some speakers seemed to believe that every library shares the rich digital collections of institutions like Harvard or Oxford, Not so, especially for my sector, further education, or for public libraries.
• There were some gross oversimplifications flying around about age and familiarity with and use of social networking
• And for all the boasting about the long tail, it has not yet delivered. See for example the results of the Andromaque test, the search for a copy of Racine's Andromaque in a public library.
  

Grand National Day

Here we are again. And I choose Rambling Minster; my children go for My Will, in my son's case, as he's a Will, and my daughter for Darkness, I think for the goth-cum-emo connotations of the name. There are worse criteria for picking a horse.

To my eye, the race two races before the National, the Aintree Hurdle is as interesting, with a fine field, and I take Catch me who I think stands a very good chance against the favourite Celestial Halo and the strongly fancied Al Eile.

Aintree:
145: Ainama
215: Song of Songs
250: Chase Me
325: According to John
415: Rambling Minster
500: Hot Diamond
535: City Theatre