Tom Roper's Weblog

Google censors Bryn Mawr Classical Review

A disturbing example of the misuse of Google's power, one hopes through incompetence rather than malevolence, is demonstrated by the case of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review's blog.

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review is an online journal of impeccable academic credentials, the second oldest online scholarly journal in the humanities.  Since August 2008 articles have also been posted to a blog, hosted on Blogger, owned by Google.

This note now appears on the main BMCR website:  'Please note that Google has removed all access to our blog after incorrectly flagging it as a spam blog. We had requested a review which did not happen, and on September 28 Google removed all access to the blog, which we are attempting to appeal.'

I hope this will be resolved quickly. It makes one furiously to think, is the world's  knowledge really safe in such capricious hands?

Join every public library authority and win a bottle of champagne

There's been considerable press coverage of a supposedly new initiative, by which people can use public libraries wherever they may be, even if they don't live or work in the area. But what's new? This has always been the case. The very first public library I worked in, over thirty years ago, was Child's Hill in the London Borough of Barnet, which was close to the boundary with Camden and Brent; neither of those authorities had a library nearby. Camden and Brent residents of both used us, with the minimum of formality. And in every other public library I worked in always offered membership to anyone. If you did not live work or study within the authority's boundaries, all we would ask for was a ticket from your home authority, and proof of address. And I have often joined a public library while on holiday in this country, though I must confess I have never tried while abroad.

Some of the press exaggerate the initiative, and hint, incorrectly, that this means there will be one interoperable library ticket for the whole of England and Wales. Still, it's good publicity for public libraries, and may bring the service to wider attention. I'll buy a bottle of champagne for the first person to join every library authority in England and Wales, scan or photograph all their cards and put them up in Flickr. What I'd really like to see is a better way of opening up the rich collections held in our to everyone, without the need for travel. Investment in catalogue and library management system interoperability would be much better than rebranding an existing service.

For some of the coverage see

The Independent

The Guardian

BBC News

Curiously, there's no mention of this on the Society of Chief Librarians website. The latest news is a story from July on the Libraries Change Lives awards

More curiously still, an article on this from Tim Coates' blog the Good Library Guide showed up in my feed reader, but has been taken down from the web version. I don't know if this is for technical reasons, or Tim thought better of it. I can't see anything defamatory in it. In his account of Tony Durcan of SCLs interview on the Today programme, he claims that Durcan was 'evading questions about why the library profession don't campaign to save libraries'. I would never expect the SCL to campaign: they're the servants of their political masters, the councillors who, whichever party wins next year's election, will be trying to cut public library services. The profession, and indeed everyone who works in public libraries will be in the forefront of campaigns to keep public libraries open and free.

Ascot: Queen Elizabeth II Stakes

Any of three of the four runners in Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, run over a mile this afternoon, could win. The only one not quite good enough, on my reading, is Zacinto. Of the others, Rip Van Winkle is the most impressive, and gets my vote.

230: Frozen Power
305: Mudaaraah
340: Dalcarce Nove
415: Rip Van Winkle  

CILIP AGM: how to use your proxy

Best of all, come to the meeting, and do go back and read why you should. But if you really can't, I now have advice from Daniel Sabel, Governance Manager at CILIP on how to nominate the chair of the meeting to cast your proxy. On the form, (downloads as a Word file) fill in 'the Chair of the meeting c/o 7 Ridgmount St' as your proxy.

Austin Gresham, 1925-2009

The time delays in obituaries are odd. Austin Gresham, the histopathologist, died in July, but has so far only had an obituary in the Telegraph and the Times. I hope Guardian and Independent ones will come soon. I knew of him, and was surprised to find that he was younger than my father, by 13 years. With my childish sense of time, I thought the whole medical establishment of Cambridge were exactly the same age, born just before the first war. His name, and that of his wife, Gweneth Leigh, who was in charge of child health in Cambridge, would often crop up at meal times. My father, a GP, was never one to leave work behind when at the dinner table. As well as kittens, a regular table decoration in our house, he took some pleasure in reading medical journals and textbooks at table. I recall in particular a lavishly illustrated dermatology text, showing syphilitic lesions, which he pored over as we tucked into the help's steak and kidney pie Professor Gresham and my father both moved in that curious Cambridge medical no-man's land, not quite fully part of the university, nor fully within the NHS. I remember lying in bed hearing parties downstairs: the smells of gin and sherry, tobacco smoke (in those days doctors smoked like anything, whatever advice they might give their patients), women's scent, when she came to kiss me goodnight, my mother would be wearing lipstick, which she only ever put on for parties and parent's evenings at school.Later, when I worked in what would now be called a gap year as a hospital porter at Addenbrooke's, one of Professor Gresham's sons was also a porter.Both obituaries mention something he deplored, that his Colour Atlas of Forensic Pathology had been an inspiration for Damien Hirst.

The problem with proxies

There's been some discussion prompted by blog posts by Lord Llama and Katherine Widdows about CILIP's proposed subscription increases, and the debate has gathered a certain momentum on Twitter too. The proposals go to the AGM next month

For what it's worth, I don't think the proposals are outrageous and will support them at the AGM, unless I hear convincing arguments to the contrary. A number of participants in the online debate who live and work in the provinces feel disenfranchised and, unable to attend on 15 October, are voting by proxy. An interesting point has arisen here: there seems to be no provision in our rules for members to instruct the Chair of the meeting to act as their proxy, which would be normal in most organisations. I have asked Daniel Sabel of CILIP's governance unit to clarify this and he has promised to get back to me.

But I'm worried by the widespread use of proxies, because they'll be cast by people who have made up their minds without hearing the debate. For all that the AGM is attended by those who have reached that level in the profession where no one notices or cares if they aren't at work, there is something to be said for the opportunity to listen to the arguments, make one's own interventions: positions evolve, amendments come from the floor, the debate changes things.

I recognise the practical difficulties; though CILIP ought to function as  an Athenian democracy (with votes for the women and slaves too), it would be impossible to herd every one of our free adult members  into a hall for an ἐκκλεσία and have them thrash out every issue there is. What else could we do? Would a system of delegates work, sometimes mandated by branch or group members, sometimes free to hear debate and form an opinion, but accountable to those who elect them?

Ayr Gold Cup day

...and the Mill Reef at Newbury.
2.20 Newbury: Awzaan
2.35 Ayr: Beyond Desire
2.50 Newbury: Antinori
3.10 Ayr: Mac Gille Eoin
325 Newbury: Strike the Deal

On the buses

I am indebted to Karen Blakeman who discovered that Brighton and Hove bus information may now be had through an iPhone app. My iPhone having settled down after the excitement of the upgrade to 3.1, I downloaded the app. My first impressions: it's very good. It works on data from the GPS gadgets on each bus, information that feed the displays at bus stops and a web page that has existed for several years. The routes and stops lend themselves well to the iPhone's touch-scrolling lists. Above all, it's free. I don't use buses so frequently now, as Brighton and Hove offer no Seaford to Wandsworth service, but at weekends it will be invaluable. I used buses regularly when I worked at BSMS, but then the bus data was only available on the web. There was a considerable delay between checking the bus times on my desktop machine, and arriving at the bus-stop, involving shutting down the computer, packing my bag, shutting the office and walking to the stop, in which time the situation could easily change.

A nostalgic aside: Karen discovered this in the Local Government Chronicle. Long ago it was my job to scan the LGC, and its rival the Municipal Journal, for references to Barnet council, for whom I then worked in the Hendon reference library. How I enjoyed browsing countless pictures of identical men in identical suits, recently appointed Head of Sanitary Services for Loamshire County Council or Director of Photocopiers at Slagtown District.

40 years of JOLIS

Forty years ago, when I was a 14 year-old school boy, reading the Communist Manifesto for the first time and writing dire love poems to girls who I hope have destroyed them, Edward Dudley and others convinced the Library Associate of the need to support a research journal for the library profession. The anniversary issue arrived the other day. I intend no slight to the other articles in an excellent issue, but I want to concentrate on three pieces from it.

First of all, Edward's own editorial, a historical perspective on the development of the journal, and some ideas on the development of electronic methods of communication in the profession. He traces the frequent changes in ownership of the journal, from the LA to Bowker-Saur, to CSA, to its present publishers, SAGE. JOLIS's sister title. Journal of Information Science, followed a similar route, though starting route with Elsevier. It is well worth reading, not least for some characteristically wry Dudelyisms, such as his observation on the ratio between vocal and silent participants in discussions both electronic and at professional meetings. He concludes by suggesting that we could apply to information Marx's analysis of the exchange value of commodities as the amount of socially necessary labour-time required for their production, and suggesting that our professional communication is at one of those points in historical development where quantitative change becomes qualitative change

Jonathan Furner of UCLA presents the first part of what JOLIS's editor, Anne Goulding, describes as a forensic bibliometric analysis of the corpus of forty years of publication. He covers his subject exhaustively, drawing out,, for example, the top ten authors through the journal's history and the top ten institutional affiliations, the latter no mean task considering the many institutional changes education in librarianship has gone through in the period. To take the library school which Edward Dudley ran, and which I attended, it has been recorded by Web of Science as POLYTECH N LONDON, UNIV N LONDON, LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIV, NORTHWESTERN POLYTECH, NORTHWESTERN POLYTECH SCH LIBRARIANSHIP and POLYTECH U LONDON.

Finally, Bob Usherwood revisits that influential text, Richard Hoggart's the Uses of Literacy, and defends Hoggart against some of the crasser misreadings of his work by members of the profession, as 'elitist' or 'pro-censorship'.  The only weakness in Hoggart's argument was his unscientific analysis of class.

I must declare an interest: I am an editorial board member, but I think every member of the profession would gain from reading these articles. There's free access online for CILIP members, or find a library that stocks it, or subscribe yourself or persuade your institution to subscribe.

Editorial: Lines of Communication
Edward Dudley
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 2009; 41; 131
DOI: 10.1177/0961000609337093

Forty years of the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science: A quantitative analysis, Part I
Jonathan Furner
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Vol. 41, No. 3, 149-172 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0961000609337095

Librarians, librarianship and The Uses of Literacy
A review article
Bob Usherwood
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Vol. 41, No. 3, 191-197 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0961000609337834

My iPhone 3.1 hell

I upgraded my iPhone to the latest version of the software on Friday, since when:

• it freezes and crashes constantly
• apps open and then close again immediate
• the battery life has deteriorated, for example I charged it fully overnight, and used it lightly today, lightly as I couldn't get it to play any music on my train journey in, yet by 2 pm the battery had expired
• the touch-screen often refuses to take any input at all

I've tried various tricks: removing the lock, turning off wifi, countless hard resets. If you haven't yet upgraded, dear reader, hold off, for heaven's sake.