Tom Roper's Weblog

Cheltenham

 

I confess: I organised the cancellation of today's Doncaster meeting, ostensibly because of frost, in order that race-goers could swell the numbers of those taking part in the Save Doncaster libraries read-ins. The rest of the country can do so next Saturday.

In the meantime, Cheltenham survived two inspections. My selections are:

1255: Local Hero
130: Shakalakaboomboom 
200: Little Josh
230: Punchestowns
305: Backspin
335: Grands Crus

The fifth day of library day in the life: in which I discuss beauty

I finished a few small jobs today, such as collating some of the information I'm required to send to the centre for the people who will take over our jobs in April. I finished doing my monthly scan of some information resources to see if there's anything of interest to people interested in eye health. I discovered that one charity had, on the tenth of the month, declared that January will be National Disease-Name-Redacted Month. Since I only found this out today, there was little I could do to help them.

I found myself thinking about the buildings in which I've worked, and their environs. Bridget Cherry, who brought Pevsner¹ up to date, tells me that my current workplace was built in 1897-9; the King George V extension was added in 1933-5 and boasts a small sculpture by Eric Gill showing Christ healing the blind, once above the main entrance; the entrance has been moved so the scupture is now less obvious. Cherry also mentions some nursery rhyme tile pictures made for the Eye Hospital in High Holborn, which were moved to Moorfields when High Holborn closed in 1988, but I cannot trace where they are. My colleagues in the Joint Library will be able to tell me, I'm sure.

These things matter. I started my library career in the suburbs, in places which had no meaning except that one had to travel through them in order to leave London. I have been happiest working in beautiful locations. At the British Council from my office high in the Spring Gardens block, I looked over St James's Park and saw the IRA mortar attack on 10 Downing Street; at the RCVS I walked through the royal parks on the way to work and could wander over the river to the Museum of Garden History or Lambeth Palace or stay on the north bank of the Thames and visit the Tate of a lunchtime. Sussex University too, in a natural bowl in the downs, and with its stunning  Basil Spence buildings, was beautiful.

So my final lesson for the young would-be librarian is simply this, work somewhere beautiful.

¹Cherry, Bridget and Pevsner, Nikolaus
The Buildings of England: London 4: North
London: Yale UP, 2002;

The fourth day of library day in the life

Some days at work form a harmonious whole. One leaves at the end of the day aware of concentrated and satisfying effort. There are others, and today was one of those.

I had a team meeting with my delightful manager. I have been managed by various people over the years. Being managed by other librarians is fine; we speak the same language. I've been managed by some people who have been quite outstanding, and others who, ahem, have perhaps been less inspiring. That's the luck of the draw. Sometimes I have been managed by doctors, and that's wonderful. They can be capricious, demanding, and quite maddening at times (my present one is none of these, just intellectually stimulating and clever and fun) but even when they ask you to produce something at five minutes notice which in fact requires five hours work,  there is always a sense of intellectual excitement, of worthwhileness. The worst times have been when I have been managed by managers, that is to say people who have bargained away whatever professional roots they once had in exchange for money and a meaningless job title. That's rarely been good.

The rest of the day I prepared some information I need to send back to the centre for the transfer to the private company who will take over the evidence hubs at the end of March, lists of patient organisations we use, and professional bodies we have links with. I wrote up some notes from the management meeting and thought about a session I'm going to run with a group of registrars on information management. After the first session, I may offer them a critical appraisal session. I played with lists of members of our External Reference Group, bringing them up to date and putting them into Access.

Today's lesson for the young would-be librarian: choose your manager with care. You can't have mine!

 

Meetings, bloody meetings

I took a day's leave today to attend the first ever face-to-face meeting of the Voices for the Library team.
VftL, as it is known to its intimates, is a group who came together to make the case for public libraries, as we face cuts which, at the lowest estimate, could result in the closure of around 400 libraries.
I won't bore you with the details of our discussions, only to say that it was a great pleasure to meet in person so many people I have only known digitally.
One way to measure the progress we've made would be to contrast yesterday's Westminster Hall debate, called by Lisa Nandy, with the lacklustre one last year.
This, I firmly believe, is not off-topic. If library workers don't get active and involved, we'll only have ourselves to blame when our services and jobs disappear.
Today's lesson for the young would-be librarian: it is necessary, as the existentialists taught us, to be engaged, engagé.

In which I learn about moles: Library Day in the Life 2

Today I went to work. It's a strange time there; I work for one of the NHS Evidence Specialist Collections, and on 1st  April the collections transfer to new private-sector providers, whose identity was revealed yesterday. A lot will change and fit's unclear how many of us will have jobs.

Nevertheless, we bash on, and today I spent most of my time preparing our next Annual Evidence Update, on retinal vein occlusion, something of a hot topic in ophthalmological circles at the moment. This is interesting work; while it inlvovbes me in sifting large numbers of references (my intital search found some 1,100 items), it's a real insight into the varying qulaity of evidence in tghe medical literature. I fin dvery few systematic reviews, a few randomised controlled trials, but heaps upaon heaps of case reports.

My favourite find of the day was an insight into the retina of the Iberian mole, Talpa occidentalis; it won't go in the update, but it intrigued me nevertheless:

Carmona FD, Glösmann M, Ou J, Jiménez R, Collinson JM
Retinal development and function in a 'blind' mole.
Proc Biol Sci. 2010 May 22;277(1687):1513-22. Epub 2009 Dec 9.

If you enjoy the byways of the biomedical literature, I heartily recommend NCBI ROFL. Beware: the humour is sometimes a little undergraduate, but it's all taken from the NCBI databases.

In other news, a sandwich exploded and covered my keyboard with bits of rocket (arugula for North American readers) and I went for a lunchtime run.

Lesson for the young would-be librarian: bash on!

 

 

in which I go nowhere near a library. Library day in the life round 6: first day

I'm Tom Roper, I'm the Information Specialist/Librarian for NHS Evidence - Eyes and Vision. Today is the first day of the sixth running of Library Day in the Life, a project in which librarians of all types describe their working days for a week, for the greater edification of each other, for people contemplating a career in information work, and to contribute to the gaiety of nations.

However, I was not at work today, but had to go to hospital for a gastroscopy. Is it an advantage to be a medical librarian in these circumstances? Perhaps not; as Jerome K. Jerome noted in Three Men in a Boat,

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight...

Most of the doctors and nurses nowadays are well-equipped to talk to an informed patient. I only came across one example today of one who was not who, when I asked what an abbreviation she had used meant, ignored my question.

For each of my posts this week, I shall finish with a moral or lesson for the young would-be librarian. Today's is, as you become an old librarian, you will spend more time in hospitals.

Ascot

Haydock is frozen, so Ascot it must be for today.

150: L´Accordioniste
225: Master Minded
255: Soldatino
325: Piraya

 

The King George

Here we are, halfway through January, and we must take ourselves back in hearts and minds to Boxing Day, for the King George. It's nearly time for the off, so I can only record my selections, without the argument.

225 Kempton: Binocular
300 Kempton: Long Run
320 Warwick: Richard's Sundance
335 Kempton: Palomar

Music in public libraries

We enter the new year in a storm of activity against public library cuts. Groups all over the country are preparing for the 5th February read-ins, and the media are running story after story, too many for me to keep up with, so see the excellent Publlc Libraries News, maintained by Ian Anstice.

There's an aspect that is less frequently commented on, and that is cuts in music libraries. Too many authorities have, over the years, diluted or closed music services, and though some, such as the excellent Barbican library, have weathered the storms of Thatcher-Major-Blair-Brown cuts, I fear for them under the coalition.

I read in the Observer of Paul Lewis, and how he had his musical education at Liverpool public libraries, borrowing three albums of piano music at a time, taping them illegally, and how this made him the virtuoso he now is. I too owe my musical education to a public library, Cambridge, and the fact that I am no virtuoso is certainly not their fault.

What are the chances in 2011 of an eight-year old discovering and being inspired by the Viennese piano repertoire through a public library? Slight, and becoming slighter.

The Welsh National

Postponed from the week after Christmas, the highlight today is a very open Welsh National. I don't fancy Synchronised, the favourite, nor the much-hyped Maktu, and have gone instead for Paul Nicholl's entry, Watamu Bay.

Chepstow 110: Sam Winner
Chepstow 145: Watamu Bay
Chepstow 220: Fine Parchment
Kempton 240: Minella Class
Kempton 315: Fiendish Flame
Wincanton 330: I'm a Legend