Tom Roper's Weblog

2,000 Guineas

Like most of the world, I can't see anyone to challenge Frankel for the 2,000 Guineas this afternoon.

200 Newmarket: Green Destiny
230 Newmarket: Dandino
310 Newmarket: Frankel
345 Newmarket: Borderlescott

Haydock and Sandown

I've been very lax recently and failed to blog selections for a number of races. I resolve to do better in future. Dry conditions everywhere are not good for the going or for the garden, and turn the job of picking winners into an impossible puzzle. Nevertheless, here goes:

Sandown 235: French Opera 
Sandown 310: Aimigayle
Haydock 330: Categorical
Sandown 345: Dick Turpin
Sandown 420: Viscount Nelson

Tinker, tailor, soldier, Riding Holiday Centre Manager

Did you play this game with prune stones at the end of school lunch, once you had freed the prunes from lumpy school custard, served in grooved proto-Tupperware jugs? Being a librarian excites me and interests me, as it always has, but I must face the humbling truth that I am not very good at it; or, more exactly, I cannot convince any potential employer that I'm any good at it. Therefore I found myself at the Next Step skills health check, looking for alternative careers.

I must explain at this point that, whatever career I thought I might be cut out for, running pony treks was not one of them. I toyed as a boy with priest and soldier; I did fancy myself as a don, allowed to walk across the grass of Cambridge colleges, but that's what being brought up in that city does to you.

The hereditary principle is a fine thing, if you want to be governed by half-witted haemophiliacs, but less useful for careers guidance. I never yielded to its pressures and turn to doctoring; though my father, and many generations before him, were Cambridge physicians, and, being adopted, I also discovered that my natural father was a doctor, and quite a distinguished one too, I could not believe I'd have been any good. I suppose I would not have killed many patients on purpose; perhaps that is what 'to do no harm' means, and not every doctor can make that claim.

Careers advice at school was dispensed by a chemistry master. He had a reputation for recommending metallurgy to everyone, regardless of their talents or natural bent, but he never recommended it to me.

So what did the Next Step site tell me? After some tests, it proclaimed me to be suited for the following:

• Practice Nurse: why?
• Fitness Instructor: come off it. For all my running, the last thing I can do is to yell bossy instructions at anyone else.
• Personal Trainer: see above
• Lifeguard: you jest
• Riding Holiday Leader: again, the equestrian theme. I've been on top of horses, and even stayed in the saddle for a few minutes, but I would not claim any skills or knowledge.
• Catering or Restaurant Manager: now, would you eat at a restaurant I managed?
• Food Scientist-Food Technologist: think first, what is my attitude to the sell-by dates of food in the fridge?
• Consumer Scientist: I have no idea what this means
• Kitchen Assistant: come, come, what would Elizabeth David say?
• Waiting Staff: no, I could not bring myself to grimace at a table and ask, 'is everything all right for you?'
• Baker: perhaps, if I could make pies in the tradition of Mrs Lovett
• Set Designer: have you ever seen me try to make anything?
• Photographic Stylist: I refer you to my Flickr photos
• Prop Maker: as above, absence of any DIY skills rules me out
• Computer Games Tester: I despise computer games. I know this is remiss of me, but I don't care
• Web Content Manager: yes, I've been doing this for years, but you try convincing the half-wits who recruit to these sorts of posts that a librarian could be any use
• Pop Musician: at last, a sensible suggestion
• NVQ Assessor: oh the irony. I was trying to recruit one of these in my last but one job
• Art Gallery Curator: well, yes, but since one of my oldest and dearest friends, a curator, has just been sacked by an organisation that thinks, as do they all in Cameron and Clegg's Britain, that public museums are unnecessary, it seems unlikely I could do anything useful here
• Education Welfare Officer: why?
• School Matron: er...
• Community Education Co-ordinator: yawn
• Training Manager: God!

Therefore, unless the position of salaried public intellectual comes up soon, I think I shall have to see what price my scrawny bottom will fetch in the public lavatories of Seaford.

For a less jaundiced view, careers being a hot topic on librarian blogs at the moment, see in particular these posts from Alice in Libraryland and the Wikiman

On ties and interviews

Ned Potter, on his wikiman blog, offers advice to the young librarian on interviews. His tie advice, though gender-specific, is sound, but does not go far enough.

This area is not as straightforward as it may seem. Give careful thought to which tie. Male junior doctors, for example, are advised to wear their medical school tie to interviews. We librarians are at a disadvantage here. Sadly the Polytechnic of North London School of Library and Information Studies had no such thing as an institutional tie in 1983 (and what would it have portrayed? Three sociology lecturers couchant?). And if only there were a CILIP tie.

A suit in sub-fusc colours and a sober, but not too sober, tie are the best one can manage. I keep loud, newsreader-type ties for the first day in the new job, once I have been appointed. Bow-ties require even more discretion. I have occasionally worn the old school tie in the hope that one of the panel will whisper to the others in awed tones as I leave the room, 'Good God, did you see he was at St Custard's? Tell the other candidates to go away, our minds are made up'.

I have left many interviews when a candidate knowing that, even if I did not land the job, I was the best turned-out, and this, along with the knowledge that I have run eleven marathons and that the panel coudn't run for a bus, preserves my amour-propre. Note, however,  that, in horse races, the horse that the stewards judge to be the best-turned out rarely wins the race.

When on the other side of the table, I have tried to maintain utter indifference to a candidate's appearance and clothes. For me, they can wear a grass-skirt so long as they're clever, creative and make me think they would be exciting to work with. But not every interviewer is as enlightened as me. And even I will dismiss a candidate who shows up wearing a Porridge Court tie. However, since the only interviews I'm invited to at the moment are the ones at the JobCentre every fortnight, my advice does not merit a great deal of attention.

 

No furniture so charming

I suppose one should welcome every contribution to the debate about how to save libraries. And yet...

The blurb for the No furniture so charming event, part of the London Word Festival, reads as follows: 'A night devoted to the architecture of knowledge and the future of book-borrowing. Much more than just bricks and mortar, the public lending library has long been considered the cornerstone of an educated and literate population, but what lies ahead for the future?' It then refers to a 'crack panel', one hopes a description of their skill and intelligence, not their recreational drug of choice, of ' hardback, paperback and e-book judges' who will deliberate on a series of presentations on the library of the future; the list of presenters includes only one librarian, Ruth Beale, described as an artist and pamphlet librarian.

It will be an interesting discussion,I'm sure, but why do they consider book-borrowing to be the be-all and end-all of the library? This emphasis, reproduced in the make up of the panel, who seem to be professional book judges, worries me. And why not allow more librarians to present, to help Ms Beale?  A lot of librarians have given a great deal of thought to the library of the future, across all sectors.