Tom Roper's Weblog

CPD23: Thing 18: part 1: podcasts

I'm tackling this thing in reverse order and, in the spirit of the thing, here's a podcast of me talking about, er, podcasts.

Cpd23

It may be useful to list the podcasts I refer to in the talk

• In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg
• JISC Podcasts
• Talking with Talis [This seems to have withered on the vine, with no new episodes since February]
• Le Collège de France where we learn, among other things, that the French for podcasting is la ballodiffusion
• France Culture Podcasts
• Herodotus Podcasts (and many more classics podcasts, though more Latin than Greek). Helpfully, there are two versions of the Herodotus podcasts, one at normal reading speed and one at a slower speed for study

Connectedness

'The last thing I’ll say today begins with a recollection of my time as a library assistant – a pretty lowly form of life – in Charing Cross Road library, part of Westminster city libraries, in the early seventies. I’m a romantic. I’m easily swayed by my imagination. And one of the things that used to thrill me was the sense of a great network reaching out from library to library, embodied in the inter-library loan system connecting my branch with the other Westminster branches, St John’s Wood, Marylebone Road, Buckingham Palace Road, Drury Lane, and so on, and from there out to the other London boroughs, and from there out across the whole country. If someone wanted a book that we didn’t have, we could get it. No-one expected every branch to hold every book in the world. It was the connectedness, the joined-upness, that meant that it didn’t matter if your local branch was a great central one or a small suburban one, or a rural one, because you were part of the great system. Out of curiosity I used to collect the compliments slips that came with the books our readers requested, and I’ve still got them.'  [And at this point Philip read out a series of these to illustrate the diversity of the libraries who had supplied material to his readers]

Philip Pullman, Library Campaign Conference, 22 October 2011 (Full text at Voices for the Library)

After exhorting everyone to blog about the Library Campaign conference, I'm of course one of the last to do so, and a lot of what I would have written has already been said. So, apart from urging people to support the march planned for February 2012, and say what a wonderful day it was, and how impressive the speakers were, especially those from campaigns in the front-line, I want to talk about one point from Philip Pullman's speech, the paragraph I quote above. I had a very similar experience. Beginning my career in 1978, not so long after his, in a small branch library in north London, I too was thrilled, less by the stock in that branch (the branch librarian had some rather old-fashioned views on stock-selection and, while we held multiple copies of more or less everything Jean Plaidy had written, there were not many texts there that excited me), but by the potential of the network, by the fact that, albeit for a small fee, we could find them a copy of more or less anything.

I felt that same thrill when, in the early 1990s, libraries began to use the internet, first with primitive tools like telnet, gopher, WAIS and then with the web. This opened up new possibilities for connectedness and joined-upness that seemed to us revolutionary. They are still, for all the paywalls and barriers to information that capitalism in decline tries to impose.

I know, as an active user of several public library services, that few seem to feel the same thrill nowadays. Perhaps it's the effect of the dismantling, under the impact of previous rounds of local government cuts, of the great regional inter-lending networks such as LASER, which turned itself into a think-tank before disappearing from history, but too many library staff seem to see requests for material not held by their system as eccentric and unreasonable; that's certainly the feeling I get when I request material from outside the system. How many public library catalogues allow users to place a request online for something not held? In my experience, none.

This is an important point, not simply because I read out-of-the-way books and want to get them through the public library service, but because, in the privatisation workshop I led, the chief threat we identified in the government-inspired trends to privatisation, outsourcing and volunteer-run so-called 'community' libraries† is that they will use the anarchy of the marketplace to break up a cooperative and collaborative system.

How should public libraries respond?

• Make requests free
• Make everyone's holdings discoverable through a single interface
• Make materials commercially available but not yet acquired equally discoverable

Neither of these would cost a great deal of money; the benefits they would bring to our social, cultural and economic life are incalculable.

Alongside that, everyone who cares about libraries must join the war on stupidity, support next February's march, and join or start local campaign groups.. The conference identified that campaigns need to talk to one another. It was clear from Jeremy Hunt's lamentable appearance before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that the enemy is organised. So must we be.

† We've always had community libraries, actually, and it's a prostitution of the name to apply to it to unmanaged collections of books provided by Big Society groupies

CPD 23: Thing 17: The Medium is the Message- Prezi and Slideshare

I first posted a presentation on Slideshare four years ago, it seems. The full ghastly history may be seen at: http://www.slideshare.net/tomroper/ That represents a small fraction of the number of presentations I have shared online. I used my blog to post copies after I'd given talks, and I even have some copies of ancient ones I did in days gone by which perhaps I shall expose to a wider audience. What price my thoughts on the information revolution and changing user behaviour from 1998, eh?

I have previous form with electronic presentation tools. The first one I ever used was a thing called Harvard Graphics. I was working in a North London hospital library in those days and, on the one-eyed man kingship principle, acquired some a reputation for being able to knock things out in it. Thus I found myself spending many an afternoon, for it was appallingly slow, in an upstairs office, turning a consultant's scribbles into a well-thought out presentation. Then I would print the presentation onto overhead transparencies, for projection from, gasp, a computer, had not made it to Edgware. Nowadays everybody can knock out a bad PowerPoint. I always share my slides. I often wonder what someone who has not experienced my charismatic delivery in person will make of them, but it seems the polite thing to do. These days I use Keynote much more, which I far prefer to PowerPoint.

As for Prezi, I have yet to use it in front of an audience. I've played a little, but every presentation I've seen delivered using Prezi reminds me of the night when, 17 or so years old, my friends Colin, Richard and I had a barley wine drinking competition in the pubs of Cambridge, topped off with some tabs of acid. Colin won, by the way, with twenty barley wines. I believe he is now an eminent psychologist. Richard went off to farm pigs.

The medium isn't the message, by the way; even McLuhan admitted that…was it in his appearance in the cinema queue in Annie Hall?

Ascot and Wetherby

Today I dedicate myself to the jumps, a vow I shall keep through till next May and the Guineas meeting. Most of my selections don't require exegesis. The exception is Tarkari in the WilliamHill.com Handicap Hurdle. This looks to me a very open race, and I think an outsider worth a punt.

Wetherby 245: Fair Along
Ascot 300: Tarkari
Wetherby 320: Diamond Harry
Ascot 340: Muirhead

 

CPD23: thing 16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published

I've never been convinced by the industry that has sprung up around 'advocacy'. It seems to me second-nature that, if one is part of a profession that does something worthwhile, one would does one's best to stand up for it in public. I always despised passengers, people who contribute nothing but the minimum required of them. I'm not sure I do advocacy particularly well, but I do it. I've always been involved in professional affairs, in trade unions, and in library campaigning. Why is it important, we are asked? Apart from satisfying whatever strange inner compulsion makes me do things like the aforementioned, it seems to me that unless we develop a profession that's prepared to be vocal about what we do, and its value to society, then we're doomed. There are all sorts of ways of avoiding this, of course: hiding in sterile debates about the 'image of the profession', muttering on closed e-mail lists, moaning at librarian-only conferences are but a few.

I'm involved, though not as much as I should be, in Voices for the Library. Is it effective? Others are better judges than me, but we do seem to have made an impact, in spite of our small numbers and, of all but me and another member of the team, our youth. I chaired the Health Libraries Group at a time when health was an area, through the Policy Forum, where CILIP was developing its advocacy work. Heath seemed to be, we thought,  an area where lots of different parts of the profession contributed to information provision. I seem to be fated to end up as the chair of organisations. Perhaps it's my grey hairs, but as well as HLG, I've chaired the ASVIN Project Board, the European Veterinary Libraries Group,  the Scientific Programme Committee for the Third International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists, Animal Health Information Specialists (UK & Ireland), Helicon, CoFHE London and South East Circle….[that's enough chairs-Ed]

As for getting published, if I were to have my time over again, I would make more of an effort to write for our professional scholarly journals. I was on the Editorial Board of Health Information and Libraries Journal (HILJ, pronounced to rhyme with bilge) for over ten years, and I now sit on that of the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. It's a good thing for one's career to publ;ish, of course, but that's not the real reason: it's because it's the only way the profession will learn and grown, like any other. To the extent that we have a body of professional knowledge, it is not in that rather abstract document that sits on the CILIP website, but in the peer-reviewed literature. It's a shame more of us, myself included, don't contribute to it.

CPD23: thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

Once more, the burden of history weighs heavy on this post. The first national conference I ever attended was the founding conference of the National Union of School Students, I think in 1972, when I would have been 17. Nothing to do with professional gatherings, I know, but by the time I started working in libraries, I was a veteran of student and labour movement conferences and other events. Consequently, when I began to attend librarians' conferences they seemed, by comparison, a little dull and restrained. There were not the sharp ideological differences reflecting in a thousand different amendments and composites, the gauntlet to run outside the hall of newspaper sellers  and leafleters, the sessions that lasted long into the night. On the other hand, both types of conference-goer share a fierce appetite for strong drink and late nights .

Health librarians are perhaps the most addicted to conference-going, maybe because the professions they serve are addicted too. So the flower of my conference going career has been during my time as a health librarian. As well as those organised by the Health Libraries Group, EAHIL, the MLA, AHIS, ICAHIS  and so on, I went to, and spoke at, scientific conferences such as those of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association. These allowed me to compare and contrast. There's a lot more money around at the latter events: you can see it in the trade exhibitors stands, in the keynote speakers, the social programme, in the activities organised to amuse spouses who have come along in tow.

What have I learnt from these experiences?

• Pace yourself, first and foremost, whether it be as your glass is over-zealously topped-up at the opening reception, or in organising your time.
• If I'm speaking, I find it impossible to concentrate on sessions until my turn has come and gone. The first time I spoke at an international conference, in Utrecht, I had to lock myself in my hotel room and not come out until I was on. Preparation is all; don't depend on being locked in said hotel room to finish your paper
• Conference time is not like normal time, and before you know it, it will be the closing ceremony
• Above all, talk to fellow delegates. Like most male librarians, this does not come naturally to me, but I try to make myself, rather than hiding behind my laptop or the Guardian crossword. There is always a subject of conversation, even if it is only the incompetence of the session chair, the poor food and small portions, or the scandalous behaviour of certain exhibitors at the disco the night before

I've helped organise a few events in my time too. There's nothing better for developing yourself professionally than trying to devise an event your peers need to, and might want to, attend. I have spent long hours in committee meetings, staring at the wall and trying to work out what the hell the burning professional issues are, and who could possibly be conned into talking about them for little or no fee. It's fun. Get stuck in.

 

George Meredith on Seaford

'...an ill-conditioned sort of place with a struggling row of villas facing a muddy beach.'

'...the DULNESS is something frightful, and hangs on my neck like Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea'

Racing Post Trophy

It's good to see Master Minded back in action, a sign that we must turn our eyes away from the flat to the jumps.
Newbury 215: Saigon
Newbury 245: Al Kazeem
Doncaster 300: Encke
Aintree 330: Master Minded
Newbury 345: Kirthill
Chepstow 415: Arthurian Legend

Update: Encke doesn't go. I choose Fencing instead

Champions day at ascot

As I write Frankel is strolling down to the start; a shrewder judge than me picked him and so do I. A bit late today, so I know only one of my earlier selections won. 150 Ascot: Fame and Glory 225 Ascot: Society Rock 300 Ascot: Vita Nova 335 Ascot: Frankel 410 Ascot: So You Think

Ascot, Newmarket and Redcar

i must post about something other than horse-racing, like nude calendars of male librarians, or putting Demosthenes' speeches into a Wordle, or the use I've been making of 750Words, or divers other weighty matters. Until I do, today's selections are:
225 Newmarket: Hazel Lavery
240 Ascot: Lost in the Moment
300 Newmarket: Miblish
315 Ascot: Elzaam
350 Ascot: Eton Forever
400 Redcar: Place in my Heart