Tom Roper's Weblog

The last things: an exercise in applied eschatology: CPD23: Thing 23: What have you learnt and where do you want to go from here?

I remember reading somewhere (is it in the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?) that Roman Catholic eschatology concerns itself with four last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. Richard Strauss wrote four last songs, Frühling, September, Beim Schlafengehen and Im Abendrot. As the sun sets on my CPD23 effort, and I offer its lifeless corpse for judgement, I shall tackle it in four parts.

1. First of all, we're asked to identify gaps in experience. This is a little hard, as I've experienced most things in my time. With an eye to the next ten years, the period to retirement, depending on how much more of our pension funds the coalition will rob to give to the financial institutions. As far as the skills needed to survive in the new NHS are concerned, then it seems to me that low cunning and readiness to stab one's colleagues in the back will be helpful. That said, it's clear that there will be enormous needs for information on which to base commissioning decisions, and anyone who can meet those needs should be in a strong position. However, the game is rigged and it may be that the government forces clinical commissioning groups to buy their support services from private sector organisations.

2. As for a Personal Development Plan, I think there are three elements to it:

• continue to develop my theoretical understanding of how knowledge is found and applied in health
• continue to develop my practical skills in finding, appraising and packaging knowledge
• submit my application for Fellowship of CILIP (which has been in gestation for far longer than an elephant's pregnancy)

3. 'Is a PDP a useful way to think about CPD?' Yes, though it has its limits. Plans, once written, can easily be left unchecked and un-updated. I also find them restricting

4. 'Keep blogging'. I certainly shall; I'm about to mark this blog's eight birthday. I've greatly enjoyed taking part in CPD23 and, like everyone else, owe a debt to the people who kept us on our toes throughout. It was good to see so many health librarians taking part, contrary to the view expressed by some that there was no point because so many of the tools used were blocked by the over-zealous people in charge of NHS firewalls.

Hennessy Gold Cup day

There's a lot of interest in Great Endeavour today, but I go for Wymott. Pulled up in his last race due to a 'small fracture', which is slightly off-putting, but he's had plenty of time to recover.

Newcastle 220: Overturn
Newbury 235: Big Buck's
Newbury 310: Wymott
Newbury 345: Fistral Beach

"Never volunteer for anything" CPD23: Thing 22: Volunteering to get experience

In lieu of what they now call a gap year, I worked as a hospital porter at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, in 1973. The porters' room divided into two factions, young men such as me, in late teens or early twenties, and older men, over fifty. The latter group had all served in the forces during the war. Apart from George, a communist guardsman, I don't think any of them had seen shots fired in anger. Jack, for example, had, if he could be believed, spent the duration of the hostilities in every brothel east of Suez; Stan had spent it, as he spent most of his shifts, asleep; Jock, a rebellious Scot, had been in the glasshouse; Tex, an American, who was probably no more Texan than me, but that was what we called him, had passed it cheating at cards; Harry, the intellectual of the group, read from 1939-45; Joe applied himself to learning the art of breaking wind on demand.

I saw a great deal in those ten months: dead bodies, frightful injuries, people in extreme pain and distress. I learned from the older porters all the tricks and dodges of the old soldier. Among the rules that governed their life were that one should never pass up an opportunity for tea or sleep and, above all, one should never volunteer for anything. If the head porter ever entered the the porters' room to call through the miasma of Player's Number Six and Joe's emissions to ask for a volunteer, and one of us young bucks put themselves forward, they would chant, like a Greek chorus, 'never volunteer for anything'.

I despised this maxim but, when unemployed, as I have been too much recently, I've found it hard to be enthusiastic about voluntary work. I approached several local employers, but, when I made it clear what skills I had, they backed away rapidly. The two that offered anything only had work that would have bored me, and turned me into a disruptive menace. This sounds awfully big-headed, I expect, and after I retire, I doubtless will volunteer. In several fields of intellectual activity, an enthusiastic and educated amateur can still make a contribution. But as a substitute for real paid work, no. This big society notion that library services can be provided by any willing volunteer is a dangerous lie.

CPD23: Thing 21: How to identify your strengths, how to capitalise on your interests, how to write something eyecatching that meets job specs

To complete this thing, we are asked to identify activities and interests that could be applied to our careers. First we are asked to answer some questions:

What do you like to do? I tried to identify this when responding to Philip Pullman's speech at the Library Campaign conference last month. See that blog post for the full argument but, in summary, I enjoy the connectedness of library work, the potential (too often blocked or unrealised, sad to say) to connect people with the universe of human knowledge and culture.

What do you dislike? Like Pullman, stupidity, also routine, time-servers, the intellectually dishonest and fraudulent.

Do you remember the last time you felt that feeling of deep satisfaction after creating, building, completing something? Last week, after delivering a one-to-one database training session.

What was it about? The knowledge that the person I was working with had made real, demonstrable progress in her understanding of the tools available to her, and the process of research and enquiry.

What skills do you need to do the things you like? I could be a better searcher, and a better teacher, I'm sure. I can't identify more specific skills.

As for making a list of activities and interests, I submit this blog, and the running blog, as answers to the question. I do sometimes forget about achievements, but there's much to remember from career that has lasted over thirty years. The area I wish I could apply more to my working life is my interest in languages, more specifically Latin and Greek. I fear my career has developed in other directions and the chances of becoming a classics faculty librarian at one of the dwindling number of universities that still teach classics are remote.

My cv is up to date. It has had to be so in the recent periods of job-hunting.

Finally, we are asked to offer an interview tip. I shall give not one but three:

• In my experience, it always pays to be shaved, showered and sober, like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.
• Less facetiously, I find it increasingly useful to write notes of interview questions as I'm asked them. There ought to be no disgrace in this, unless you are the sort of candidate who, with a note of the question in front of you, still rambles and fails to answer, in which case you have no excuse
• And, something I have never quite mastered, it is probably a good thing to extract a laugh or two from the panel, but it must be done judiciously. With hindsight, I have approached some interview panels in the same frame of mind as a comedian going out to play the notoriously difficult second house at the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night.

Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance

In this morning's Financial Times, they interview the new lord mayor of London, David Wooton. The interview is a clear piece of propaganda for the Corporation of London, but, for all that they probably paid a PR a great deal of money to come up with convincing and plausible statements, I think they should ask for their money back

He says he is “fine” with people’s right to protest and points out that the City has a richer history of political radicalism than commonly thought. “As I am often fond of saying, if you go over to the Bishopsgate Library, which is in the' City, you will find the biggest collection of leftwing literature in Europe. Every revolutionary in the western world in the last 100 years Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Guevara ... they have all been [there].” ' http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3c49166-11f3-11e1-9d4d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1eBr4H1iO

Where to start? Marx died in 1883 , so was definitely not in the City in the past hundred years. In any case, he was more of a Camden man. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, who he fails to mention, visited London, but were mostly to be found in what is now Islington or Hackney. As for Che Guevara's visits to London, they have not been recorded by any biographer to date.

 

 

The Oxford Greek play 2011: Clytemnestra

 

I am becoming a Greek play tourist; having become a regular attender at the Cambridge play, and the King's College London one, I decided to strike out for Oxford. While Oxford's tradition of performance of a play has not been as regular as Cambridge's. Amanda Wrigley, formerly of the Archives of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama, describes its history in her new book, Performing Greek Drama in Oxford†.

This production is of Aeschylus's Libation Bearers, or , the middle play of the Oresteia, but retitled for this production so as to bear the name of Orestes' mother, whom he murders at the end in revenge for her murder of his father Agamemnon at the end of the first play in the trilogy. At the end of Helen Eastman's superb Cambridge production of the Agamemnon, the last sight we saw was the silent figure of Orestes.

Since I am neither a proper classicist, nor a skilled drama critic, take everything I say cum grano salo. It was a good, and in places very powerful production, particularly in the second half, when Orestes arrives in disguise at the palace where his father was murdered and Clytemnestra lives with her lover, the usurper Aegisthus, to kill them both. Among some strong performances, I particularly liked Jack Noutch's Orestes, and Lucy Jackson as Clytemnestra.

The surtitles were in a new translation, by Arabella Currie; Tom Paulin was also credited with a role. I try not to read these too often but when I did, they seemed clear and in fittingly forceful language for the Greek and the action on stage. However a Japanese setting didn't help, as far as I was concerned. I prefer my Greek drama to look Greek, which is very backward of me. This led to moments, as when Electra and the chorus fanned themselves, when the youthful matinée audience broke into giggles.

The character of Pylades, Orestes' foster-brother and travelling companion, has been excised from this version. True, he only speaks once, when Clytemnestra is pleading for mercy,  but the production left in Orestes' references to him, which made it seem as if Orestes had an imaginary friend. To compensate, two non-speaking concubines are added to the cast. While as a general rule I agree one cannot have too many concubines, it was hard to see what they added to the play. They flanked Clytemnestra as she received the disguised Orestes, perhaps to emphasis the corrupt nature of the usurper's court.

There are two performances left, tomorrow afternoon and evening. I would certainly urge anyone in the Oxford area to go.

Some other reviews:

Cherwell: http://www.cherwell.org/culture/stage/2011/11/16/first-night-review-clytemnestra

http://www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com/theatreworld/southrev.htm#OxfordPlayhouse

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/clytemnestra_oxford_playhouse/

http://redandgoldfever.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/clytemnestra/

† Wrigley, Amanda
Performing Greek Drama in Oxford and on Tour with the Balliol Players
Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011

GP commissioners and their information needs

In the curious acoustic of the BMA’s magnificent round Prince’s Room, where one can hear a conversation on the other side of the room as if it were at one’s own table, TFPL held a meeting of their Health Special Interest Group on the information needs of GPs. Commissioning needs dominated, hardly surprisingly. This is a partial account, based on my notes and tweets. There’s a TwapperKeeper archive of tweets at the #tfplsig hashtag, and the presentations and questions and notes from the group tasks, are online. There’s also a TFPL blog report.

Welcoming us, Vivienne Winterson of TFPL introduced the chair for the evening, Sue Lacey Bryant, who, Vivienne observed was ideally suited to lead our discussions, having an unique awareness through her role as Associate Director of GP Consortia Development at NHS Milton Keynes and her involvement in evidence-based practice. Where will we be in 9-18 months time, Sue asked? What products should we be developing to meet commissioners’ need? She mentioned work-life balance as a key issue, as commissioners face huge workloads.

Anita Jolly, Clinical Specialist with BMJ Learning, took us through the commissioning continuum, from the micro level of one doctor commissioning services for one patient, through the meso level, commissioning for localities, to the macro level, commissioning for communities. There will still be some national commissioning, for example for rare conditions. Commissioners will have to carry out population needs analysis, service analysis and must set priorities setting. They must procure services that are the best fit, shape provider structure, plan capacity and evaluate outcomes. The patient experience will be at the heart of everything.

Knowledge needs will be heaviest at the strategic planning stage, with a great deal of epidemiological data and information to be processed. I’ve put here in bullet form the knowledge needs she identified:
• National drivers
• Financial drivers
• Service design
• Evidence based models
• Organisational research
• Health economics
• Market intelligence
• Other providers (cf ‘any willing provider’)
• Capacity management
• Policies and guidelines

Commissioners will need skills in strategic planning, procurement (including information management). They will need to promote an evidence-base culture and continuous quality improvement.

Then Anne Gray of Quality:MK took us through her experience of commissioners’ knowledge needs. They want to know about:
• Service specifications
• Business cases
• Models used elsewhere (with contact names if possible)
• Benchmarking
• KPIs
• Outcomes
• Will it work here?
• Summaries of evidence
• Impact analysis

Quality:MK offers a hot topics page, updated with the issues of most concern to commissioners. At the moment self care and urgent care are riding high Probably the most important point Anne made is that references are not enough. Commissioners need a much more tailored and active service. She also mentioned the Commissioning Handbook for Librarians, a wiki-based resource for librarians supporting commissioning, the Ask an Expert service and a paper,
Gkeredakis, E and Roginski, C
The need for clarity in evidence based commissioning.
HSJ 26 May 2011 p23-25.

The final speaker was Sarah Panzetta, who described the development of the GP Camden website. Development started in 2008 and the site launched in 2010. Camden has a large number of locum or salaried GPs, with high levels of information need unmet by a complex landscape of disparate organisation-based websites and intranets. Sarah told us that getting content right for the incredibly complicated world of GPs takes time. Compatible referral forms were very popular with users. The presence of Dr Poppy Freeman, the GP lead for the project, was crucial to its success. Developing the site required the core skills of a librarian: gathering, organising, describing. Obsessive tendencies needed to be curbed; the best was often the enemy of the good.

In discussion, we were given eight minutes (which seems to be a new magic number for group tasks), to answer a series of questions:
• What kinds of IM skills does a CCG need as it moves forward into commissioning?
• Who do we need to liaise, partner, network with to meet these information needs (as a virtual team)?
• How to identify models of care?
• What do we need to learn and improve?
• What tools and rules are required for commissioning?

I was in the final group, on tools and rules. I fear we didn’t think of much in the way of rules, but perhaps some of the tools might be useful. In the report-backs, I was struck by comments from the Models of Care group, who came up with some interesting ideas for sharing information in the NHS. In general, there is a considerable need for knowledge to be shared by GP commissioners. What worries me is how far market pressures will militate against this.

Cheltenham Open: the second day: Paddy Power Gold Cup

There was a lot of money on Paul Nicholl's Mon Parrain in the Paddy Power Gold Cup during the week, but at the time of writing, his odds are lengthening. Nevertheless, I  can't see his closet rival, Wishful Thinking, taking this one from him

120 Hinterland
155 Hennessy
235 Mon Parrain
310 Oscargo
340 Shallow Bay
410: Saint Are

CPD23: Thing 20: Library Day in the Life and Library Routes/Roots

I've participated in both these activities in my time. I have taken part in four of the Library Day in the Life projects to date, to wit July 2011, January 2011, July 2010, and July 2009. The links will take you to my posts for that round.

As for my library roots, see this: http://www.roper.org.uk/tr/2009/10/library-roots.html

CPD23: Thing 19: Catch up week on integrating 'things'

For this thing we are enjoined to reflect on how we have integrated things into our practice. So:

Blogging: I've been blogging since 2003, both personally and professionally, so I think this one is pretty well integrated. In my new job, as Primary Care Librarian for West Sussex Knowledge & Libraries, I've just started a blog, Primary Care Knowledge: not much there yet, but it will grow. I subscribe to the huge OPML file of CPD23 participants blogs. There's too many to read them all, but it's worthwhile.

Online Brand: for all my reservations about the word, yes, this is integrated

RSS feeds, Twitter and Pushnote: this first two have been part of my professional and personal life for a number of years. Like many participants, I failed to see the point of Pushnote.

Online networks: likewise. It's interesting to note that CILIP Communities have come alive for the election hustings

National/regional groups: yes. As for every health librarian, Health Libraries Group is central to what I do. I sometimes wonder if, if CILIP's difficulties cannot be resolved, whether we have the capacity to create a stand-alone organisation for health librarians, along the lines of the North American Medical Library Association. For regional groups, since I wrote this thing, I've been on the CILIP Sussex ramble.

Google Calendar: yes, I continue to use it, integrated with iCal. Since the thing, iCloud has come out, and it will be interesting to see if it will work with, or replace Google Calendar.

Evernote: a great boon. I was using it before the thing, and I continue to find new uses for it.

Librarianship training: I continue to ponder Fellowship and possibly a doctorate

Mentoring: I need to make a greater effort here: I am conscious that, with changes of job and so on, I have not been as much of a support to my menthes as I could be

Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox: I wonder why these were lumped together, but they all continue to be useful. Though many social media sites are blocked at work, Dropbox, thankfully, is not.

Zotero, Mendeley, CiteULike: I continue to use Mendeley as my reference management tool of choice. As I said t the time, I'm less impressed with the other two

Seminars and conferences: I'm considering submitting a paper to next year's HLG conference. Looking beyond that, EAHIL and MLA might be places to speak.

Advocacy: continues to occupy a great deal of my time. This week will be no exception. At 10 am on Wednesday, the results of the requests for judicial review of library closures will be announced

Presenting information: not much has changed since I wrote this thing, though I remain cautious about Prezi, preferring Keynote

The one new thing that I am seriously considering making a part of my practice is podcasting. I know have a new microphone, and access to my son's mixing desk. More news soon