Belated BIALL thoughts

So, after a busy few weeks, I'm finally ready to sit down and pull together my thoughts on this years BIALL conference, in Dublin.

Bear in mind, this is all my persoanl impressions, and my opinions will be coloured by how much relevance I can see various sessions / talks having to my professional life. If I didn't like them, that didn't mean that they were actually rubbish!

I hadn't been to a BIALL conference since Harrogate in 2005, (shortly before I changed jobs and moved into a commercial firm from an institutional body), and I was hoping for more talks of relevance to me this time around. Working in a nice old legal body's lovely, but as you're neither academic, or corporate, finding the useful stuff from the conference can be hard.

To be honest, I hadn't thought the provisional programme had looked too interesting, but I had some hopes that the blank spaces would be filled in closer to the time, and as these talks were obviously still in discussion, I thought maybe they'd be more topical. So I booked in the hope of some Web 2.0 stuff, perhaps something on digital copyright (the new CLA electronic licences)...but mainly, it was going to be a chance to meet people in the flesh that I'd only met online, and hopefully attend some interesting seminars.

Well, the meeting people bit happened, and that was great, I had a lot of fun and made some good contacts and friends. But the useful information bit was sometimes a little bit harder to find...

I was a good girl, and attended all (well, almost all) the conference sessions and parallel sessions.

So, how did they go?

The Plenary Sessions on the Friday morning were fine, although Richard Susskind seemed to be presenting a standard paper, which he tweaks slightly depending on the audience he's presenting to. The bulk of it was presented the next week at the Law Society of Scotland conference. And although Lesley Robinsons talk on "Information to Knowledge - the Process" was interesting, and it would be lovely to be involved in all the process she was talking about, it's just not something I'll ever be doing in my current role.

Lunch was an interesting affair...they may not have been quite prepared for 400 or so delegates descending on the 2 food stations!

The afternoon Plenary Session was one I'd really been looking forward to, appealing to my inner geek as it did by being an interactive panel discussion on Web 2.0. I thought it would be a discussion on the ways we can use Web 2.0 to make our jobs easier, and what the pitfalls were...instead, it began with a 20 min musical chairs and Chinese whispers session. I understand that the point was to illustrate that people in widely separated areas can find it difficult to communicate, that misreading of their messages can happen, and that sometimes, the people originating the messages or passing them on may be corrupting them. And that's a good point to make, but could have been done in 5 minutes. Then it was time for each of the speakers to give their presentations. Janice Edwards ran through some of the basics of Web 2.0, and what it may evolve into. Next up was Martin de Saulles, with an interesting presentation (download available here) about Web 2.0 tools and the hype surrounding them. Then Sue Hill was up, discussing how, as someone unfamiliar with Web 2.0 until a few weeks before, she was enjoying exploring the potential uses for her company. Keep an eye on her site for developments!

Overall, an interesting session, although I have to confess, I thought there was a better understanding in the general librarian population of Web 2.0 than became apparent from some of the discussions both in this session, and in chats following it. I'm in shock - that must mean I'm ahead of the game!

I was a bad girl after that, and scampered away into town instead of going to the Members Forum /Have Your Say, mainly because I didn't have anything I wanted to say! Oh, and of course I needed to buy a dress for the Presidents Dinner...

Next morning, I decided sleep was more needed than my first Parallel Session, so I can't tell you what Margaret Flood of Trinity College, Dublin was like, talking about "Legal Deposit - Preserving the Published Record or More? Facing the Challenges of a Digital World". But I can say that Heather Semple of the Law Society of Northern Ireland's talk on "Researching the Law in Northern Ireland" was very interesting - lots of useful information about where to find NI law, where it comes from, what it's called when...sure to come in useful next time we get one of those "I need an amended version of this NI Act now!!" questions. Although being able to say "Actually, they don't have consolidated legislation for NI" probably won't make me any friends!

Another interesting picnic style lunch followed (aka balancing a plate on my knees while sitting on the concrete floor of the conference venue), then back into Parallel Sessions C: "Who's Really Computer Savvy? Web 2.0 Technologies and Your Library". I have to admit to tuning out during this one, as it was sorta preaching to the converted...see, never happy me! But, as far as I could see, it was very well received, and Stephen Weiter was a very good speaker.

And then it was "Federated Search - the Process and the Problems" from Melanie Farquharson. Again, another one I tuned out in slightly, as it's something completely out of my hands, and in my current position, not going to be an area I'm ever likely to be involved in dealing with. Shortsighted? Maybe, but if it turns out that I need to know more in 5 years, I'm pretty sure the technology will have moved on so far that anything I learned now would be outdated. I'm working on the 'information overload minimising' approach at the moment!

And...the final talks on Saturday sort of blur into one! The talk by Lucy Dillon on "The Impact of the Legal Services Act" had only minimal relevance for me, as it only effects English law practitioners, but I kept one ear open. With my employer covering both Scottish and English matters, I need to be aware of the possible impact of this on Scottish law firms. As far as I'm aware without checking, Scotland's a few years behind, but planning on implementing similar legislation within 5 years or so.
"Law, Crime and Punishment in Bloomsday Dublin" was an entertaining explanation of the real-life legal cases referred to in James Joyce's Ulysses...and also included a 4 page synopsis handout of the book itself, which is probably as close as I'll ever get to actually reading it myself!
Victoria Janetta's presentation on "Implementing an Enterprise-Wide Search Tool" was another one I zoned out in - for various reasons relating to our IT, it had no relevance for me.
And finally, Samantha Steer spoke about "Information Managers in the 21st Century". This was basically a talk around the research done earlier this year for Sweet & Maxwell, and released with much fanfare to The Gazette and CILIP. As I'd already requested the slides from them when they were released in February, I zoned out again here...

I'm sure there's probably links to many peoples presentations available, but I can't find them on the BIALL website...hmmm, maybe I should have gone to the Members Forum after all....

And all that's left now is...to wonder when the CD of everything that we ordered will turn up?

And contemplate next years conference...which does actually look a lot more like my sorta thang! In another year, there'll have been more chances to see what Web 2.0 is and isn't doing for us.

Technical terminology

I was looking at some Bills on the Parliament website, and I wanted to find out more info about what some of the stages abbreviations meant. So I clicked on the link to take me to this page.

And I was delighted to learn that 'ping pong' is a proper term, when discussing the progress of legislation through Parliament.

PP - Ping Pong, where the bill passes back and forth between the two Houses debating amendments to the bill

• L - Commons' Amendments considered in the House of Lords
• C - Lords' Amendments considered in the House of Commons

Brilliant -the mental images of members of the House of Lords and House of Commons playing Ping Pong in Parliament will keep me amused all day!! :-)
Off to have flashbacks to Pong now!

I think I'm offended

So, after you hit retiral age, if there's nothing else for you to do at a law firm, you get to become a librarian?

And what does an 88 year old DO in terms of library work? Is it just an honourary title, which allows him to potter around the office, or is he regularly asked to do research?
Did he use online resources, or work mainly with the printed texts?

Actually, I'm genuinely interested - I would love to think he was whizzing about in Westlaw, digging up stuff from LexisNexis Butterworths Direct, looking up the Statute Law Database, shattering preconceptions about older people and technology!!

Although sadly, I think it's more likely that 'librarian' was just a job title they gave him to keep him happy, rather than because he was a great researcher, and helped keep his service users on top of the rapid changes in their profession...

Scottish Law Librarians Group Book Festival event

From BBC News website: "Members of staff at the National Library of Scotland point to an extract taken from one of the first books printed in Scotland, which forms part of the 500 years of the Scottish Printed Word exhibition. Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images."


If you're a member of the Scottish Law Librarians Group (SLLG), you'll have already been sent your invite to this years event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
The SLLG likes to try and ensure that members get the maximum benefit from the group, and as last years Book Festival visit proved so popular, it's been decided that this should become an annual jaunt.

So, this year, we've selected the following as (hopefully) being of interest to as many members as possible, and at a good time to allow everyone the chance to attend:

"Bill Bell, David Finkelstein & Alistair McCleery: Books and Society
Tue 19/08/2008
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
As Scotland celebrates 500 years of printing, editors David Finkelstein, Bill Bell and Alistair McCleery reveal the remarkable contribution to publishing and literary culture made by Scotland over the last 120 years - a period covering momentous change in writing, publishing technology, bookselling, readership and, of course, book festivals."

Tickets for this event for SLLG members will be paid for by the group, so it's free, free, free!
The image above (I think) relates to this event too, as this talk supports the exhibition referred to.

You can download the Festival Brochure from the website.

SWOP meeting: "From Parliament Square to Holyrood – historical official publications online"

Belatedly writing up the SWOP meeting, which I posted info about here. Links to available presentations here.

This turned out to be a really useful and interesting event, even though it may have been aimed more at academics and researchers than anything else (it was only me and someone from a Council who weren't academic staff).

• "Parliament’s past online : a review of sources" Paul Seaward Director – History of Parliament Trust.

This part was full of interesting historical information, and background on UK Parliamentary materials development e.g House of Lords and House of Commons records were stored in different buildings, so a fire in 1834 that destroyed HofC records prior to that date had no effect on HofL records. Parliament Rolls and Statute Rolls are separate. Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (subscription service) and BOPCRIS (an HE and FE academics access only site). So, there's sources, but you have to be an academic to view them, from the looks of it!

• "From archive to internet: producing an online edition of the records of the pre 1707 Scottish Parliament" Gillian MacIntosh St Andrews University

A review of the background to the development of the Records of the Parliament of Scotland online. Highlighting the lovely option for parallel translations from old Scots, that can be viewed alongside their modern English translations. Noting that there's now a citeable reference style for the old Acts (eg [1604/4/22], denoting year, month and number of the Acts), and original sources are given, unlike the previous printed edition, which is now known to be inaccurate and suffered from the editors personal bias!

• "Prototyping Hansard" Robert Brook, UK Parliament

An un-official, ad-hoc project, working with the raw Hansard data and reusing it in various ways. It's a very basic, non-prettified version of a website, but it allows users to search on tagged items to find all sorts of information on them, eg, by member name like Tam Dalyell. They specifically don't work with the most current data, stopping at 2004.


I have to confess to tuning out slightly for the following presentations:

• "Online Historical Population reports" Matthew Woollard – Project Director, Online Historical Reports Project.
• "Digitisation of Parliamentary Texts at BOPCRIS" Dr Julian Ball, Project Manager, BOPCRIS
• "ProQuest Parliamentary Papers" Rob Newman, Senior Editor, Proquest CSA

These were very definitely aimed at the academic sector, and researchers of population / history, and therefore not of particular use to me.

But overall, definitely an afternoon well spent - I have a far better understanding of where the historical parliamentary materials came from, why there's gaps, why the printed collected Scottish Acts are unreliable, and now know about a funky online tool to play with Hansard! :D

Better late than never...

Well, on Saturday I got home in the evening (after a corporate fun day out which was, actually, really good fun) to find a "We tried to deliver but you were out having a life" card from the Royal Mail. I'm well used to these by now, as mail delivery time seems to be between 11am and 3pm in my area. Apparently, working and receiving mail are mutually exclusive activities in this fine city.

So yesterday, I did my regular detour to the Depot to collect my undelivered mail. What I ended up collecting was a huge beast of a hard backed envelope, slightly oddly addressed: the teeny-tiny fact that I live in Edinburgh, capital of the country has been omitted from my address. Apparently I now live at the following location:

Jennie XXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
Lothian
XXX XXX

Lothian? I have a region but not a city now?
Then I saw the sticker on the envelope saying it had come from CILIP, and all was made clear. They've made yet another boo-boo. Not as good as the beginning of this year, when they spontaneously relocated my home address to the building next door to the flat I used to live in 2 years and 2 home moves ago, but still, pretty good work...
Perhaps they're working up to only putting nations on address labels eventually, by beginning with dispensing with all this petty bureaucracy about actual streets and cities?

I knew then what it must be: my Chartership certificate. 9 months after submitting my portfolio, 3 months after the official acceptance of my portfolio in March, I have a snazzy certificate, all prettily mounted (can't fault them for their presentation!), and ready to, erm..be sent back to my parents for safekeeping, along with the degree and postgrad diploma certificate.

So here it is, in all it's glory.
Woo.

For all those Naked Rambler hunters

Yes, it is one of the top searches / hits for this blog (although I'm worried about the ones that are looking for images!).
And yes, there was meant to be a review hearing earlier this year, of which I can find nothing.
But the Scots Law News has found more information.

It's good to see that my suggestion of an English border-drop was taken seriously ;-)

I don't know when they did it...

...but I'm glad they did!
The very fabulous Scots Law News blog has changed its layout. Now posts are dated, timed, and allow a link directly to each post.
The content has always been very good, but being unable to see the date, or link directly to a specific post was frustrating for me - I imagine there were ways to do that, but they weren't obvious to a reader.
Now, all is well in the world, and the posts are well linked to background material, making it easy to bring yourself up to speed if you've missed any related info they refer to!

My only niggles are that I still can't find an RSS feed, so my little overloaded brain has to remind me to visit regularly, and I'm not keen on clicking a link to read a full story...I go to blogs to skim for info, not clicking into each post...

But overall, well done SLN, and thank you for making reading it easier on the eyes :-)

Because I'm nosey!

I finally weakened and decide to see what was going on with Twitter.
I joined in January 2007, but never used it, as I didn't know anyone else who did, or ever would.
But now, I do know people who use it...perhaps it's finally reached critical mass for me? There's no guarantee I'll actually make much use of it, but it seems more interesting when there's people you're interested in posting on it. And it's letting me rant about my crappy day while my boss isn't there to hear it...

I'm a Luddite, but I'm also always willing to change my mind if I can be persuaded of the usefullness of things!

I was going to say it's like the opposite to my Facebook account, in that it's workmates only, whereas Facebook is friends only, then realised I've got a bit of crossover of both on Facebook.

Note to self - the next social network you join needs to have a way of separating out groups and allowing them only a certain amount of access to you. "Work" group sees only the updates / info you tag as "professional", friends get to see everything...

The strain of the law

Sadly, Scotland lost another judge today, Lord Johnston. He was most recently in the news as part of the Nat Fraser appeal panel last month.

Lord Macfadyen died only a few months ago, in April.

Obviously, the Bench is not a healthy place to be - I certainly wouldn't want to have to cope with the things that those on it have to...

Don't go on holiday!

I tell ya, it takes at least a week to catch up on the week you were away...and now I'm off to Dublin this afternoon until Sunday, so I can only imagine how long it'll take me to catch up again when I get back!

One useful thing I have done while on holibobs though is play with Yahoo Pipes, to create a feed of feeds. After being a total doofus and needing the help of the lovely law.librarians group to fix things (how come they could easily explain what a video didn't?) I've had a stab at making some usefulness from the UK Librarian Bloggers wiki, starting with (hopefully) a feed of all the academic library blog feeds on there.

If I'm lucky, you should be able to do something with it, like subscribe to it. Although I haven't got as far as actually testing that theory myself.
Hopefully, you'll find it here :

http://pipes.yahoo.com/jennie/ukacademiclibraryblogs

And even more hopefully, it'll be useful to someone! Let me know if it works, and if it's useful. If it is, I'll start creating more...public libraries, special libraries, Scottish, English, Welsh etc...

I could be in online trouble

If giving a fake name and date of birth to MySpace is a criminal act...

Admittedly, I've not actually done anything criminal online, but I regularly make up a false date of birth / location / name when signing up to various websites.
I refuse to give the real information when I beleive that all it'll be used for is to track what I'm doing on the site, and target marketing at me based on that information. Same reason that I don't have loyalty cards - if they want market research, they can put some work into it, rather than stalking my shopping habits!

We're constantly being told to be more aware of how important and sensitive our personal information is, and not give it away without careful thought and consideration of the basis for the request for it.
But by giving false information when we don't believe the request for out personal details are justified, we're breaching the terms and conditions of various sites.
How can you win?

Help locating a librarian from the 1990s

I had contact via this blog, asking for help finding a librarian that someone used to work with in the early 1990s.

I've posted the text of the email below - if anybody knows her, or of her, get in touch with me and I'll pass the info on (I've withheld his email), or pass his info on to her. Since, as he says, we're fairly well networked, I'm hoping somebody will see this and get in touch.

Also off to post on the CILIP Communities board - I have a vague idea that CILIP has a register of members, but I'm not sure about that. And if she's married and changed name, or left the profession, there's not much hope of finding her, but here's hoping!

Dear Jennie,

This may be a slightly odd email; but I am trying to trace a friend who when I met her was working her BA in librarian(ship?) at Birmingham Polytechnic (now the University of Central England) and subsequently worked as a Librarian at Blakenhurst prison in the Midlands. Her name is Valerie Evans and she worked at the prison during 1993/'94, but I am told she subsequently left.

I was wondering if:

The library communinity is fairly well networked in the UK and whether someone might know her or indeed work with her now.
Alternately:
Whether she works in some affiliated library/IT service somewhere in the UK.
If by some staggering coincidence/chance you might happen to know of her, I would be delighted. If not, could you give me some pointers as to where I possibly look for her if she still works as a librarian. My email address is xxxx@xxxx

I am in New Zealand at present and trying to find her is as you can imagine a difficult task. I would be very happy to hear from you. You will find a photo of her attached

Kindest Regards

Neil Allister

Why Web 2.0? The opportunities and challenges for the legal sector

I've foolishly been allowed to organise a training event for the Scottish Law Librarians Group, and if you're a member of the SLLG, it's free for you to attend, yay!

Why Web 2.0? The opportunities and challenges for the legal sector

You are cordially invited to a seminar which looks beyond the hype at the challenges and opportunities Web 2.0 provides for information professionals in the legal sector. James Mullan will explore some of the technologies that are currently available and provide practical examples of how these can be used within an Information Services unit. There will then follow a chance for those who wish to investigate these tools to experiment with them on the computers provided, and have informal discussions with James about any of the topics covered in his presentation.

James Mullan works as an Information Professional at a large city law firm and is an active blogger, owning the Running Librarian Blog. He is a well known Web 2.0 evangelist and administrates BIALL's blog and Facebook profile. He has also spoken at numerous events including Knowledge Management for the Legal Profession and Online Information and has written widely on the subject of harnessing collective intelligence by means of Web 2.0 technologies...

The first half of the seminar is expected to take between 45 minutes to an hour, with computers and refreshments available for the following hour of the second half of the event.


Date and time: 3.30pm, Friday 20th June
Venue: Edinburgh Training Centre, St. Mary's Street,
Edinburgh (location maps and directions available
from: http://www.edintrain.com/location.asp )
Cost: Free to SLLG members

Thanks to James for agreeing to make the trip up to the Frozen North!

New Advocate blogger

As pointed out a few weeks ago by lo-fi, there's a new Scottish legal blogger...and he's actually a proper, qualified grown-up who knows what he's talking about, unlike me and my random mutterings...

Jonathan Mitchell QC, member of the Murray Stable, has revived his online presence with a blog on Scots law and legal practice, with regular informative and helpful posts.

Tally-ho to Dublin!

I forgot to confirm that I've been allowed to skip off to Dublin in June for the BIALL Conference, for law librarian-type fun, games, and edumacation.

I'm looking forward to it - a chance to catch up with the people I already know from Scotland who're going (we like a good conference jaunt, there'll be anything up to a dozen of the Scottish Law Librarians Group going that I know of, and as there's only about 100 of us in total, that's a good showing!), and to meet some of the people I know online, who I haven't actually met in person yet. I'm hoping they'll be nice to me and overlook my inner geekiness...I wonder if any of them can be bribed with tablet, Edinburgh Rock, and C U Jimmy hats....

and you know, what? I may even....learn something new!
Although I think Guinness may be involved at some point, and I've never found that to be much of a memory aid before... ;-)

The police in Aberdeen aren't holding a grudge

No, of course not.
They just really, really like Sgt Eros / Stuart Kennedy, and they like to see his act as often as possible, to see what reason they can find to arrest him again.

I'm sure there are far more important things going on in Aberdeen that need police attention. And this wouldn't be in any way related to both a sheriff and appeal judges finding their previous attempt to prosecute him to be ridiculous, and thrown them out.
Would it?

Terrible poetry trumps...erm...Harry Potter

Mr McGonagalls works attracted a bid of £5,500, while a 1st edition of Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone only managed £5,000.
Bad poetry has a special sort of attraction from the looks of it!

Am I X, Y, or Millennial?

I was born in 1978.
In some places, this makes me a Generation X-er...in others, I'm Generation Y...
Then again, I might be a Millennial, who were born between 1977 and 1995...

Depending on where you look, you can find someone who'll tell you you're either X, Y or Millennial.

Does it matter which Generation you are?
And what happened to Z?

Following the Hedgehog Librarian

As posted on her blog, a library meme.

"Below are the top 106 books tagged “unread” in LibraryThing.

The rules:

Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your To Be Read list."

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

Catch-22*

One hundred years of solitude

Wuthering Heights

The Silmarillion

Life of Pi: a novel

The Name of the Rose

Don Quixote

Moby Dick

Ulysses

Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

A Tale of Two Cities

The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

War and Peace

Vanity Fair

The Time Traveller’s Wife

The Iliad

Emma

The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations*

American Gods

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius

Atlas shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian

A portrait of the artist as a young man

Love in the time of cholera

Brave new world

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A clockwork orange

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno

The Satanic Verses

Sense and sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les misérables

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes

The God of Small Things

A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A confederacy of dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The unbearable lightness of being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse-five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake : a novel

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity’s Rainbow

The Hobbit*

In Cold Blood

White teeth

Treasure Island*

David Copperfield*

The Three Musketeers

Some points about this list -

I have a definite avoidance of girly 'period' novels going on: I can't stand hard-done-by swooning heroines who have to be rescued from their tragic circumstances by the actions of an honourable man!

I quite like Dickens.

I like science fiction / fantasy.

Some of the books I've never heard of, so I can't tell if I want them on my To Be Read list!

To join or not to join?

I have a terrible, dirty secret. One that will make some librarians gasp in despair, and others maybe will feel relieved that they're not alone.

You see, I'm not actually a member, or user of public libraries.

There, I said it!

In fact, the only time I've been a member of a public library was at Uni, when I joined the local public library...and never used it. As a child, my Mum was a librarian in the local branch, and she just borrowed out books for me on her ticket, so we never got around to getting me a readers ticket. In secondary school, I used the school library, and sometimes the local library, with Mum still borrowing books on my behalf.

Now, as an adult, what I do is go to the local charity shops, buy a pile of whatever books from there that take my fancy at £1 each, read them, then give them back for resale. This means I give to charity twice over, once with the sale to me, and again with the donation back to them to resell. Also, I'll have an occasional shop at Amazon, buying enough of the £3 paperbacks to get free shipping, reading them, then again, giving them to the charity shops. I very rarely keep any of the books I buy, due to both space issues, and a knowledge that it'll be many years before I've forgotten enough of the contents to be able to read them again without thinking "I know what happens next".

I don't have any dependants, my money is entirely my own to spend as I see fit, so I don't feel that spending £15 to £20 a month or so on books is extortionate, although I realise there could be many people who would think spending that much on books regularly is insane.

As someone who isn't addicted to a particular author, reads fast but hates deadlines (ie return dates), tends to choose books to pick up based initially on their spine art, and is constantly fighting a book hoarding instinct, is there really any reason for me to use public libraries?

What could persuade me to switch from my buying and sending to charity habit, to joining and using a public library? Purely in relation to books - I'm aware public libraries have a lot more than just books in them, but I have my own computer and internet access, and don't want to join any sort of groups, so it would have to be the books that would tempt me in.

Am I a bad librarian for not being a member or user of my local library?

I don't understand

Why has this man been allowed to only perform community service after stealing 288 items worth £26,00 from the Catholic Archives in Edinburgh, as blogged before?

The reason for not imposing a custodial sentence? He had already served time for similar thefts in England, so a custodial sentence would be "oppressive".

Erm...so now a valid defence is "he did it before elsewhere, but he's very sorry"?
Surely that's not right?

Worth waiting for!

I'll definitely be having a good look at the online archive of the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament, from the first surviving act of 1235 to its dissolution in 1707.

It's been a huge amount of work (11 years), and looks very impressive! I used to like reading the 19th century reprints of the Acts which this work replaces, so this should make things a bit easier!

Even found a few mentions of my family name...and attempts by a widow sharing my surname to be paid the money her husband was due fromt he Army, back in 1649. She got it ;-)

Records of the Parliament of Scotland to 1707.

The trouble with Scots

As an accent, apparently if baffles transcribers in Devon, leading to mistake in court transcripts.

Although the residents staying at Her Majesty's Pleasure in Barlinnie may prefer their accomodations new name of Barrel Annie....

Turning off Beacon

So, as I continue to get pop-ups on Kongregate asking if it's ok to publish what games I'm playing in my Facebook feed, I decided to try and find out how to turn off Beacon...which I didn't even know was turned on. It seems to only be doing this because Kongregate is an American partner site.

It's in there, in the Privacy settings. If you want to do this too, go to:

Privacy >
News Feed and Mini Feeds >
Actions on External Websites >
Tick box marked "Don't allow any websites to send stories to my profile."

Save changes.

I did NOT like that!

So, I was sent a link to a fun game, Chronotron.
I was playing away, getting past versions of myself to work out puzzles, when a little pop-up appeared on the bottom right of my screen, saying that Beacon was telling my friends I was playing Chronotron on Kongregate, before sliding back into obscurity.
So I went over to Facebook, and sure enough, that information had appeared in my profile!

This is my first encounter with Beacon, and needless to say, I don't think my friends want to know when I'm playing a game on a totally separate website, so I disabled it immediately.
But I didn't know that Beacon was activated, or affected UK users? Maybe I need to find out more about it, as who knows what else it'll be informing my friends I'm doing on other websites!

"A bunch of over-the-hill slappers"

A judge in Canterbury's certainly spoken his mind about the behaviour of a trio of women who robbed and assualted a 31 year old man.

Can't say I disagree with his assessment of them though!

Link via Arbroath

Totally off topic

But...I just booked my tickets for the opening night of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!
How excited am I?!?!?

Yeeeeeeeeee-ha!!!!

*bounces off into the distance*

Current strangest blog search terms

I do get hits on here from some very odd search terms (which has actually prodded me about another point, to be blogged on later), but I have to say, todays is probably a winner, just for the disturbing thoughts about the searcher that it brings to mind:

"ruminants and librarians"

Is there someone out there looking for librarians that chew the cud? Or do they think that somewhere, there's a librarian in charge of a library of ruminants, all peacefully grazing in fields according to their classification?

Enquiring minds want to know....

JK Rowling wins appeal against photo use

JK Rowling has won her appeal against the use by a newspaper of a photograph of her young son, taken while he was being pushed by her in a buggy on a street in Edinburgh in 2004.
And frankly, I don't blame her.
Regardless of what she does or doesn't do in her professional life, that should not have any effect on her personal life. If she's at a professional event, she knows she's going to get photographed, and she prepares herself for that.
She shouldn't have to worry about photos being taken of her and her family while they are enjoying private, family time together, or even, as in this case, just going down the street. And her children shouldn't have to grow up worrying about being pursued by photographers, when their personal life has nothing to do with their mothers job.