Breaking the Rules

A busy day at the office

Struggling with the last stages of a cold, I get up early and eat a good breakfast - nuts, banana, fig, yoghurt, and a glass of milk. No wait for a tube, so I get into work before 8:00. Print off the agenda for a meeting at 9.30 of the Media Commissioning Board. We discuss the interactives for our exhibition, 'Taking Liberties', Taking Liberties Interactive, and how many visitors to the actual physical exhibition used the interactive before or after the visit. We discuss our podcasting strategy. Have to leave after an hour for a one to one with Peter. Next is a discussion of my research strategy paper with conservation and collection care. Later Adam from electronic Information Services rings to discuss their input into the same document. Helen and I then have lunch in the staff restaurant - it's rare for me to do this, as there seems to be a culture of lunchtime meetings. At 1.00 it's a meeting with Phil and a photographer who is interested in photographing the visiting speakers to Eccles Centre events. 

Back in my office I have several emails requiring decisions - will we take part in a web archiving project for the European elections? Yes. Are we interested in a EU network to improve europeana - maybe: I'm worried about the 80% funding of these networks: what is in it for us? Maybe for discussion in The Hague at the European Library Management Board? My papers come through for Thursday's meeting at DIUS. 

Leave work just before 5.00. Pour myself a sloe gin, play Bach's partitas on my I-pod and finish off Paul Benjamin's 'Squeeze Play'. This is the only Paul Auster novel I haven't read. It's got that trademark Auster quality that prevents you putting the book down and the same elaboration of plot that, Greek tragedy style, has to be unwound to allow any closure. You could write a PhD thesis (or several) on why Auster chose to use a nom de plume for this.

Cage and after

It's Monday morning and have to plough through my weekend emails, imagining I'm Cnut (the king, not the polar bear) trying to turn back the tide. Look at my papers for the Board Investment Committee, I have to appear at 10:55 to go through the trust funds expenditure and management for last year. It's a bit disconcerting to be presented with a different set of statistics that separate out the unrealised loss from the expenditure, so am on the backfoot from the start. Our policy is to spend up or amalgamate funds under £10K but some are so specific that some specialist items don't appear for three or four years. The bigger funds are managed to match expenditure with income. But these are difficult times: given falling inflation it may be prudent (a word rather devalued now) to spend some capital? Whether we can do this depends on the trust deeds, objects and powers. Charity Commission

Receive the comments back from peer reviewers for our Arts & Humanities Research Council proposal with Aberystwyth University for a collaborative PhD in Library and Information Science, which hopes to look at the added value professional librarians add to the information cycle. The deadline is Tuesday so have to comment immediately.

Ask Lorna to organise my travel to The Hague in March for the European Library Management Board.The European Library  Wil this become the national library portal into europeana? It probably won't be a dark portal as europeana isn't brilliant at presenting library catalogues. Lorna also gets hold of the Board Room in April as I'm hosting the Fedeartion of European Publishers/Conference of European National Libraries.

Reply to Elena's enquiry from the Moscow State Library: they are increasing the amount of stock on open access - we seem to be heading in the opposite direction as we cope with increasing reader numbers. It's interesting to learn that we have c.0.3 % of our stock on open access, and this accounts for 2.2% of our storage.

Meet with Sharon after lunch and discuss the spreadsheet her team has prepared. This compares the US 'at risk' print journals list we got from OCLC with our holdings. We need also to compare with the UKRR holdings: I expect there to be little duplication as the US list are print only serials, whereas many UK universities have entered their print into the UKRR scheme because their are electronic versions available. But I may be wrong.

Late afternoon it's time for Paula's PhD tutorial which is about self-medication in the 19th Century and she is comparing Britain and Brazil.

Tonight the Eccles Centre has organised a 'Cage and after' talk and concert at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. I remember going there in the early 1980s for a meeting of London arts schools protesting against their amalgamation into the London Institute: Lawrence Gowing was in the chair with his trademark spectacular stutter (it was dangerous to be in the front row). It's not changed much - the home of the South Place Ethical Society and previously Perry's pen and ink factory. Conway Hall First up is a conversation between  David Behrman, Anton Lukoszevieze (of Apartment House) and David Ryan, a former colleague of mine from Chelsea School of Art. It is quite laboured - a giveaway is the early invocation of the audience to contribute. The concert begins with Alvin Lucier's 'Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings' (1995), with pianist Philip Thomas  using e-bows which vibrate the strings of the grand piano. Wallingford Riegger is next with his 'Whimsy for Cello and Piano'  (1930) but before it starts we all become conscious of a heavy rock beat emanating from somewhere - 15 minutes later it is silenced, it was coming from the basement of the building next door. I reflect that this Cagian and post-Cagian music really revalues individual sounds and their production - it revalorises silence, like the song of a bird. Behrman's 'Wave Train' (1966) finishes the first half of the programme. This piece uses feedback from guitar microphones on the piano strings. Works from Ashley, Cage - a prepared piano piece, 'Music for Marcel Duchamp' (1947). This is what I like about London, you can find just about every cultural activity.

Moribundia

Finally finish my last Patrick Hamilton novel, 'Impromtu in Moribundia' (1939). It's unusual for Hamilton. A sort of H.G. Wells inspired time traveller arrives in a utopian future - London and Brighton - where names are Erewhon-style reversed - London becomes Nwotsemaht and so on. Everybody else would have tired of the conceit after a chapter, but Hamilton pursues it to the very end. There are visible speech and thought bubbles and the incarnation of advertisement slogans - girls have faces zoned into before and after acme treatment etc. This is an important SF text that deserves further study.

This is a photo I took of Hamilton's old school in Hammersmith: