Breaking the Rules

Vertical integration

Spend a quiet weekend dodging the showers. I'm half way through reading Norbert Lynton's 'Tatlin' for a review: he died before it was finished, and John Milner, completed it - so it sounds a little strange at times, quoting himself. It's kicking off lots of Science Fiction thoughts.

Explore making three dishes from one - I boil a piece of beef (brisket) with celery, onion and carrot, and have some warm with a green sauce. I recycle the stock in a stracciatella soup (with egg, parmesan, breadcrumbs) - simplicity itself. Later I finish off the cold beef in a poached beef salad with spring onion, capers, gherkins, parsley and eggs in a dijon mustard, olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Look through my papers for the Warwick-Duke Humanities Project.

More responses

Amazed at the continuing good responses to the exhibition and the numbers of visitors. Last week's talk on manifestos attracted nearly 100. Sarat rings me up today to congratulate us - I always respect his viewpoint whether on Iranian cinema or Hindu philosophy. He tells me about showing a party of Chinese around who equated avant garde with the now rather than the past.

Whilst in Frankfurt the week before I heard the end of a clip on BBC World about the killing of Clemmensen, the Danish newspaper editor, whose work we have in the Copenhagen section. The Danish government are trying to extradite one of those involved who now lives in Bavaria. Kam

Get home early and reheat some ratatouille I made yesterday. I think I may be seriously addicted to tomatoes. Try to finish my review of 'Representing slavery' for 'The Art Book' - I need to ask the publisher for an image from Francis Meynell's watercolour series on the Middle Passage. Meynell and the Middle Passage

Artists' books 2

On Monday evening took a group from the British Library Advisory Group around Breaking the Rules: they liked it, especially the last sections. Talked to Martin Wade of the National Library of Scotland afterwards - he is very complimentary. and we discuss exhibition spaces, digitisation projects and the spending review. Tuesday: revise the heritage materials list - I maintain the list for our prioritisation meetings - items over £40K or that need external funding. There are some imminent important sales and we need to get our strategy for these honed. Whoever thinks a librarian/curator's job is dull needs to think again. Then it's a debrief from Ronald on the last Executive Team meeting on Monday.

Then after a few emails - the Library and Archives Copyright Alliance list is afflame with discussions of its paper on orphan works - that's materials where the rights holders are untraceable (maybe I should become a lawyer) - I have to give a talk in the gallery on artists' books. It's the best attended so far and the questions are interesting and thoughtful. I start with Kahnweiler's revolution in art dealership - exclusive contracts, publicity and his publishing of new i.e. unpublished literary works by writers who were the friends of artists who 'illustrated' the works. Then the 1912-4 'golden age' of the artist's book in St Petersburg/Moscow, using any and every printing technique available - lithography, letterpress, rubber stamp, hectography etc. And on wallpaper, newsprint, burlap - and even gingerbread. Anybody can make a book without the mediation of a publisher (and sometimes printer). We walk back to Cendars' and Delaunay's 'Transsiberien' which hovers between the deluxe livre d'artiste and the artist's book.

Then it's a Directorate forum with a presentation on the 21st Century Curator Project by Matthew and on the Content Strategy by Graham. After the questions I interject that curators should take more ownership of their own careers and their involvement in the content experts' groups.

I polish off more emails and send the Collection Powerpoints to my fellow Collection Heads - I use it for the induction sessions, but I can't make the next session and Jude wants to do it anyway.

Time to go home. I hate it when they 'regulate' the Tube - it's like an unfair punishment at school, when you are made to suffer for somebody else's sins. It must be illegal under Human Rights legislation. Eventually I get home and decide on what to cook: mashed sweet potato, fresh brown mushrooms in milk, and (apologies to vegetarians) veal and sage. A glass (well actually three) of Chilean red restores me to humanity.

Almost there

On Sunday another 100 lengths, then madrigals in Nunhead, where I have never been before. On the way home and to the No 37 bus we see a cordoned-off crime scene with a smashed-up police car in the middle of the road. It's strange how some of these events disappear from the news. We may never know what happened.

Monday morning into work early. Send off the draft of tomorrow's speech at the House of Commons. Print off the documents for today's meetings. There's an email from Janet - there's a room problem in the Berlin section. I see my boss to discuss the slides for his talk, discuss the digitisation task force and the structure of the music department. I then go down to Exhibitions. Alan has been here nearly all wekend. But the cities in the wall cases have been done and are looking good. I withdraw one of the largest Berlin items. I have to take a journalist around the show - she has written about Chagall and is very knowledgable about the period. She is an enthusiast for Cendrars - so I'm converted - and she's interested how we are trying to put back literature and music back into the avant garde.

I then have to chair the Collection Development Implementation Group. We have an over-arching vision of moving to 'e' - newspapers, serials and e-books etc. The vision has to confront reality of publishers, agents, and technology. We'll get there. There's a problem with one label for the exhibition and I re-draft it.

I'm duty officer tonight and it's quiet until the end when there's a problem closing the Humanities 2 Reading Room, and I have to stop readers moving down to the Humanities 1 Reading Room as it's already closed. On my way out to hand in my pager and basement key a reader approaches me to complain that he has difficulties when he brings in a British Library Document Supply book he has borrowed through his University Library.

Friday before

I have my performance management mid-year with my Director. Then coffee with Stephanie to discuss the British Library's research profile in Library & Information Science Research - we conclude that we are doing quite a lot, but perhaps not making enough of it. Then I see Alison and we discuss the future of the National Preservation Office which is under review.

I try and finish the slides for Ronald's Collections talk but the system is very slow and it takes me twice as long as it should. Janet rings from Exhibitions to check on the opening for 'Blast'. I go down to confirm and take a look at the space. We are behind schedule but at least we have done the wall case panels. Alan and his team are going to have a busy weekend.

I leave work at 5.30 and the Tube is very busy. When I get home, decide on another pasta meal - with sardines this time. My weekly oily fish ration. I listen to the News Quiz on Radio 4. I start to read Feneon's 'Novels in Three Lines' This is a perfect example of my thesis of the link between the avant garde and the printed format: Feneon wrote three-line news items for the newspaper 'Le Matin' in 1906 - this should be called 'News in Three Lines'. Albert Camus used a cutting about a son who returned secretly to his family but was then murdered by his mother and sister, and this so haunted Camus that he made it into a short story. Is the three-line novel the future with our ability to concentrate reduced to a Web-page length?

Calm before...

Relatively quiet on the exhibition front - just a few panels and labels to finalize. There's room for Alban Berg's 'Lulu'. Our copy is dedicated to Schoenberg.
Wedekind's play becomes Lulu's life and death (at the hands of Jack the Ripper) and the characters are introduced as animals - Lulu is a snake. Rupert, consummate professional as ever, has a label up his sleeve. I send to Marketing a list of suitable destinations for posters. I bullet point the highlights of the exhibition for the Chairman. Publishing ring to say the books have arrived. The THES feature is out today and looks good. There are a few queries around invitations to the private view.

I try and catch up with everything else. I revise the timelines for the Directorate Business Plan. Confirm my attendance at the European Library Contacts Meeting in Copenhagen in December. I confirm the agendas for two meetings I chair next week. I have a one-to-one with Carole and the Americas section is going really well - Aquiles, Dorian, Jerry and Matthew showing how professional and committed curators can be. We have a collaborative PhD student, Phil, working on our Canadian Copyright Photographs, and he helps galvanize us too. I check the papers for the Eccles Centre as our Advisory Council meets soon.

I am not renowned for my modesty. But I have conspicuously failed to mention that I am in an exhibition at the British Library, 'Cunning Chapters: a collaborative artists' book'. I've written a manifesto that links with 'Breaking the Rules'. The other contributions are much more worth seeing than mine.

I leave a little early as I have to write my speech for the House of Commons event next week - fortunately NOT on the 5th November.

Zero -8

Bump into Alan on my way in and give him a set of corrected labels - the more times we go through these the better. John rings to discuss the curatorial support for the Britishnness/Citizenship exhibition. I plough through more emails - more suggestions for invites to the private view. I check with Lorna whether the meeting room for the National Co-ordinatinng Committee for Art & Design is still booked and request visitors' passes for Wednesday. I confirm with Jane that I can meet her at the Whitechapel opening tomorrow and sign the Book Works accounts. The show is Langlands & Bell.They were very helpful when I did my 'Artists' Multiples' book and we have kept in touch. I attempt to fill in my Performance Management Mid-year Form for my meeting on Friday, and request a better Magna Carta slide for the presentation I'm preparing for the Director. Sort out the walkthroughs and press views on the 7th and 8th.

My first meeting is the Additional Storage Programme Moves Board - this is the biggest move for the British Library since we moved into St Pancras. We discuss the moves methodology and the risk register. It's a video-conference and I am starting to like the format - you can see more behaviour than in a normal physical meeting.

Back to the sign-off of the last panels. Little errors like Munch for Munich, Franz for Frans...Then another meeting - a brainstorm on collection storage strategy, with post-its left, right and centre. Geraldine rings to ask me down to Exhibitions to discuss a problem with the End of the Avant Garde section. British Library exhibitions have tended to fade out rather than end, and I'm determined we have closure. The problem is that we need to accommodate a computer screen, two collection items and a text panel in a small space. I can cut the text and we solve the problem.

It's 5.30 and I decide to go home. The Tube is very slow tonight. I get home and cook one of my standbys - chilli, garlic, pepper, pasta and olive oil, accompanied by a glass of red wine. Then a salad and a pear. Next door's kitten pours through the backdoor when I unlock it. I feel I could sleep for ten years.

Walk-throughs

Have to cancel my half-day training on the 8th - the press view has to take place then. And I have to take staff through the exhibition in the afternoon. Sign off the isms panel and Paris. I get 10 label panels back - they are too long and typesetting won't save us. The press coverage is intensifying and the weekend Guardian covered us. The Press Office is expecting a big turnout on the 8th.

The build is still behind and we won't be able to start laying out the items until Wednesday. Publishing get a finished paper and hard-back copy of the book - it looks good. I check the copy for the leaflet subsidised by the Friends of the British Library.

All this is on top of meetings (digitisation, 21st Century Curator Project), press enquiries and other requests for information. Sign off travel claims etc.

I walk past the window of a bookies in King Street, Hammersmith - it's a tribute (or is that the right word?) to Telingater's constructivist photomontage on the cover of 'Kirsanov is Called Upon to Speak' (1930).
Or am I now seeing the avant garde everywhere?

Counting down

I get to work at 7.00 - still dark. Geraldine has left on my desk some more panel proofs to OK and I check some labels - the headings can be only one line and though there's a 150 words limit that is also affected by word length. Some of the copy is written in long sentences and needs to be broken down into simpler structures. They are already abridgements of abridgements, and sometimes the sense gets lost. I pack up the rest of the 230 page packet and put into my bag as I now have to run for the Leeds train for a meeting of the CURL Research Support Task Force Consortium of University Research Libraries I manage to do another 90 labels by Leeds. Liz from Imperial is on the same train and we get a taxi to the Brotherton Library Leeds University Library We have a good meeting and a sandwich lunch, then it's back on the train to London and the rest of the labels. I get back just after 5.00pm and take the labels I've checked down to Exhibitions. It's an opportunity to see where the build is - it's looking good, but Alan will have to come into work on Saturday. The projectors are in and the sound is sorted.

It's the Goldsmith film tonight, so we go to the Conference Centre - this is the premiere of Simon Morris' film and Kenny is here too - Simon introduces us and he offers us any of his books that the Library doesn't have. The film has edited readings by Goldsmith and an intriguing score. This would have been a perfect event for the Breaking the Rules Events Programme - he's into defamiliarization - how to look at the world differently. 'Day' is every word of an issue of the 'New York Times' re-typed - it will be impossible to read a newspaper in a 'normal' way ever again. At the end of the film Kenny threatens to do a 3 hour reading but instead makes some brief remarks and tells us that he started off as a sculptor: you can see how he approaches words as a medium, carving and modelling text into something else.

I congratulate Simon on the film and then bump into Philomene, who studied painting at Chelsea when I was there - I haven't seen her for ages - a private view at the Jerwood some years back. It's great that she is interested in Goldsmith. The avant-garde spirit of Chelsea lives on.

48 hours

The last two days have been really busy: on top of the day (and two late nights) job, the exhibition is demanding more and more attention. The building is going well:

Meanwhile there are lots of queries: can Events have a layout of the exhibition for the leaflet; is the credits panel ready; which books on the Thames & Hudson art list should the British Library Shop stock in addition to the earlier list (I add a couple of Gaberbocchus Press books to the email). And there's a query about the private view cards. The Isms panel isn't looking right - do we cut or amend? The idea was to use the definitions from the Arp & Lissitsky book, 'The Isms of Art', but they need changing.

I go up to Belsize Park and act as courier for the the remaining loans - Stefan Themerson's press-cuttings book - the pages with the cards for 'Praesens' and 'Linja' (both in the exhibition) jump out, but should we use the 'Europa' pages instead?

We've got permission to show the extracts from 'The Yellow Star', the 1994 Chronos film on the holocaust. This is for the end of the avant garde section. Carole has done the timings of the 1933 Berlin book burning and the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition scenes but that's the German copy: we decide to cut the sound because there is over-commentary, but that means we have to do captions, so I have to view the English VHS tonight. It's depressing viewing: how could this have happened? how could people have let it happen?