Dumpling in a Hanky

The State Papers Domestic of Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, covering the period from 1509 to 1603 are now available online for anyone who's interested to rummage though, at State Papers Online. The papers cover a vast range of issues from the time: Containing 380,000 facsimile manuscript documents linked to fully-searchable Calendar entries, Part I delivers the complete collection of State Papers Domestic for this era. Every facet of early modern Government is detailed including social and economic affairs. Key themes of Part I include: Henry VIII’s relations with Europe The Reformation The Dissolution of Monasteries Elizabeth I: Marriage and the Succession Voyages of Discovery of Drake, Gilbert, Hawkins and Frobisher Relations between the Crown and the nobility The rise and fall of the Earl of Essex The diplomacy of William Cecil and Francis Walsingham Includes: From the National Archives, London: SP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 From the British Libra...

An interesting weekly blog about book sleeve design. There's some lovely books out there! Faceout Books

I promise! This is the last of them! Chair / Bookshelf in one Source Detachable Bookshelf Source Little Wooden Cubes Shelf Source Infinity Bookshelf Source Twisted Bookcase Source Triangle Shelves Source Apple Crates Source Colourful Shelving Source Tree Shelf Source

And more fun shelves and library bits and bobs! Pocket Library Source Hanging Bookshelf Source Batman Chair Source Book Hangers Source Salvaged Shelves Source Maze Bookshelf Source

Miss Jennie has scheduled some lightweight, pretty-bookcases / shelving and random thoughts posts over the next week or two...as she's heading off to the Winter sun of New Zealand, yay! As of Saturday / some-point-far-too-many-hours-travel-later, I'll be on holiday, escaping to the not-depths-of-freezing-Winter delights of Christchurch. And, I'll be fitting in a trip to Wellington, and probably even a trip to the NZ Parliament building and a tour. Yes, even on holiday, I'm a law geek.. So, toodle-pip, see ya in the new year!

Did you know that Obama will be having an effect, even in Scotland ?

Ah, the joys of Crib Candy - so many pretty things appear in my feed reader! Of course, as a library geek, I keep a note of the nicest shelving solutions...hey, you never know when my employers might go mad and demand a redesign of the Library using only eco-friendly materials, or one entirely suspended from the ceiling, right?!?! So, here's some of the most interesting book shelves that I've seen recently. Diagonal Bookshelves Source Slat shelf Source Rotating Bookshelf Source Rotating Shelving System Source Double Access shelf Source Leaf Shelf (with perhaps a OTT claim - "Available in all leaves of the known universe." Source Leaves Bookshelves Source Bamboo Bookshelves Source Think that's enough for now...more to follow!

I'm continuing to add to this list, as and when I can, and trawl through those already on the list to check for changes since the last visit / my mistakes in the collection of the initial list (my apologies to Neil Infield for accidentally renaming him to Ian!) Also, I received an email telling me to look at FADE Library 's great work on collecting UK health library blogs, which I will(with their kind permission) also add in to the overall list (and blog about in a later post) to try and make it as comprehensive as possible. Unfortunately, my email provider went squiffy and deleted the original email before I could reply, so I don't know who to credit for alerting me to this massive piece of work by the FADE staff, and also means their own blog details were zapped! If this was you, please can you get back in touch so I can add your blog, and say thank you personally!

...got 'er 'ead chopped OFF! Well, she did in my childhood, while I viciously beheaded poor, innocent dandelions! And yesterday, the Scottish Government presented a copy of the Death Warrant for Mary to the Blairs Museum in Aberdeen, while the original will stay in Lambeth Palace in London. Hmmm....maybe time to do a little touristy sightseeing during my next trip in January? Image source

From the Edinburgh City Libraries website comes news of Capital Collections , "an exciting website giving online access to some of the amazing and unique prints including photographs, engravings and drawings held by Edinburgh City Libraries." As a resident of Leith, which has been undergoing insane roadworks to install an unwanted tram network for 2 years now, and facing another 3 years of them before completion in 2011, this photo is pretty topical right now. It certainly feels like they've been messing with the roads non-stop since this photo was taken in 1904!

I went to look at the news on the JLSS site, and decided I'd agree to take part in the survey - I thought I might be able to give some feedback about the removal of the Library / research area, and why it should be redesigned. After all, it did say "We would greatly appreciate it if you could complete a short survey to help us improve the Journal website. Click here to have your say"... Instead, I got presented with the most random of surveys: Erm...hello? Exactly what has my home ownership status, and my hot beverage choice got to do with the website redesign, and the missing Library usefulness?!? Is someone there taking the pee? Were they scrambling to find a way to fill up SurveyMonkeys default setting of 10 questions, and threw in the tea/coffee option? Come on JLSS, you did an otherwise great redesign of the website (we're ignoring the Library 'thing' for just now), can you please not let it all down at the end with a silly, unfocussed survey?!

The Scottish Council of Law Reporting , publishers of the Session Cases, have made selected cases available for free from their website. In their own words: For some years the Scottish Council of Law Reporting has provided the law-teaching universities in Scotland with a CD-ROM containing cases selected from the Session Cases ® archive to distribute as a learning aid to their students. Technologies change, and the Council is pleased to provide a database of Scottish cases selected from their archive as an open access resource. The only problem I'm having is finding out a listing or index of what these selected cases are, but hey, for allowing even some access to an otherwise subscriber access only database, I'm not complaining!

The current Big Idea in the legal / library blog world is the Free Legal Web (FLW). Originally mooted by Nick Holmes, the idea is to pull all of the content currently floating about the ether (legal professionals blog posts, Government information etc) into one portal. That in itself is a big enough task, but what doesn't seem to be clear yet is...who is this Free Legal Web for? The people involved so far seem to be legal professionals and IT specialists. The legal professionals will be working out some way of getting the useful materials together, and persuading other legal professionals that giving up their valuable time and work (such as blog postings) for this enterprise will be a worthwhile investment, and will reap them rewards in the end. The IT professionals job will be to write the scripts and programmes that will get everything together in the one place, and working well with all the other bits and pieces. That's all lovely (although it's hard to tell what's...

Yay! As emailed out over lis-law last week, the Copyright Licensing Agency have developed a CLA licence just for law firms . Body of the press release below: New licence for law firms 15th October 2008 CLA have announced the launch of a new licence designed specifically for UK law firms. From 1 November 2008, the new Law Licence will offer law firms additional benefits to the existing photocopying rights. The Law Licence now enables articles and clippings from law reports, journals and press cuttings (magazines, journals, legal and other periodicals, but not newspapers) to be scanned, stored electronically and distributed externally to clients. The new licence has been developed in consultation with The Law Society of England and Wales and the City of London Law Society so that it meets the needs of law firms that wish to copy from law reports and journals, business titles and other published media. Chris Holland, Librarian & Head of Information Services at the Law So...

A legal librarian friend forwarded me this event notification today from SIN, the Scottish Information Network . Unfortunately, I didn't get the notification myself (nor did at least one other member that I know of), despite having joined SIN back in April. I think they may need to look at their email /contact list management! Scottish Information Networking event - First steps in blogging Dear colleague Do you blog or are you thinking about blogging? The Scottish Information Network is running an evening event entitled “First steps in blogging” on Tuesday November 4th. Come along and hear advice from some real bloggers or perhaps even plug your own blog! The event will also be an opportunity to meet with other members of the network and find out more about what’s happening in the information world. See below for more details and let me know ASAP if you would like to attend John Coll Business Information Services Manager Scottish Business Information Service National Library of Sco...

Starting on Saturday 8th November, the Edinburgh Festival of Libraries will be running a week long programme of talks, walks, tours, presentations roadshows and behind-the-scenes peeks into some of the many different types of library services working in Edinburgh. Lots of interesting things going on, but I'm kinda ruled out of any of the daytime events by working (I've maxed out my holiday allowance for the year, boo, hiss), which is a shame, because there's plenty I'd have loved to be able to go to! So, to make sure I still get to do *something*, I've emailed to book a place for the finale event on Friday 14th November: Finale event - Future of the Book Panel discussion "The Future of the Book" Print books or e-books? Uplift or download? Writers and readers or interactive interchange? We are pleased to present a panel of informed people who will present and discuss a range of views on this topic. The discussion will be chaired by Stuart Kelly, Literary...

You turn your back for 5 minutes... Last week, the Law Society of Scotland launched a redesigned website for the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland, with minimal (if any) fanfare. Well, there may well have been a fanfare, but as I'm not a solicitor and so therefore not on their emailing list, I only found out when I went to check up on their news area last week. It doesn't even list it as something of note in their own News area...no press releases to The Firm Magazine , nor Scottish Legal News ...is this some sort of terrible secret, not to be publicised to the world at large? This is how it used to look (Feb 2008 image from Internet Archive): This is how it looks now: It is, however, a bit of a good news / bad news situation. So we'll start cheerfully with The Good News : It's pretty, it's shiny, and looks much more sleek and modern. The JLSS now has blogs, yay! There are links from the homepage to both the Editor's blog, and the Law Society's blog too...

So, last week I did a firewalk for charity, at Edinburgh Zoo. Due to the 'delightful' roadworks going on in Edinburgh for, ohhh, eternity, I arrived at the event at 7pm just as the briefing started, instead of the planned 6.30pm for registration. Apparently, in the few minutes before the briefing officially started, it was announced that a daily news show crew were there to film us, and if anyone objected to being filmed, could they make themselves known. It seems like nobody did, because we were all filmed by the crew at various points, usually in the background to the presenter. I have absolutely no desire to be on TV, particularly during a stressful event, so I was not best chuffed to find out by questioning other firewalkers that what I thought was perhaps going to be a promotional clip for the company organising the firewalk, or for the Zoo itself was actually going to end up on national telly. Added to this was the fact that I had not been asked about my agreement to the...

Lo-fi librarian tagged me as part of Information Overlord s meme, and has therefore forced me to reveal my terrible taste in music. I admit it, I'm a pop princess, and have a disturbing love of 1990s pop at that. Fiendish lo-fi, fiendish! If I'm ostracised from society for this list, I shall blame you!! So, the challenge was to name my top 5 favourite bands beginning with the letter 'S', so here goes... Salt N Pepa - Lets Talk About Sex This one is because my Mum used to delight in singing along to this any time she had me and any of my friends trapped anywhere, like in the car. I could claim that she was trying to encourage healthy discussions in that area, but realistically, she just enjoyed embarrassing lots of pre-teen girls. Semisonic - Closing Time I worked for a summer in America in a theme park, first as a landscape gardener, then as a ride operator when the bulk of the staff went back to school after the summer break. This song was the last one played every ni...

For entertainment, I sat and graded the ads I was getting for 15 mins again, refreshing them to see what would come up to replace what I'd marked as 'irrelevant'. The results, from their headlines: Rachel Ray diet (twice), 1,000,000 people can't be wrong (Pink Patch ad, this one is particularly repetitive, 8 times out of 12 this replaced an ad I'd removed by rating it irrelevant!), the Pink Patch diet (same as the other one, but different format...this company must have an impressive advertising budget), Floristry courses at Bournville College, the GI patch (yet another diet offer!), free Samsung Tocco, Poor history credit card (multiple), Call worldwide for a month (some sort of phone plan), free PS3 with T-Mobile, Home in Cyprus and Greece, Instant payday loan, free Samsung Soul, Jobs in Oxfordshire (twice), Want a PS3 for £10.92? (auction site ad), The best of Dagenham, A few drinks tonight? (don't know what this advertised, had website link but I didn't ...

A collection of some of the pretty / fun library related stuff I've bookmarked over the past few weeks... Furniture and decorative bits, made out of those pesky, un-recyclable books: Source Elephant / bus / snail shaped bookshelves for kids rooms...funky! Some fabulous, (and some insane) shelving / bookcase ideas here . My favourite is this one, the arrangement in the top right makes it look like a tree full of books: And finally, a way to reuse all those Metro papers that keep appearing in the corner of rooms.... roll them into twine , and make them into rugs!

Argggh, it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day today! Enjoy the day me hearties!!

Have you noticed the little 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' icons underneath those ads that appear (in new-look Facebook) along the right hand side of your screen? Facebook allows you to rate these adverts, as shown in the text of the popup displayed below: Tell us what you think Why didn't you like this ad? Choose reason: Misleading Offensive Pornographic Uninteresting Irrelevant Repetitive Other Thanks for your feedback. Over time, this information helps us deliver more relevant ads to our users. I have been studiously grading the adverts I get over the past few days, marking almost all of them as either 'uninteresting' or 'irrelevant', and actually, the amount of ads I'm now seeing for 'miracle diets' (wow, there's an incredible range of insane diets out there!) , debt management companies, 'free' stuff, ways to live like a celebrity, fundraising as a mother (why that one for me? I don't have kids, unless I've got rea...

I was allowed out last week (yes, entirely unsupervised! Well, apart from Lorna...) to attend a free Society for Computers and Law event on " Facebook and Social Networking Sites: Cyber-Stalking Paradise 2.0 " Yes, I'm a sad geek, but hey, t'was free! The presentation was by Professor Lilian Edwards, who was an entertaining and informative speaker. The lack of inbuilt privacy in Facebook wasn't new to me (I'd been in and fiddled with the settings to 'lock down' my profile only to approved friends, and block some people from finding me almost as soon as joining last September), but the discussion of why the site is so 'open' was something I'd not really thought about before. Facebook was set up to be open, to allow social groups comprised of school years with school issued email addresses to network, and act as an online yearbook. Which was fine when those were the only people using the system, but when it was opened up to general use, there...

Once again, another SLLG members event has been organised, this time we're sorting out our poor, abused books:  The National Library of Scotland have agreed to host and deliver a Book Preservation Awareness Workshop for SLLG members.  This half-day session takes a pro-active approach to preservation and the training will be provided by a qualified conservator.  The workshop will cover the causes of deterioration and the basic first aid treatments to apply once the root cause of the damage has been identified. Topics for the Book Preservation Awareness Workshop: 1.         Prevention is better than cure 2.         Basic repair methods to include tip-ins and tears 3.         Four-flap enclosure 4.         Proper use of Clarkson Book Cradles 5.         Book handling 6.    ...

I think that (thanks to the Scottish Legal Newsletter ) I may have found the training course I've been looking for! " An introduction to law in contemporary Scotland " from the Open University looks like it'll cover the basics well enough...it might not go into the further depth I'd like, but it's a pretty good start! This course looks at law making in contemporary Scotland and introduces you to some specific areas of Scots law including the law relating to employment and to children. It considers the role of both the Scottish Parliament and Courts in law making. The course will be of particular interest to anyone who wants an overview of how the legal system in Scotland operates and will provide an excellent beginning to students who want to understand how modern Scotland works.

Gadget Lab muses on what would improve the next version of the Kindle, as the original version's been out for a year. Have to say, it's never struck me as the most attractive of toys: definitely looks like it's escaped from a 1960 "visualisation" of the future...

Looking at the report here from The Register , it looks like the Kindle (and other e-readers) might not be selling as well as the hype may have previously suggested. I dunno if that makes the Luddite in me happy, or the techie geek in me sad...regardless, I'd like to at least have a shot of one to see what I'm missing :D

I was asked to email this out to members of the SLLG last week, and thought it was interesting enough to share: The Advocates Library’s exhibition highlighting the link between the Scottish printing trade and the practice of law in Scotland will be on show in Parliament Hall, Edinburgh , from 11 August until 27 September 2008, Monday to Friday, 9am until 4.30pm.  With the kind permission of the Lord President, the exhibition will be open to the public and will form part of the Scottish Courts programme of events in Parliament House for Doors Open Day, 27 th September 2008.  Examples from the library’s unique 18 th century collections of printed Session Papers will be displayed in addition to other items from the Library’s extensive collections.  Session Papers are documents used in the presentation of cases in the Court of Session, Scotland ’s supreme civil court.  The papers often include non-legal documentary exhibits such as drawings, plans and maps....

Well, apparently, according to the recent Times article. The only problem is, Alex Wade doesn't seem to have bothered actually doing any proper research. They've decided that only staff at law firms are likely to blog, or have any knowledge of the law, thereby ruling out advocates / barristers, academic law professionals, support staff / librarians, students.... There are lots of law blogs out there, by all sorts of people working in the law, all it takes to find them is a few minutes! I randomly selected one of the blawgs listed in the article, and a quick look at some of Geeklawyers blawgroll lists the following: Bar Council Blogs Batgirl was a librarian Binary Law CharonQC Conflict of Laws Corporate Blawg Current Awareness Family Law Free Movement Head of Legal Human Law Impact IPKat Law Outsider Lawclanger Legal Beagle Legal Spy lo-fi librarian Martin George Open Content Lawyer Pink Tape PJH Law Publawyer Pupillage and How to Get It Ruthieslaw ...

From some of its headlines in the last week, you'd be forgiven for thinking the answer is "yes"! First up was this delightful individual , who they (and other news sites) decided to label as a "librarian" of child pornography images. The original source of the word librarian seems to come from the quote at the bottom of the page: Det Chief Supt Mark Braithwaite, from Cleveland Police, said Thompson had been "a critical piece of this network". "He was the librarian/warehouseman for a myriad of images that were distributed to like-minded individuals both in this country and elsewhere." Also, a second quote from a different source in a Reuters UK report: "He was a senior administrator for a pedophile website and was effectively a librarian for the storing and distribution of indecent images of children," Detective Sergeant Rebecca Driscoll said outside court. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but what he was doing (as stated...

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." As mentioned previously here , I went on a Scottish Law Librarians Group organised trip to an Event at the Book Festival. Despite it being all about books, it was actually reasonably difficult for the Committee to find an event at a time that would hopefully allow people to attend, and on a topic that was relevant to our jobs! The closest we could come was one on a Scottish-specific topic, in this case, the history of the Scottish publishing industry over the last few hundred years. This turned out to be a really ...

Noriko Ambe's work is fab - I love intricate things like this! They make the books look like topographical maps, or some sort of clockwork item! From Swiss Miss

As I waffled about back in March , it was recently shown that pacemakers could be hacked. At that point, they weren't sure what exactly could be done to the pacemakers, but now...they know. Some academics have managed to turn off pacemakers by remote control ... Definitely not conducive to good heart health!

Sarah Hammond, an MA student, is researching the world of UK library blogging, and is trying to compile a comprehensive list of UK public library blogs. She's going to post the results on Delicious, with the username Public_biblioglogosphere , and has kindly agreed to allow me to add the results of her work into the overall UK library bloggers wiki. She's also doing her dissertation on the UK biblioblogosphere, and has set up a survey for UK public librarians to fill in here , if they're feeling  nice. It should only take 10 minutes, and will give you an inner glow of happiness for being so lovely :D

After some checks by someone who's much more technical than me, it appears the invite for the survey was for a BT telephone directory. Glad of that - the less I have to do with Phorm the better (although as a Virgin Media customer, I wonder if that decision's always going to be mine to make)

I participate in various online surveys, getting pennies, or prize draw entries in return. Last night, I got sent the following invite - hands up who thinks it's in some way linked to BTs Phorm experiment? Hi Jennie, We have a new survey available for you to take. You will also be asked if you would like to take part in an ongoing program run by BT in which you will be asked to take part in online activities. You will need to provide your e-mail address and register on the website so that you can be sent the details of how to take part. In exchange for taking part you will be entered into weekly prize draws. If you complete the survey but do not register to take part in the rest of the online program you will be rewarded 25p if you register to take part in BT's online activities you will receive £1.00. You will also be redirected straight to a BT site at the end of the survey. Please be assured that your e-mail address will only be used to contact you about this study. Or maybe...

From Neatorama , a report from a reader of the blog about a Google StreetView car getting pulled over by the police for using the buses / cycles / taxis only lane in Bradford....with amusing photos... Wonder if the close-up views of the car park of the old police station will be turning up on StreetView? :-)

Since Gordon Brown's gone on holiday, that leaves the country under the watchful eye of his co-pilots.While looking at this BBC News article about deputies, I had a little moment when I wondered whether Harriet Harman (one of the 3 grown-ups currently in charge) had ever got back to her blog . she had a little incident in April when it was hacked, and her 'resignation letter' was posted. It would appear she's not gone back to it since...although there is a spoof blog that's quite entertaining! Actually, I think I prefer the spoof one to the real one...

...I shall detour from my normal random posting on vaguely law and library related topics, and sidestep into my "real" life for a moment. On Saturday 19th July , I took part in the Edinburgh Rat Race for the 2nd time, doing the Mean Streets Prologue event. The Rat Race is a team event, 3 people with 2.5 hours to make their way around the city by foot, hitting checkpoints and completing fun challenges along the way. the Adventure Class do it over 2 days, with much more crazy stuff on the second day, and the Mean Streets counts as their warmup, taking placeon the Saturday evening. As a not-very-fit sorta person, I wasn't sure I could manage this at all last year, but I did, and so I was looking forward to doing it again this year. A friend organised the teams, so we entered 6 teams of 3 peeps. I'd never met my team-mates before, so I was worried I'd be slowing them down if they were really fit:  a 20 year old Uni student and Officer Cadet, and a 40ish marathon runn...