Dumpling in a Hanky

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?

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 Eva...

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 admin...

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.

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... ;-)

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?

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!

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?

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...

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 a...

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?

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.

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 . ...

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.

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 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

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*

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 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.

The appeal by Nat Fraser of his conviction for the murder of his wife Arlene will be filmed today , and the footage shown later on the BBC. There will be no footage of Nat Fraser himself, or of the members of the public, just the judges giving a summary of their verdict. I think this is a good step for the Scottish justice system. This case been very controversial, with huge difficulty for both sides in proving guilt or innocence. Being able to see the judges explain, themselves, exactly why they will uphold or quash the conviction should be far more persuasive to the public than a reporter reading out a transcript. Lets just hope Lord Justice Clerk Lord Gill, Lord Johnston and Lord Osbourne make their judgement easily intelligible to the layman. And laywoman.

Yay, the draft feature (was which starting to get annoying, as I had to remember to go to Blogger in Draft to do a future post) has now been launched as a standard feature of Blogger. I had already been using this feature on both my personal blog and this one, but it'll be a bit easier to do now. Woo-hoo!!

Strangely timed, after my post of a couple of days ago, but a collection William Topaz McGonagal's work will be auctioned here in Edinburgh on the 16th of May. Ah, the mangled wording and dodgy rhyming of The Tay Bridge Disaster - rock on Mr McGonagall!

Got time off for good behaviour yesterday, and was allowed out for a CILIPS training event: "Copyright in the digital age: an introduction for information professionals". Chair: Tony Donnelly, Chief Librarian Glasgow Metropolitan College 10.00 Registration and coffee 10.30 Welcome and introduction 10.35 An overview of copyright in the digital age (JISCLEGAL) 11.00 Keynote Managing digital rights (Paul Pedley, Head of Research at the Economist Intelligence Unit) 11.45 The challenges of digital preservation (Simon Bains, Digital Library Manager, National Library of Scotland) 12.30 Using Creative Commons licences (Dr Charles Duncan CEO Intrallect) 1.00 Lunch 2.15 Managing intellectual property rights in digital learning materials:The Trust DR project. (John Casey, EDINA ) 3.00 Digital licenses: a practical guide (Alan Rae, Dundee College ) 3.45pm Summary and close Unfortunately, John Casey was un...

The LOC Blog reports that they've acquired 24 pages of the original drawings for the first appearance of Spiderman in print. Maybe his Spider Senses told him he'd be safe in their archives?