Dumpling in a Hanky

It seems to be the week for messages in bottles being discovered in Scotland, filled with either mysterious  (or not so much, when translated , but still a lovely sentiment) or vintage scientific messages . Looks like that's my weekend sorted then: I shall contribute to the world stock of random messages in bottles, adrift at sea. What message should I put in my bottles?...

So, only three short months after submission*, and yet still many weeks before the next scheduled Board meeting on 12th September (CILIP moves in arcane ways), I got an Exciting Email on the 24th August - my Chartership Revalidation portfolio had been accepted, yaaaaaaaaaay! So, I believe this makes me a Very Valid librarian. You may worship at my feet, and shower me with gifts and adoration now... And it also possibly shows me to be reasonably masochistic, to have effectively put myself through the whole Chartership process all over again, four years** after I did it for the first time. Not to mention that fact that I'm going to be doing it again in another three years***. So why did I do it? Well, to quote George Mallory, "because it's there". Also, because it works well within my workplace's appraisal system. This system focusses on enabling staff to identify and address any deficiencies in either their own skills, or in the services that they provide to ...

Spiegeltent inner roof canopy Last week, I was part of the Scottish Law Librarians Group annual outing to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. This year, the chosen talk was The Guardian debate,  "Rethinking the Internet: is the web changing society for the worse?" , with the following description: We have embraced the online revolution with open arms and nearly 20% of all retail purchases are now made via the internet. More than that, the internet appears to be empowering citizens in ways that challenge the traditional relationship between individual and state. Is the net effect positive or negative? Writer Nick Harkaway, novelist Naomi Alderman and James Gleick, author of The Information, lead the discussion. Chaired by Ian Katz, Deputy Editor of the Guardian. * So, you'd think with that sort of blurb that the debate would allow some involvement from those not in the room, via the internet itself e.g. that someone official (the Book Festival does have a T...

Ohhh, it's all gone quiet on the news front, hasn't it? Normally, summer is a much quieter time around the office anyway, as less information's coming in. The Scottish and Westminster Parliaments are in recess, courts are in summer vacation period, and the " Silly Season " begins in the newspapers. Currently, the Silly Season stories are being replaced by the Olympic Frenzy stories, which are almost as mind-numbing.in content, and as irrelevant to my usual work as the daft stories about things like a cartoon-style hamster pursuit .* This leads to a slight lessening in the volume of routine work coming in...but unfortunately, that doesn't mean we get to slack off, sit twiddling our thumbs, or race the Library study chairs around the office. Oh no: now's the time when all those, pushed-to-the-bottom-of-the-To-Do-list,  "when I get some more time" projects start to get all the attention! Need to revise and update in-house training materials? ...