Dumpling in a Hanky

The House of Lords Constitution Committee has published its eigth report, " Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum ". Within that, Sections 79 to 83 discuss the effect of a potential "Yes" vote in the upcoming referendum, with the following result: If an independent Scotland were to have its own supreme court, justices with experience of Scots law would no longer be appointed to the UK Supreme Court. However, given their UK-wide remit, serving justices with this experience should continue to sit on the Supreme Court until their scheduled date of retirement.

                                                                              Unofficial Open Access logo Last year, I sector hopped a bit, going from a law library, to the academic sector, and on to a public body. During my academic sector interlude, I was working with Open Access publications, sourcing academic materials in the appropriate formats and versions, and uploading them to the institutional repository. Now, to anyone working in academic libraries, that sentence probably needs no further explanation, as they know exactly what it relates to. However, outside the academic sector, the topic of Open Acce...

Land Registration (Scotland) Act 2012 seminar notes TUPE update notes Because my new role means that I'm regularly asked do to legal research, it also means that I need to make sure that my level of general knowledge of a wide range of legal topics is pretty high, and that it stays high. Helpfully, my employer runs in-house training sessions on all sorts of things, for all sorts of departments, and these seminars are also open to a range of staff. That means that my colleagues and I can take the chance to get some excellent information from speakers on relevant topics, both drawn from our own staff and from external experts. I've been learning about land law, employment/company law, and there's some environmental training coming up soon too. These sessions are interesting on multiple levels - it's great for me to be able to have access to the level of professional training that the solicitors have, which helps me get my knowledge up to a higher level, but it...

I am, as you may know, a member of CILIP, the professional body for information professionals. There are two main reasons I'm a member. I am a Chartered librarian, and I take my commitment to maintaining this visible badge of my professionalism seriously. I have revalidated my Chartership within the previous assessment system, and I have submitted my Revalidation within the new system. To continue being a Chartered librarian, I must be a member of CILIP (although currently the commitment to continue to revalidate my Chartership is voluntary, and has been so for the length of my membership since approximately 2001). So I continue to be a member. I am a registered CILIP Mentor, and I help to guide those information professionals who are keen to be professionally qualified through the Chartership/professional qualifications process. I could not abandon midway through that process the people who are looking to me for guidance in their professional development. So I continue to be...

There's been all sorts of publicity about Wikipedia since it first appeared, and opinion among the librarians I know has swung from "that's potentially useful" to "that's a bit dodgy, I don't think I can trust it", and finally on to "that's a good start for finding information on all sorts of stuff, but I need to be aware of its shortcomings". So, I know Wikipedia's handy, and I know I have to be wary of certain stuff (it's notorious for being maliciously edited on pages covering contentious topics, and amusingly Wikipedia has a page on malicious edits/vandalism on Wikipedia ), but I don't know how to look into the workings of it and assess it properly. I know the editors are volunteers, but how do they become volunteers, and how exactly do they edit pages? And what are the systems in place to stop or flag up unreliable edits? If I'm going to explain to my service users why they should or shouldn't rely on a Wikipe...

Who would have thought that Eminem secretly yearned to be a librarian? Is the life of a rap star not exciting enough for him, that he wants a career change to a more cerebral calling? In fact, it seems that he not only wants to be a librarian, but he wants to be the BEST librarian, as the lyrics of his recent song with Rihanna show: At 1.36, he proudly declares: "but it was confusing 'cause all I wanted to do is be the Bruce Lee of loose leaf." Bit odd, really, seeing as most librarians loathe looseleafing with a passion, but to each their own, I s'pose...

Last year, I accumulated almost 230 hours of Continuing Professional Development, or CPD, hours. This total includes: The time spent attending professional events The time spent managing the development of the Informed website The time spent creating content for Informed, my blog, and other locations The time spent providing professional training to others Time spent mentoring Chartership candidates While I was doing this stuff, I also: Lost one job suddenly Started two new jobs Applied for 100 jobs Prepared for and attended multiple interviews Completed the time consuming renovations of my house Read 67 books This isn’t a humblebrag, it’s just an example of what’s actually achievable in terms of professional activity and involvement, with a bit of motivation and organisation. My total is well in excess of the average professional body CPD requirement of 20 hours annually (prospectively, 20 hours annual CPD will be a requirement for Chartered CILIP members, to R...