Thursday 31 March 2011

Don't panic

Currently listening to students talking about town planning, planning permission etc, and all I can think of is Hitchhikers Guide...

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But, look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Wednesday 30 March 2011

5 things

It's been a ferociously busy couple of weeks since the students got back from break, as the deadlines began to mass - for me as well as for them.

5 things I am grateful for:

  1. - interesting questions. There's no better kind of busy than getting research requests that give me cause to think and learn and explore something from a different angle as I go. My to-read list has been getting longer all month.
  2. - Koha's list feature, which makes putting together a convenient shelf list of material in the LUP library for someone a snap, and allows me to re-use them where that's appropriate.
  3. - organisations that catalogue to content-page level, plus those that provide index page previews; all the better for ruling a potential book in or out.
  4. - e-prints, institutional research repositories, open data and open research.
  5. - the London Library team, who I've been visiting daily - occasionally twice-daily - and the ILL team on campus who have helped several students out of tight corners at short notice



* Photo by Rob Warde, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Frankenstein

Frankenstein's one of my favourite classic novels, and with all the buzz around the NT production of Nick Dear's adaptation, my expectations were high - and then surpassed.

We had Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature - absolutely incredible, and so intense - and Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor Frankenstein, and I am planning to try for day tickets during my break week to try and catch the alternate casting, because I'm so intrigued now about how much - or how little - difference that would make.

If you have the chance, this would be well worth waiting in the morning queue for day tickets.