Report on IAML Congress 2024, Stellenbosch

Several IAML (UK & Irl) Branch members were fortunate to attend the 2024 Congress of our international organisation – “big IAML” – at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, earlier this month. Taking place in a different country each year, Congress is an exciting opportunity to hear papers from international colleagues and experts in related fields, share…

The British Library: Thoughts on how to help our Patrons

One of our colleagues has recently blogged to remind patrons that librarians in other institutions are ready and willing to help where they can. Read ‘The Library’s doing Nothing? Don’t You Believe it!’ Do you have other suggestions you could share?

Pathways, Outputs and Impacts: Being a Librarian-Researcher Today

In one sense, the talk I gave at the IAML (UK & Ireland) Annual Study Weekend last year (2018) could be seen as a sequel to the “Ghosts of Borrowers Past” talk, which I gave in 2016.  However, it also offered me the opportunity to talk about something completely different – the tricky task of…

Patrick Mills remembered

I was deeply saddened to learn that Patrick Mills had died in December last year. A delightful man who taught me all I know about music cataloguing. This little memoir really begins in 1976 (yes, that summer) when I joined the staff, fresh out of library school, of what was then the British Library Bibliographic…

Getting to know you

A few weeks ago I attended LibCamp; an Unconference for librarians at Cambridge University. What is an Unconference? Well think of the way many of the ASW’s quick-fire sessions worked, but then extend each session up to 45 mins, and you’ve got an idea of the way an Unconference works. Any attendee can suggest a suitable topic,…