libraries & archives
Micromuseums
Micromuseum is a new word for me. But that was the topic of a presentation to the Friends of the Glynn Vivian last week by Fiona Candlin of Birbeck College. It was the ideal talk – funny and self-deprecating but full of ideas that rattled your lazy assumptions about what museums are about. And it […]
The destruction of culture: a plea to Swansea Council
What makes a city a city? I mean, in the sense of a particular, distinctive city. Its people, certainly, its geography, landscape and architecture, also its economy and politics. But what really sets a city apart from its neighbours is its culture – that network of traditions, customs, institutions and habits, most of them with […]
Moby-Dick and the poor devil of a Sub-Sub
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) is a book that, once read, will never leave you. Its themes are as close as a book’s themes can be to the essence of being human. Its symbol – ‘symbol’ is a poor choice of word – of the great white whale will stalk your imagination, waking or asleep, for […]
The beautiful librarians are dead: academic librarians and the crisis in public libraries
An adapted version of a talk given to Welsh academic librarians at the WHELF Gregynog Colloquium on 15 June 2015. The city of Kingston upon Hull is famous for its poets, among them Andrew Marvell in the seventeenth century, and Douglas Dunn and Philip Larkin in the twentieth. Hull’s best known contemporary poet is Sean […]
The value of being open
The adapted text of a response to the award of an honorary doctorate by the Open University in a graduation ceremony held in the Wales Millennium Centre on 12 June 2015. Annwyl gyfeillion, rhaid imi ddweud ar y cychwyn ei bod hi’n anrhydedd anhygoel imi dderbyn y radd hon heddiw. I mi mae’r Brifysgol Agored […]
Books and their readers defend Cardiff libraries
This afternoon hundreds of people from Cardiff and some from beyond came together outside the Central Library in The Hayes to protest against Cardiff Council’s decision to close six of its libraries and further diminish the Central Library. Many speakers, including writers like writers like Gwyneth Lewis, Jo Mazelis, Fran Rhydderch and Labi Siffre, emphasised […]
Cardiff Central Library: defend it or lose it!
1 What has been lost “It’s hard not to feel utterly despondent at the current plight of public libraries. Along with the NHS and the BBC, our libraries are some of the few truly remarkable British institutions left. So often absolutely ordinary in appearance, a good library should offer escape routes down the most extraordinary […]
Cardiff libraries: a Council dispossesses its people
Cardiff is a thriving place. Big new developments are announced almost monthly. Recent ones include the new BBC Cymru Wales building near the station, the electrification of the Valleys railway lines and the massive Embankment complex. But while the Council pours resources into stimulating and supporting commercial growth, it leaves some of its basic public […]
The Library of Birmingham
The city of Birmingham is famous for reinventing itself. No sooner are buildings thrown up than plans are hatched to raze them and start again. A good case is the central library. The ‘old’ library, an inverted concrete pyramid of stupendous brutality opened in 1974, has been abandoned in favour of a brand new block […]
Introducing electronic legal deposit in the UK
One of the greatest of Lynne Brindley’s achievements during her twelve years in charge of the British Library was to remain steadfastly true to the Library’s aim, shared with the other UK copyright libraries, of extending the law of legal deposit to encompass publications in digital form. This article casts a retrospective and sometimes rueful […]
