Tim warns of the red menance

Before he deletes it and tries to pretend he never said it, here's a screenshot

 

Sheffield revisited

Remember the Sheffield debate, organised by SINTO? Our Tim, as we feel we must call him, now we know of his Yorkshire roots, was to appear on a panel with library campaigners to discuss the way forward.
It never happened. All the speakers, we were told, Tim included, agreed that it was not the right time for such a debate.
Now he says it was the others who withdrew, in fear. Not what was said at the time. We think that Tim might now have cause to feel a little, if not scared, at least apprehensive, of what will happen when this news gets out.
In case you'd forgotten, he's a great man for what he calls his reputation.

Der Zauberlehrling

Tim has let the apprentice loose with an incoherent attack on CILIP. Remember your Goethe; this is unlikely to end well.

'I learnt librarianship by trial and error in a rare books library with a copy of AACR2!'. Rare books librarianship requires a very particular set of skills, and one fears for scholars of the future if they have to try to disentangle the cataloguing errors made by during the apprentice's learning. What other lessons were learnt by the same empirical method one wonders? Don't stub your cigarettes out on the incunables?

Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras will soon be with us. We were thinking of throwing a party. For some reason a champagne and hummus theme came to mind. Do come

Unintended consequences

Tim's borderline-obsessive hatred of CILIP seems to have be having the opposite effect to that intended. See here, where it seems that he has convinced someone who had not yet joined that he should.

We hold no brief for CILIP, indeed their Vice-President has gone to some, occasionally intemperate, lengths to repudiate us: http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2011/02/coates-watch.html It was the only Valentine we had.

Nevertheless, we do think that the organisation might react in stronger terms to Tim's attempts to dictate, from outside the profession, how it should organise itself. If we were to decide that the Booksellers' Association had lost its way, and pontificate on how it should improve itself, we imagine we would be sent away with several fleas in our ears. Yet is is apparently entirely reasonable for Tim, and the quisling he has gathered to his bosom, to tell librarians what to do. Furthermore, he continues to fall into the vulgar error that the membership of CILIP consists only of professionally qualified public librarians. Over the years, many people have pointed out to him how much of a misconception this is, but his ears are stopped.

Is librarianship a profession? We think so; it is certainly more of a profession than being a travelling seller of patent medicines to Tory councillors.

By their friends shall ye know them part 2

To be expected: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2011/02/how-to-cut-library-spending-wiithout-cutting-libraries.html

According to Wikipedia, Conservative Home 'aims to represent UK grassroots Conservative opinion'. CoatesWatch reads that as a polite way to describe those who, in earlier generations, supported the League of Empire Loyalists or the Monday Club, those who believe that Winston and Maggie are not gone but sleep under a mountain and will wake in a hundred years time to lead them to purge the nation of trade unionists, people with dark skins and anyone who doesn't read the Express, Mail or Telegraph.

That's not what we thought it was called

 

Stop press: a CILIP announcement says that it's cancelled, because all the speakers have withdrawn. There's no statement on the organisers' blog, SINTOblog, but a short announcement on SINTO's events page.

And another update, 22nd February: SINTO have now published a statement: http://sintoblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/sinto-library-campaigns-event.html. They sound miffed.