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June 21, 2009
Swindon and the MLA
Following the release of the MLA response to a Freedom of Information question about their working relationship with Swindon Council, it is not hard to predict that officers and senior people in both corners may lose their jobs.
The Borough Solicitor in Swindon might be embarrassed to see in public some of the things that he has written in emails, and others, too.
The impression created by the documents is that the MLA did plenty of 'blacking out' (redaction!) on behalf of themselves, but didn't do the same on behalf of the poor folk in Swindon council..
This saga has plenty more chapters to run.
Posted by Perkins at June 21, 2009 1:05 PM
Comments
Just thought I'd better throw an email in to let my adoring public (all 7 or 8 of them...) know I'm still here and quite willing to foam at the mouth about something. Perhaps my point for today could be that it's about time a few officers and senior people in the library sector lost their jobs as the unpleasant truth is that there is little opportunity in the library sector. This might at least free up some space for a few benighted galley slaves to be unchained from the oars like latter-day Ben-Hurs, and brought up into the light before it's too late. My own field of expertise used to be rare book cataloguing, and Keith Trickey himself has warned that "new graduates [now] look blank at the mention of MARC or AACR2." If people with expertise like myself remain worn-out and disillusioned galley-slaves chained below decks, said well-meaning graduates will surely sail the good ship "Librarius" will straight into a sandbank in the not-too-far distant future and public libraries will degenerate into information points consisting of nothing more than badly-maintained IT terminals.
Posted by: James Christie at June 22, 2009 2:49 PM
Well, I haven't been lynched by a rampaging mob of librarians re my last comment so all I want to say this time is it's about time we all stopped kidding ourselves. There have been few jobs, few vacancies, little hope of career progression (or indeed a career) in librarianship for many years and the situation only seems to be getting worse. East Dunbartonshire Council, for example, is now lumping librarians in with cashiers and the term librarian is now (if I heard correctly) banned in Worcestershire. Some years ago, a source told me verbatim that "Scottish librarianship is dead" and still people say the profession is "thriving." It isn't. I haven't even noticed the credit crunch as the situation for me has always been this dire, and I see no public acknowledgement or respect for the role of librarian. We are always first in the firing line for cuts while the DCMS plays musical chairs. What would I have done differently if I had known this while I was cataloguing that private library in the 1990s? I'd have finished the job, then I'd have sent back the Chartership. I tried to make the best of myself despite a learning disability, and I now feel that all my striving (while nobs in ivory towers wittered on about revalidation, metadata, Web 2.0 and other drivel) was for nothing.
Posted by: James Christie at June 24, 2009 11:04 AM