Library stuff
Went on a CPD visit to the MOD library in Whitehall on Wednesday. It was pretty cool. We got to see Henry VIII's wine cellar, and the library itself. They do a lot based on online resources, but the library itself would have seemed like the coolest place in the world to my eleven-year old self. All the Jane's series, and tons of books on aircraft and military history. Including a couple of titles I want to look out for. A history of the "Eagle Squadrons" and a really cool encyclopaedia of WWII codenames.
Thursday was hand-in day at work and went OK. I missed the last hour of it, as I was off to a film. About librarians.
The Hollywood Librarian is a low-budget independent documentary about libraries and librarians, using how movies portray "us" as a starting point. It was interesting, but a little twee at times. Some of the film clips were great, though. I got to see some scenes from the anti-censorship Storm Center, and scenes from Desk Set with Katherine Hepburn as a librarian were accompanied by interviews with her sister Peg, a real-life librarian. There was a good point made about how SF films have used empty or destroyed libraries to signal the end of civilisation - Zardoz featured here, but Logan's Run, and to an extent Rollerball ("we've lost the fifteenth Century") could also apply*. Disappointed not to see Shawshank Redemption featured. However, there was some good stuff from a real-world prison library where long-term inmates are volunteering in a literacy program to help their peers. Their story is tied in with the battle to save the public libraries in Salinas, home of John Steinbeck. Which is a great story, but should, to my mind, have been a separate documentary. The interviews with the librarian at Cesar Chavez public library, and Olish Tunstall, were powerful stuff. Perhaps the feature film should have been made as two different fifty-minute documentaries for TV.
silverjet_allie, minx2012 and Pete came along, as did privatep32. Hope the non-librarians didn't have too rubbish an evening. I also bumped into Mandy from City, someone from one of the Inns' libraries, and Vic from the softball team.
And Issue 12 of City of Heroes has gone live and I created a psychic blaster. Called "The Librarian".
*See, now this is why the Morrow Project needs to be recruiting librarians...
Thursday was hand-in day at work and went OK. I missed the last hour of it, as I was off to a film. About librarians.
The Hollywood Librarian is a low-budget independent documentary about libraries and librarians, using how movies portray "us" as a starting point. It was interesting, but a little twee at times. Some of the film clips were great, though. I got to see some scenes from the anti-censorship Storm Center, and scenes from Desk Set with Katherine Hepburn as a librarian were accompanied by interviews with her sister Peg, a real-life librarian. There was a good point made about how SF films have used empty or destroyed libraries to signal the end of civilisation - Zardoz featured here, but Logan's Run, and to an extent Rollerball ("we've lost the fifteenth Century") could also apply*. Disappointed not to see Shawshank Redemption featured. However, there was some good stuff from a real-world prison library where long-term inmates are volunteering in a literacy program to help their peers. Their story is tied in with the battle to save the public libraries in Salinas, home of John Steinbeck. Which is a great story, but should, to my mind, have been a separate documentary. The interviews with the librarian at Cesar Chavez public library, and Olish Tunstall, were powerful stuff. Perhaps the feature film should have been made as two different fifty-minute documentaries for TV.
silverjet_allie, minx2012 and Pete came along, as did privatep32. Hope the non-librarians didn't have too rubbish an evening. I also bumped into Mandy from City, someone from one of the Inns' libraries, and Vic from the softball team.
And Issue 12 of City of Heroes has gone live and I created a psychic blaster. Called "The Librarian".
*See, now this is why the Morrow Project needs to be recruiting librarians...