Scottish Libraries, Column 1

It’s quite daunting sitting down to write a first Presidential column. What note (or is it pose?) to strike? The Latin tags of my distinguished predecessor Stuart James, the mellifluous and measured prose of a Colin Will or just go with the Chic Murray jokes? It’s late January as I write so nothing much has happened to the President yet. I’m told a little biography is a customary starting point. So, born 1947, school in Arbroath and later Edinburgh (Knock knock. Who’s there? Emma. Emma who? Emma Watsonian), mediaeval history at Glasgow University then library school at Strathclyde. Conventional progression through the ranks in St Andrews, Edinburgh and London before returning to Strathclyde University in 1998. Turned my hand to most things – cataloguing, serials, reader services, medical libraries, IT of various sorts. A big mouth and a taste for bad jokes led to LA Council, IFLA, travelling, writing and lecturing. Hobbies: naval history (writing); reading (detective fiction, Patrick O’Brien, Flashman, naval history…); suffering on behalf of Arbroath FC and West Ham; good restaurants; a bottle of Scapa; Eric Clapton and Bessie Smith.

Most of this can be blamed on Arbroath Public Library where I practically lived from the age of seven. It was the biggest building I’d ever seen at that stage in my life and it intoxicated me with its riches as I read my way through the Children’s section then gained promotion to the big library and hoovered indiscriminately through that. This was followed by the public library at Musselburgh, the school library at Watson’s, the wonderful halls of the Mitchell, the Hay-Fleming in St Andrews, the Central Library in Edinburgh and Westminster and Kingston Public Libraries. I’ve had a reader’s ticket for 45 years now – currently for Stirling’s Library in Glasgow. So for better or worse you can blame me on the public library system.

One of my major preoccupations this year will be IFLA in Glasgow. The first concern is of course to ensure a warm welcome for everyone who attends, the second is to ensure that as many Scots librarians as possible can attend this amazing travelling circus, the third is to show how well we can do things. It’s IFLA’s 75^th birthday this year and already we’re tackling this in some style. A poem has been commissioned from Glasgow’s Poet Laureate Edwin Morgan and will feature prominently in the celebrations. We have a cultural evening in the Glasgow Concert Hall organised by RSAMD. To our delight Hector Macleod the new Head of Scottish Music at the Academy has offered to write a special piece for the concert. So a pome and a theme tune for IFLA – not a bad birthday present!

To close this column I want to do a bit of detective work, test the memory of age-challenged readers and test the mettle of the membership. Starting a new association brings its own challenges. It’s amazing how much trivia the Executive is grinding through as a result of the merger. The right shade of blue for the logo, the typeface for stationery, the positioning of the Charities Commission number, the list of names to go in the annual report, new banners for Peebles, when to change the name of the illustrious organ you are at this moment reading, everything passing first through a filter of whether we can act or whether we should leave things to the new Council. Its amazing the passion that can be aroused over whether or not to use italics. One of the trivial but necessary tasks as we tiptoe into CILIPS is what to do about the Presidential regalia. First the memory test. The Hamilton folk memory says that there was no presidential regalia until about 1955 or 1956. At that time the redoubtable Bill Paton was elected President for the then two year term. He had been a member of a prize-winning choir in Greenock and in a generous gesture had his choir medal(s) melted down and turned into the present Presidential medal. The Executive Committee has approved the new regalia, but what to do with the old that is fitting? The vaults of a museum seem as sorry a fate as a cupboard in Hamilton. In an inspired moment, the suggestion has been made that in a spirit of prudence, establishing a tradition and not having any better ideas, we follow the Paton lead and melt down the present medal to forge the new one. No harm will come to it for a month or two yet so alternative helpful, legal and biologically possible suggestions are welcome at d.law@strath.ac.uk.

And can anyone explain explain the remark by a sports reporter this week who claimed “Yes they’ve found the key to Celtic’s Achilles heel.”?