JISC/CNI After Dinner 2000
Well good evening. It’s a great pleasure to be here. I’d like to thank Malcolm for that kind introduction. What can I say about Malcolm? Well I don’t think I can say it any better than the trial judge did, so I’ll just wish that the electronic tagging device doesn’t cause too much embarrassment or discomfort. His introduction of me seemed to omit no major fact from my biography other than that I was born by Caesarean Section. This is of no significance in my life except that it has left an occasional tendency to leave buildings by the window rather than the door.
I suppose I should begin with a remark about our sponsors this evening. Reg Carr has been our recent leader on the JISC side. Reg, some of you will know is a great Montesquieu scholar. It was Montesquieu who remarked that “It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour”. Well two out of three ain’t bad. And as for Cliff. Well there aren’t many left like him nowadays, what with education and brandy the price it is.
American colleagues may only just have learned that last year I moved from London back to Scotland. I haven’t attended many conferences in England since then so English colleagues will no doubt think of me with some exasperation as forgotten but not gone. In fact it’s so long since I’ve been in a group like this that I wasn’t sure I’d remember everyone and so it seemed sensible to ask Norman Wiseman for a list of delegates broken down by age and sex – and then I arrive here to find that you all are.
I’d been at King’s College for a long time – almost fifteen years. In fact I’d been there so long that when I left they held a party that lasted two days and two nights. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought it a pity that I wasn’t invited. Scottish colleagues have asked me why I moved back and both English and American colleagues may be interested in the differences I’ve found between Scotland and England. By the way are there any Scots here tonight? Can you put your hands up? Just thought we should know where we all are in case there’s a fight later. The rest of you should know by the way that the Scots are a very well balanced people – they have chips on both shoulders. Of course I’ve moved to Glasgow. It’s a great place and not nearly as violent as its reputation, although it’s true that the Samaritans are ex-directory. And it’s an environmentally friendly city – almost all the roofs are lead free.
The winters are of course dark and wet and we tend to stay indoors. So the winter is punctuated by a regular series of parties. In November we have St Andrews Day. In December we have Hogmanay or Old Year’s Night – not to be confused with the English celebration on the 31st of December of New Year’s Eve, or the American celebration of New Years. Then of course in January we have Burns Night on January 25th. For each of these celebrations we have a day’s leave the next day. These are not so much a day’s leave as hospital appointments. So we’re party animals in the winter. In England it’s rather different. April 23rd is the day that Shakespeare, England’s great national bard was born. April 23rd was the day Shakespeare died. April 23rd is also the saint’s day of St George, the patron saint of England. This is not a day on which the English have a party or indeed a date that any of them can remember. Boy are we envious. They’re a funny people the English. Twentieth century English history largely revolves around confrontations between England and Germany – they have played them in two world wars and ten football matches, but the one they bang on about the whole time is Gareth Southgate’s missed penalty in a soccer match in 1996. France has the Sun King, Germany has the Iron Chancellor, Russia has Ivan the Terrible and England, England has Ethelred the Unready
The Scots don’t dwell on their martial exploits – we have Mel Gibson to do that. We prefer to think of ourselves in terms of what we have invented – most of it arguably adding to the ruin of modern life. Not just soccer and golf, but James Watt and the Steam Engine, Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone, Logie Baird and Television, Alexander Fleming and Penicillin, John Knox and Presbyterianism, Robert Louis Stevenson and schizophrenia, John Duns Scotus (known as Dunce) who invented stupidity, John Dunlop and the bicycle tyre. Actually the really scary thing about the bicycle is who the hell was twisted enough to invent the bicycle pump in order to blow up the tyres on the first bike before it was invented. Then we virtually invented the social sciences. Adam Smith is the founding father of economics while a much misrepresented and much travelled Scot invented political science. He spent so much time in Italy that his name is now usually mispronounced. It should of course be pronounced Machiavelli. Close second to him comes Pontius Pilate, who, believe it or not was born in the legion camp at Perth. We omit of course, Tony Blair. Although he went to school in Scotland, he’s clearly not Scottish - no Scottish politician would be done over by the Women’s Institute.
Americans may not know but the Women’s Institute is famous for it’s jam-making. Did you hear and I swear it’s true about the ground-breaking research reported last week? Scientists in Brighton (an interesting concept in itself) have taught an octopus to open jam jar lids. Apart from an obvious use as self-basting calamari, it’s difficult to see the point of this research, particularly since they have proudly announced that this proves that your average octopus has the same brain power as a dog. Who says that British Science no longer leads the world?
The reason one is asked to make after dinner speeches is because one has almost reached one’s dotage. I have worked in libraries for thirty years now. Thirty years ago in St Andrews I worked on one of the early automated union lists of serials. Twenty years ago in Edinburgh I ran one of the early recon projects. Ten years ago when in London I was one of the group who set up BIDS as an early free at the point of use data service. Last year in Glasgow I helped to set up the Glasgow Digital Library. Why does it all feel like Groundhog Day? For most of that time I and many of those in this room have tried to promote change in libraries. For all that time we have been at the bleeding edge. Indeed as I look round this room at those who have also taken part in that long march I see a right bunch of bleeders.
I hope that the rest of the bleeders in the room will forgive me for singling out one name, which is a name particularly associated with the transformation of libraries in the UK. That transformation began almost a decade ago in a seafood restaurant in Baltimore, when a small British group looked at what was happening in the USA and determined that it would happen too in the UK. The group was led by Lynne Brindley. Lynne’s appetite for challenge remains undimmed and I know you will all join not just in the general delight at her appointment as Chief Executive of the British Library, not just in wishing her well in that most challenging of posts but in offering all our support in transforming that great institution. As readers of Patrick O’Brien will know the expression of delight when a colleague received a new command was “May it give you joy” always shortened to “Give you joy”. So Lynne – “Give you joy”.
It would be nice to think that we have all helped to change libraries and yet it is not so long since Umberto Eco first posed the classic Catch-22 of all too many libraries. It relates to access to research materials. Most research libraries will claim to offer access to the true scholar. But as Eco points out they operate differently. Anyone who seeks access to consult a particular book cannot be a scholar, since no true scholar can work from a single source. They should therefore be refused access. Conversely, anyone who seeks general access to a collection of books clearly doesn’t know what they want. If they don’t know what they want they can’t be a scholar and so should be refused access. This is not an idle joke. Some years ago I asked the Deputy Librarian of a major research library what there admissions policy was and she is in the room tonight. She drew herself up to her full height and haughtily stated “No-one is allowed to use this library – and then we make exceptions”
All of the people in this room I would guess are dedicated to the concept of freedom of access to knowledge on the web and I applaud that. Andrew Carnegie – another Scot - was one of the earliest exponents of this philosophy. He said:
It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to support it as a municipal institution.
What I want to do tonight then is to close by celebrating those communities who have been willing to found electronic libraries as a municipal institution. We have faced huge pressures to leave these developments to the private sector, and indeed bureaucrats such as Commissioner Martin Bangemann of the European Commission have positively attacked public sector involvement. Universities in Britain and America have stood out against this, while bodies such as CNI, JISC and NSF have consistently ploughed funds into allowing this group gathered here tonight to develop a new electronic paradigm of Carnegie’s goals.
Carnegie was a Scot who made his fortune in America and spread his largesse globally. This meeting here in Stratford represents a continuing ambition to seek global and humane solutions to global problems. Those agencies who support those aims by using public funds to address such problems are much maligned and rarely applauded. We should thank them all.
Before I came over here this evening I telephoned Alcoholics Anonymous. “Do you want to join?” they asked. “NO, I said, I want to resign”. Now that I’ve finished, I hope that you, like me will go on to enjoy the rest of the evening. Can I then commiserate in advance with those of you who will rise tomorrow thinking “never again” while reading those immortal words “Armitage Shanks”.