‘Fil’ the Frog goes to
Boston Spa
Friday 28th November was circled in the calendar
and both ‘Fil’ and I were very excited to be going on a trip to Boston Spa for
the Forum for Interlending event at the British Library. Not only was this my
first visit to the British Library but actually, my first visit to York. With
all the lovely Christmas lights, York was very picturesque and definitely
somewhere I would like to revisit.
We were met by a very nice lady at the station and taken on
the short drive to the British Library through the lovely countryside. First
impressions for me were like entering some kind of military base which made
perfect sense when we were informed that the site had originally been a
munitions factory.
Despite there being some issues with trains at Doncaster, we
were delighted that everyone who had booked to come for the day managed to get
there. Unfortunately these delays did set us back a little with timing but we
tried our best to keep up with the schedule of the day.
There were lots of treats in store for us: and not just the
lovely home-made biscuits!
Firstly Claudia Howard gave a talk on Consortia in Wales and
all the benefits that forming a consortium can bring. There followed a very
informative update on where we stand in respect of the changes in copyright
legislation from Chris Morrison. We hope that everyone will now take on board
that they can supply articles and chapters from e-resources, provided that the
supply of the items conforms to the permitted exceptions. (woohoo!)
Kate Ebden from the British Library gave us an update of the
developments at BLDSS and we were able to see some of these in practise on our
tour of some of the buildings, including the Imaging department where we saw
what happens to our academic theses when we send them for digitisation –
amazing machinery! Also the fantastic automated retrieval of items is really
quite staggering to watch!
We finished off with a very whistle stop workshop where we
could, in groups, discuss some of the day-to-day issues that affect us as
‘ILLers’ and how we deal with them.
The day absolutely whizzed by and it was 4 o’clock before we
knew it, time to get everyone back to York station to make their way home.
‘Fil’ and I had a great day, meeting lots of new people and catching up with lots
of others. It was a busy but very rewarding and enjoyable day – thank you to
Kate and her team for making us so welcome and for the lovely lunch J
‘Fil’ was so tired that he just went straight to bed
zzzzzzzzzz
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