Removing Barriers and Creating Opportunities

After a two-year inquiry into the barriers to participation faced by disabled people, the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Scottish Parliament today published its disability inquiry report. Centering on the issues of work, further and higher education and leisure, the report examines the barriers caused by inaccessible transport, poor physical access and attitudes towards disabled people.
Committee convener Cathy Peattie MSP said: "The committee has gathered extensive evidence about the barriers to participation faced by disabled people across the length and breadth of the country. We believe that these far-reaching recommendations for change listed in the report will result in real improvements in the lives of disabled people in Scotland and we challenge all organisations named in the report to raise their service provision to a level which ensures equal access to all disabled people.”

Easy-Read summary (.pdf) can be found here; the full (web-based) report is here.

Source: Scottish Parliament, 28 November 2006

Storming the Winter Palace (quietly)

"The popular caricature of the librarian of yesteryear wasn't necessarily glamorous. That myopic creature in a cardigan, who loved enforcing silence, always used a pencil and whose favourite phrase was "the library is closing in five minutes" might, once, sadly, have been somewhere near the mark."

Well, I'm not glamorous, the cardigan pockets were always good for the fags & lighter. I'm not Tony Soprano but should have been & my favourite phrase was always " No problem".
Still this might tell you what we do. Or could do, given the chance.

Stereotypes? Don't follow leaders...

Rest of the article can be found here.

Source: The Guardian : Money : Work, 25 November 2006

More open access journals

Jan Szczepanski, a librarian at Göteborg University, has collected links and information on Open Access journals for years. His lists contain over 4500 current OA-journals and 757 historic.
Yeah, I know. Hoplessly academic & you don't have time.
We'll have a look & relevant title will wend their way into the library catalogue. Or even here.
If I have the time...

http://www.his.se/bib/jan

Source: Internet Resources Newsletter, 145. November 2006.

studybookshop.com

studybookshop.com is an online textbook exchange that provides students and graduates with an easy way to buy and sell secondhand student books.

They say - "The need for such a site is simple. Students spend hundreds of pounds on new textbooks for their university course only to use them for one or two modules. After graduation, these books are no longer required and therefore remain unused. Studybookshop.com identified a need to sell second-hand student textbooks in order to save and earn thousands of pounds each year for students."

As the proud owner of scores of unread-for thirty-years academic volumes (did I ever read them?) I would suggest that this site is certainly worth investigating.

http://wwwstudybookshop.com

Source: Internet Resources Newsletter

NHS Scotland eLibrary

The NHS Scotland e-Library aims to empower the healthcare family and benefit patient care by providing high quality knowledge support throughout the patient journey.
The e-Library aims to support:

• Clinical and managerial decision-making
• Education, training and lifelong learning
• Research and development

Its audience includes:

• NHS staff of all disciplines – both clinical and non-clinical
• Students and teachers working with the NHS
• Partners in care in the voluntary and local authority sectors.
• Increasingly, it is working with partners to support the information needs of patients, carers and the public to participate in self-care and shared decision making.

The NHS Scotland e-Library is a comprehensive provider of high quality knowledge content, including:

• 5000 + fulltext electronic journals
• 5000+ electronic books
• 100 + databases of journal articles
• 1000’s of evaluated health and social care Websites

It's the bits in red that are paramount here. Any member of college staff with an interest in health & social care is a member of a partner institution, i.e. the college. Registration has potential for you, your students & for the college. After all we're all on that patient journey. We just don't quite know how far along the road we are yet...

http://www.elib.scot.nhs.uk/

Creative writer?

Budding novelists who are frustrated by endless rejections from publishers and agents should take a peek at a website called The Frontlist (www.thefrontlist.com). The site encourages unpublished writers to submit material, and read and review the work of others, which is then ranked accordingly. All very well, you may think, but will the book industry pay any attention? Well, at least two companies are promising to do so.
The literary agency AM Heath and the web-to-book publisher The Friday Project will receive and read the top-rated submissions. Scott Pack, the former Waterstone's enfant terrible now at The Friday Project, says: "The internet is a great showcase for many styles of writing, but up until now fiction writers haven't been served well. We are therefore great fans of The Frontlist and look forward to many hours browsing its content and commenting on submissions ... we hope to find some great novels to publish as a result."

Source: The Guardian Review, 25 November 2006

Bright Lights # 54

New issue of Bright Lights emagazine is now available. Great cinema (not movie) stuff, he said snobbishly.

We took time off from all-consuming hobby of sticking pins in Republican voodoo dolls to post a new issue. You can go directly there by clicking http://www.brightlightsfilm.com, or you can preview the contents at our tasty new blog at http://www.brightlightsfilm.blogspot.com.
We know our readers love a bargain, and we do too. So we've not only put up a GBFRI (great big fat regular issue), but also a bunch of articles on film noir from our 1994 print issue devoted to that
subject.

A competition for discriminating minds...

Catalyst Magazine is running a competition to find the best in student journalism, illustration and photography.
A winning article, photo essay and illustration on race, class, faith and education will each receive £200 and be published in a future issue of Catalyst and on the Catalyst website, www.catalystmagazine.org.
The competition is open to students anywhere in the world.

Q: What do race, faith and class have to do with the way we learn and what we teach? Is the system racist or are we falling prey to a culture of victimhood?
Enter either:
1. an article of up to 1500 words, or
2. an illustration, or
3. a photo essay of 5-10 photographs
They are looking for fresh writing with compelling, interesting arguments, new points of view, probing and critical analysis, engagement with difficult questions and written in clear, plain English.

The deadline for entries is 31 December. Winners will be announced in mid-January. For more information, including submission instructions, see www.catalystmagazine.org/competition.

Technobile

Article in today's Guardian. All I can say that I have a weakness for 18-year malts.

I know too much about computers. More than is good for me around here. When somebody else's computer goes wrong - a program locks up or the broadband stops working - you can guess who they call first...

All I can say that I have a weakness for 18-year malts.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1936691,00.html

Source: Guardian Technology