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Introduction - Service Improvement Manager

Hi -

I wanted to introduce myself on the forum, my name is Sara Mihajlovic and I am the Service Improvement Manager at the BL.

I've met members both at BLRG meetings and independently, and hope to meet more and more readers to discuss BL services.

If you have anything specific you would like to discuss either at the next BLRG meeting, or over a coffee with me - please do not hesitate to get in touch.

I can be contacted on sara.mihajlovic@bl.uk

I am very keen to build an excellent public involvement programme at the BL, and all your comments and feedback are an important part of this.

Management want your feedback ›

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Good to see the BL asking

Good to see the BL asking for responses from users.

Hi, The BL is involved with

Hi,

The BL is involved with a number of digitisation projects, details can be found here:

http://www.bl.uk/news/2005/pressrelease20051104.html

and also here:

http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/digmain.html

Thanks, Sara

1. Microsoft and the BL - a

1. Microsoft and the BL - a match made in heaven.

Some libraries are tweaking open-source academic software like Zotero to organise their catalogues. The BL continues to work with its archaic and dysfunctional Integrated Catalogue. Some libraries join Google Books and the Open Content Alliance of the Internet Archive. The BL joins Bill Gates. Some libraries are research libraries. The BL claims to be a research library.

Another match made in heaven is the following: Zotero joins the Internet Archive. More information can be found on the Zotero Blog or on Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog

Perhaps the latter could be one of the many examples the BL could choose from in order to be scholar friendly. The corporate body that governs and controls the research collections we cherish seems to miss out on them a lot.

2. As a matter of fact, large sections of this collection result from purely historical contingencies - whether or not this would be "the queen's collection." Another example of the BL's closed and detrimental attitude to scholarship is the planned restriction of access to the digital newspaper collection, open to UK educational institutes only. Does the BL realise that large sections of its collection - including the newspaper collection - come from countries from which the native scholars cannot even afford to come to the BL? The "historical contingencies" that helped the British Museum develop its collection were not exactly favourable to these countries. To restrict access to this digital collection reflects a very, very sad state of affairs.

The first one relates to a

The first one relates to a deal with Microsoft. Um, none of this can be seen in the UK, can it?

The second link points to a set of pages with little useful content on it, as far as I could see.

Thank you very much for your

Thank you very much for your introduction. This forum seems a bit under-used to me (indeed I didn't know it existed until recently), but is invaluable to online people like myself.

Can I ask why the BL has so little of its collection online? Has the idea of doing something like Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr) ever been mooted, and if so, to what effect?

roger_pearse@yahoo.co.uk