No, I didn’t know what mastic was either. And on looking it up, I’m not sure I trust a spice that can also be used in varnishing. But apparently it’s a classic flavour in Eastern Mediterranean cooking. Cooking tips and librarianship – this blog series really has it all.
Anyway, in this last post (aww…), we’ll be looking at description and discovery of resources, as well as at some of the more unusual resources themselves, as held in archives and special collections.
Introduction
Our dual themes for National Libraries Week here at Sussex are wellbeing and community. This guest blogpost, from School of Psychology reader John Drury and PhD student Selin Tekin Guven, touches on both, discussing the way in which communities come together in the wake of a disaster not only for support but to campaign for justice and social change.
Check out the other special events happening in the Library this week, including mindfulness sessions and a board games café, and have a go at our Book Face Competition on Twitter or Instagram.
Katy Stoddard
If you’ve seen any of the photos from our training week in Istanbul – photos of food, of drink, of ancient wonders, of sunlight on the Bosporus – you will almost certainly have also heard me or Lizzy stressing (maybe in a rather defensive tone) that we sat through more than 30 presentations during the course of our five-day not-holiday. In an attempt to divide up the sharing of our endeavours according to Smithian principles, I assigned myself – foolishly, as it turns out – the task of passing the fruits of these presentations onto you. During the few brief respites I’ve had in the last few weeks from my usual showboating metadata artistry, I’ve been going through my copious (if occasionally cryptic) notes, and it’s been dawning on me just how much information was thrown at us.
So I thought I would use this writing opportunity to reflect and try to get my thoughts together for a presentation that I’ll be delivering in Birmingham at the Talis Insights Conference in a few weeks’ time. Continue reading
In a former life I was a librarian at the Guardian, answering queries from journalists and, among other things, blogging historical content from the digital archive. In 2011 I wrote a blogpost about the history of the Booker Prize, the UK’s biggest prize for literature but also its most controversial.
2011 was the year the Booker was criticised for being too mainstream, as if a book cannot be ‘great literature’ and also a cracking read. Some even suggested setting up a new, ‘proper’ literary prize, though in the event the traditionalists prevailed and the prize was awarded to Julian Barnes, the only ‘proper’ author on the shortlist. Continue reading