Odd times indeed. I have several multi hundred word posts fighting for space in my head…because I can’t manage to find the time to sit down and type them up. Distractions abound. Many of them silly…well almost all of them I s’pose. There’s a post on The Great Book Sorting – whereby I regale you all with the tales of opening boxes of books and putting them on shelves…some are even in order. Fascinating stuff. There’s the post where I guide you through the exotic minutae of adding your location ID to one of Gale’s generic MARC URLs. Oh the rapture. The things that exist inside my head. Oh deary deary me.

“They’re as mild as, well, a roomful of librarians.” SMH 14th Nov 2009

The essay in Saturday’s Spectrum featured the above line as part of a discussion of the future of the State Library of NSW. Very much of the old school I’d guess. All those teenagers working on group assignments in the hallowed halls, interrupting his quiet time. If he were as deaf as me, rowdy teenagers would never intrude again. Libraries, and much of society it must be said, are wonderful places for quiet solitude…so long as I remember to switch off my hearing aids. Though he is mostly right when he argues that there is a disconnect between the old and the new. The two parts of the SL have never really seemed to fit. They are different spaces. Folks at the SL do have plans for new spaces…fingers crossed and all that.

To be fair…I’ve barely touched on my own thoughts on the matter as I type once more, few words seem to make it to the page. My muse is absent and the words are not flowing. My word count is higher than expected but this piece is mostly fluff of my own making.

However there is some interesting news and proof that I am late to the party once more. In my hunt for a link to the above essay, I discovered that the SMH back archive is now free! Free I tell you! I did a search on Newsstore, found the article and a link that that said all was free. They are charging no longer. I don’t know when that happened. I find it curious that they are not charging at a time when the Murdoch papers are threatening to go the other way. Interesting timing I s’pose…or at least I guess it would be if I had any sort of clue as to timings at all.

My apologies for the dreariness of my words and the lack of intellect and response to this week’s essay in the SMH. I was struck by the quote it is true but seem unable to recall my thoughts at the time of reading.  I do you, my readership, a disservice. Regardless, I shall continue to post, inane though it may be at times…as I tend to find, it’s easier to write, if I’m writing regularly. If I can regain the flow, I may be able to write of bigger things once more.