NEWS
Project Muse titles join Oasis
HUMANITIES and social sciences e-books from Project Muse have been added to the Oasis Platform, making an additional 34,000 titles available. Wendy Queen, director of Project Muse,
said: “We recognise that libraries have individualised acquisition strategies for e-books and want to support tools which integrate with their preferred processes and best meet their needs for adding our books to their collections.” l
http://www.proquest.com
Start a leadership
conversation DAVID Gurteen, Nancy Dixon and John Hovell are holding a three-day workshop from 20 to 22 September that will focus on Conversational Leadership. The event is an opportunity to find out more about the emerging concept, that has links to the world of knowledge manage- ment. It is described by David as “about taking responsibility for the changes we wish to see in the world, recognising the extraordinary and underutilised power of face-to-face conversation and adopting a conversational approach to the way in which we live and work with each other”. The course will take place in Fleet, Hampshire, and full details can be found at
https://bit.ly/2TAG5LV.
Academic book week events
A NUMBER of events have taken place across the country as part of Academic Book Week, from 3 to 10 March. In its fourth year, the event is designed to raise awareness of the positive impact of high-quality academic titles. This year saw debates, presentations and promotions as the Booksellers Association teamed up with University College London. Top- ics discussed during the week of events included Open Access, the Teaching Excellence Framework, and integrity in publishing.
12 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Public pressure puts end to library cut proposals
A COUNCIL in Wales has scrapped plans to close four of its libraries after a public outcry.
Neath Port Talbot Council in south Wales had planned to transfer to commu- nity groups or close libraries in Baglan, Cwmafan, Glynneath and Skewen. The council launched a public engagement exercise on this year’s budget, where the cuts were first revealed, and the results of that, combined with public opposi- tion and support from local politicians helped persuade council leaders to end the plans.
The council re-drew its budget for the coming year with Council Leader Rob Jones saying: “It is when cuts of this scale need to be considered that people realise just how much council services touch their everyday lives. Engagement
over our budget proposals was signifi- cantly higher this year in comparison with past consultations. This shows how much people in Neath Port Talbot care about their services and I want them to know we are listening, which is why we’ve made a number of revisions to our original proposals.” Taking the library closures off the agenda, Councillor Jones revealed: “There will be no cuts to the service for next year and a separate report is being commissioned on the Library Service.” The review will look at services in libraries and whether there is dupli- cation across Neath Port Talbot with those being offered by community run centres. Councillor Jones also added that there is still a chance that libraries could face cuts in the next budget.
Celebrating two decades of the Children’s Laureate
BOOK TRUST has celebrated 20 years of the Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate scheme. First launched by Book Trust in 1999,
the Laureateship is a celebration of the best authors, illustrators and poets working in children’s publishing. This year sees the honour celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of events and the release of a special book, Flights of Fancy, with contributions by each of the 10 Laureates – from inaugural Laureate Quentin Blake to the current incumbent Lauren Child. Lauren said: “Some of the reasons for having a Children’s Laureate are to spark ideas and debate, to have the platform to consider how things might change, to explore what might be important for the audience we write and illustrate for, and to bring forward those voices from which we need to hear. I believe that books, illustration and stories can pro- foundly change a child’s life. “These are all reasons why I accepted
March 2019
the opportunity to become Children’s Laureate and why I have not regretted that decision for one minute.” l
https://bit.ly/2TkmVd9
News
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