As far as I know there are no strikes currently planned, but there will be no book ordering available for the next week or two while the new online catalogue is introduced.

I was looking at this for something I’m working on at the moment. 40 years ago I was looking at it to find out about degree courses. And the latter exercise has effectively led to the present one.

Every librarian in the world could tell you this without having to study 10,000 people.

Is Finlay going to turn out to be a bit dodgy? Plying Helen with whisky and charming the socks off her. The Highlands Rob? #TheArchers

German Studies librarianship conference klaxon! Marking 40 years since a symposium on the topic that led to the founding of an interest group for German Studies librarians in the UK gslg.org.uk/2025/10/31/g...

I was telling someone at work about this. Them: But is it about Penguin Books or actual penguins? Me: Actual penguins. [Which should have been clear from the fab penguin anecdote I’d just been telling.] Him: Oh well, as a bibliographer it’s of no interest to me. 🤷‍♀️

Librarian followers, are you being driven to distraction (and tears) by the new RDA toolkit or is it just me? Apparently I have to learn how to navigate this thing before I can carry on cataloguing (which I’ve been doing for over 30 years & I was an RDA trainer when RDA started). And it’s awful.

Oh dear, Ruairi’s not the messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy #TheArchers

I assume this weird Mulligan story is meant to highlight loneliness and mental health issues among farmers but it seems to be morphing into a way of finding Josh a new love interest #TheArchers

What we really need on #TheArchers is for Debbie to come back and wipe the floor with all the other candidates to run Bridge Farm.

I’m surprised they hadn’t thought of this before, but here it is. (Shortly after I took this photo in Waterstones I saw the book in my local library so of course borrowed it.)

I'll be doing a presentation with a colleague on propaganda in Nazi- and Soviet-era children's books on 10 November as part of the Leeds City of Languages festival. Details here: leedscityoflanguages.leeds.ac.uk/events/talk-...

Are George, Amber and Brad going to be the new Will, Emma and Ed? #TheArchers

Saw this portrait in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille and can’t help thinking he has something of Michael Caine about him.

Watched ‘The Librarians’ on BBC iPlayer, and I encourage everyone to seek it out on any platform or in any cinema you have access to.

I have no memory of this song (embarrassingly unlike The Tweets) but it’s peak 1981 #totp

Started watching ‘The Hack’. Not sure I’ll stay with it, but was amused to see Senate House in London having to stand in for Broadcasting House given that it’s an ITV production.

Sad news indeed, but also a classic example of a sentence that absolutely calls for the Oxford comma.

Curating in the Crossfire: a 2-day event at the British Library looking at how materials created and shared in times of conflict are selected, collected and preserved. Details and booking here events.bl.uk/events/curat...

Our blogs have a new look: bit.ly/BL-Blogs All previously published blogs will be available in our archive, launching in coming weeks. Watch this space for an update on when that goes live.

“Brian’s the gammon.” That kind of figures #TheArchers

Is this Scottish castle holiday going to turn into a version of The Traitors or a cosy crime mystery? #TheArchers

I know this is not the most important takeaway from this story, but I’m intrigued that German media follows the German convention of giving the suspect’s surname as an initial only although US media has spelt it out.

Ooh, the Ambridge cricket team are never going to play for Ambridge again. Does this mean no more tedious cricket storylines on #TheArchers? 🤞🤞🤞

Saw this in the Radio Times and misread it as ‘Jerry & Margo Go Large’ so obviously thought that it was a weird spinoff from ‘The Good Life’. Alas, it is not.

Picked up this YA dystopian fantasy novel on spec at station book swap last week & it’s had me absorbed all weekend & left me longing for the sequel. If you like that sort of thing I would highly recommend. (But it’s going back to the book swap where an actual young adult might benefit from it.)

A friend has just sent me pictures of the puppy she’ll be bringing home in a few weeks, and I will probably spend the rest of the evening intermittently looking at them and shouting out loud about how cute the puppy is. And I have volunteered for dog-sitting duties if ever required.

Amber going abroad for sponsored cosmetic dental treatment? Surely that’s not going to go well. #TheArchers

So my theory is that Chris (and sometimes Martha) move in with Fallon, and living with a child suddenly makes Fallon realise she wants children. And either she has a big reconciliation with Harrison and gets pregnant or has a 1 night stand with Chris & gets pregnant #TheArchers

Engelbert Humperdinck (the 19th-century composer, not the pop singer) wrote a few extra bars of Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’ to cover for a scene change that took longer than expected at the premiere.

I was rewatching ‘Dead Poets Society’ last night & it always annoys me that when they show quick scenes of the boys (senior students at an elite private school) doing various lessons, in Latin they’re just reeling off really basic noun declensions that they should surely have learned years ago.

George, you little [expletive deleted] #TheArchers

Oh, well played, Clarrie! #TheArchers

Oh, George, no! #TheArchers

Showed Bamber Gascoigne how to use the first version of the British Library online catalogue.

Has Kate killed Crispin with her massage?!?! #TheArchers

I've written a blog post on the exceedingly serious topic of garden gnomes. Sadly, by the time someone suggested I should have alled it 'German Gnomanticism' it was too late. blogs.bl.uk/european/202...

Watching a 2018 documentary about Andrew Davies (of BBC ‘Pride & Prejudice’ & ‘Middlemarch’ fame) & it reminds me that nobody ever mentions his TV adaptation of the Arthurian legends which I loved, and read and re-read the novelisation of.

The 7th GSLG/British Library Graham Nattrass Lecture is on 24 June at 6pm. Prof. Roger Paulin will speak on Anna Katharina Emmerich’s "Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi". Attendance free but booking required. Contact details here: gslg.org.uk/2025/06/03/r...

While Mamma and all the aunts cooed over the new baby, big sister Edith quietly prepared her garotte #GirlsOwnCC

Is Lilian’s overwhelming grief for Peggy in part her processing her grief for Jennifer? #TheArchers

Oh heck, is Lilian still banging on about the shopping lists?! #TheArchers

Wondering if Peggy’s weird will is part of a new storyline: what if anything has she left to the mysterious Rev Crispin, and was he exploiting her in some way? #TheArchers

If “all the family get together for the funeral” does this mean Debbie will make an appearance #TheArchers

Bibliography seminar klaxon! blogs.bl.uk/european/202...

From solemn wreaths at Mill Hill to the Liberation Fire in Wageningen, our European Collections team reflect on Dutch Remembrance Day (4 May) & Liberation Day (5 May), two dates inextricably linked: bit.ly/VEDayEuropean #VEDay #VEDay80 📷 Mill Hill Dutch War Cemetery (ImageryBT / Alamy Stock Photo)

When Edith announced her hen do, she had expected a more exciting turnout than her dull fiancé Albert and his pet hen Winifred #GirlsOwnCC

Fully funded (4 year) PhD studentship supervised across Keele Univ. and the British Library: "Eighteenth-Century Knowledge Work in the Harleian Collection". You'll generate your own project focused on how this unique collection was created and used: www.keele.ac.uk/study/postgr...

Intrigued and a bit baffled by this and several similar displays of romance novels at the Leipzig Book Fair. They’re all German translations but the titles are all in English. One even claims to be translated into German from Italian but the title’s in English! What’s going on?!

Someone has published a Thomas Mann crime novel and I have to admit I’m tempted…