Old Building - Bradford College in Autumn morning sunlight
Today I have registered as a CILIP mentor; I attended the training back in July and yesterday I got around to signing up. My motivation stems from a sense of supporting those within the profession who are seeking to gain accreditation, chartership or fellowship. Throughout my career I have been fortunate to have had the support of colleagues so this opportunity to put something back in feels right. Already I have two candidates who were, up until now, informal but I suppose we can move onto a formal footing now. I’m also interested in the role of mentoring from a less formal point i.e. when there is not neccessarily a final goal at the end. More information about CILIP mentoring scheme can be found here.
Filed Under (Events, General) by ronan on 02-09-2010
Over the summer I always try to catch up on my reading but this is never successful because I generally find bookshops and buy more books. On holiday in Dalkey just south of Dublin I purchased Fintan O’Toole’s excellent Ship of Fools from the local “Exchange” bookshop and it has proved to be a fascinating if not frustrating read. The Excahnge bookshop is situated in Dalkey’s main drag, Castle Street just along from the original public library building (1901) and the newly built public library where, despite the contradictory signs of “free Wifi available here” and “the use of mobile phones is not permitted” I managed to crouch in the general non-fiction section (signed Neamhfhicsean – for Irish speakers) to connect my iPhone to the outside world.
Another bookshop visited was the wonderful Secret Bookshop – in the centre of the city (but I obviously can’t tell you where!) Here I bought, for just 5 Euros, Niall Murphy’s A Bloomsday Postcard a selection of 250 postcards all posted in Dublin during 1904. Edwardian Dublin had six postal deliveries a day and one on Sunday and the sending of postcards was extremely popular and indeed reliable as evidenced by one card sent by a young man to his sweetheart asking her to meet with him that very same day at Kingstown station (near Dalkey). Many of today’s institutional e-mail systems are less reliable. 
Cutting back through Trinity College to catch the brilliantly named DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transport train) back to Dalkey, I stopped in the TCD boohshop and picked up (half-price 9.99 Euros pbk) Berhard Meehan’s The Book of Durrow which contains 40 full-colour reproductions and a very interesting text. This has reminded me of my probably over ambitious plan, some while back now, to host an exhibition of illuminated Qur’ans, from the Chester Beatty Library here in the Grove Library, at Bradford College.
Back to my own summer reading challenge – while driving from Oxford to Winchester en route to the South Downs for a camping trip I was, amid all the flurry of media interest in public libraries, excited to see signs for a reading festival – how proper I thought. Of course it later emerged that this was the Reading (and Leeds) Festival where, according to my guitar hero son, the Libertines did an amazing comeback performance. The Buzzcocks are playing around the corner at Myrtle Park festival on Friday night if anyone fancies it!
