‘Whittaker’ had a few days of leave carried over from last year’s entitlement, so he’s taking a long weekend. But will ‘his’ readers survive without him? For anyone chancing upon this page, here are a few random but carefully-weighed comments.
So, why does Whittaker blog? To borrow Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”:-
- This blog is intended to inform staff and students of the performing arts.
- It aims to flag up useful and interesting websites, forthcoming events, new or rare library acquisitions, services offered by the library, and other sources of information, study, research or career support.
- Thus, this week it has offered readers details of a research symposium; old Scottish musicians and song collectors William Motherwell, William Tytler and Alexander Campbell; an arts and humanities streaming workshop; a Steve Reich 75th birthday competition; British Library Postgraduate Open Days; thoughts about a research query on the Lordship of the Isles; and the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. Nothing if not varied!
- Our staff and students are musicians, actors, community arts animateurs, stage designers, film and television directors, jazz improvisers and ballet dancers, to name but a few.
- ‘Whittaker’ keeps a weather eye for interesting trends coming up on the Twitter scene, but ‘he’ will not be found on Facebook, as ‘he’ doesn’t care to discuss his private life on social media websites. This is a professional blog.
- Meanwhile, the combination of upcoming cultural and information trends, with intriguing historical facts pertaining to old Scottish song collections, can be attributed to Whittaker’s own dual-qualified background in library & information science and musicology. He does try to seek out drama, film/television and ballet snippets, but depends on his informants to feed him interesting titbits in these spheres.
- The author of Whittaker does also occasionally contribute to other blogs such as TheThesisWhisperer, lurks around Twitter’s #PhDchat on Wednesday evenings, and authors the Jobs.ac.uk Music blog in 'his' spare time, to keep in touch with the world of research and offer support to those following him along the doctoral path.
If you like what you read here, please do comment. Any suggestions are always considered with an open mind.
Blogs are more discursive, and give the chance to pull info together from different sources. Like my WhittakerLive posting on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland namechange, or my separate pages on Minstrels and Metaphors.
Tweets are great for single, punchy comments or notifications, and messages to individuals or all followers. And that's why I both blog and tweet, but I have an RSS feed from Twitter to Blogspot, so you can catch up with me both ways!
By the way, you might be interested in Leonard Cassuto's blogpost about academic blogging, in the Guardian Professional's Higher Education Network (advice, insight, and best practice from the community). Does blogging help progress for an early career academic? Read it here.
Inger Mewburn, aka The Thesis Whisperer, runs a very successful research blog. (Do visit http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/.) However, Inger also, from time to time, blogs elsewhere. Today, 2nd September, I caught up with her on the Networked Researcher blog: her post is called Is there a new digital divide brewing? It makes interesting reading.
"Whittaker" started asking "himself" why he maintains WhittakerLive. Actually, it's all there on the sidebar:-
WhittakerLive has posted friendly and informative postings since 1999. We showcase performing arts websites, and higher education links that will interest our staff and student performers.
Current awareness: useful weblinks, publications, recordings, events etc. Also postings on learning skills, research support and information literacy.
It's a wide remit, which is why the postings might seem rather random at first glance. However, this week's postings are pretty representative of what we aim to achieve. So, what have we got? Obituaries for Ray Fisher (Scottish ballad singer) and Alasdair Gillies (bagpiper extraordinaire). An 'on this day' posting for Joseph Ritson, an influential 18th century antiquarian. The name-change from RSAMD to Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Digitised Beethoven. The first call for papers, for Musica Scotica 2012 conference.
Now, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is not just about Scottish music, or indeed about classical music or music history. It's drama, dance, film and TV, performance and improvisation ... so please do suggest newsworthy items or websites that are of potential use to staff and students working in these areas!
It's a meercat kind of situation.
'Whittaker' has just realised that if you Google WhittakerLive, or indeed Whittaker Live, you're likely to find a load of postings for Roger Whittaker Live.
So, to make it perfectly plain, Whittaker Live (as in Whittaker Library of RSAMD, shortly to become the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) is a blog about the performing arts and higher education as it relates to the same.
Roger Whittaker the Anglo-Kenyan singer-songwriter was born in 1936, and has released a number of live albums:-
- Roger Whittaker Live in Berlin
- Greatest Hits Live
- Live in Concert
- Live (1994)
- The Last Farewell (Live) 2001
... but despite BEING alive, is unconnected with Whittaker Live the performing arts blog. The eponymous William Whittaker is deceased, but his memory lives on in the Whittaker Library.
