Suddenly the word "subsidy" seems to be very much in fashion, especially in local government. I've heard it three times in the last week used in connection with local government services, but I don't recall hearing it in this context before.
Recently it was in the news - and continues to be to some extent - due to the changes in housing benefit which introduced rules about the number of bedrooms that anyone claiming housing benefit would be entitled to, with a commensurate reduction in their benefit if they were deemed to have too many rooms. Opponents of this change called it the "bedroom tax", which was a clever soundbite and infuriated the government, who (correctly) pointed out that it was not a tax, but who still found it difficult to counter. (It had the unlooked-for and unwanted effect of leading elderly and comfortably-off supporters of the government to think that they were actually going to be taxed on their own extra rooms - rather like King William III's window tax and the subsequent Georgian attempts to increase revenue from the tax by decreasing the number of windows you could have before incurring it). Then somebody came up with the idea of calling it the "spare room subsidy". The implication here is clear: money paid to people with rooms which are now deemed to be surplus to their needs is a hand-out, has always been so, and is to be withdrawn (but it never was called the "spare room subsidy" before: this is an attempt to put a certain spin on the policy).
It's a word with an interesting history. According to the OED (use your public library's subscription to check it online!) it was often originally used to indicate a tax: a tax on imports and exports, which was given to the sovereign; a levy paid by parliament to the sovereign for a particular purpose (such as a war); or (an obsolete meaning) help, assistance (of the kind which you could request from a saint, for instance).
More generally, it also means: a donation (usually to provide assistance); a sum which one country might send to another for a specific purpose (such as war, or to repay aid); and, the meaning which is closest to what we are starting to see now, money granted by the state or a public body to keep down the price of a commodity or service or to support something held to be in the public interest (so, the government's intervention to assist the banks after the crash could reasonably be called a subsidy, as would be money supporting a rural bus service which might otherwise be too expensive to be viable, but which is considered to be in the public interest because it enables people living in otherwise isolated communities to have jobs, visit the shops, &c.)
The word "subsidy" does not traditionally have negative connotations (such as the idea of a generous hand-out to an undeserving recipient, or the idea of its being something which could be withdrawn at any time and for which the recipient should be suitably grateful). It is not a word to use with scorn about something which one does not wish to pay for any more. This seems to be the meaning which is beginning to be attached to it, however. It has come a long way from its meaning of a tax which was raised in order to fund the monarch!
It is not a word which is appropriate when discussing the provision of statutory services. They are not "subsidised" but provided in accordance with legal requirements. We do not need to feel inferior for being on the receiving end of them. Did the monarch ever feel this when receiving his subsidy? or, to be more up to date, do the banks show any sign of unworthiness at having received such a substantial subsidy? Local government spin doctors and eager adopters of buzz words everywhere, please desist! We know what you are trying to do: use language to distort the argument. You have been rumbled!
Friday, 12 December 2014
Thursday, 11 December 2014
Words in vogue: reform
"Reform" used to mean a change which was an improvement. The SOED [Shorter Oxford English Dictionary] lists several variations on this, many of them with quite a strong sense that a wrong is being put right, an abuse is being corrected, malpractice is being rectified, &c.
Perhaps "reform" still does have this meaning, and its current apparent frequent misuse is due to the fact that one person's reform is sometimes another's retrograde step. Whatever the reason, it seems to be being used widely in contexts in which opinion is not supposed to be being expressed. The use of the word "reform" implies that whatever change is being discussed is a change for the better (and, therefore, that the speaker supports the change). Something to remember next time you hear a BBC reporter discussing "necessary reforms".
Perhaps "reform" still does have this meaning, and its current apparent frequent misuse is due to the fact that one person's reform is sometimes another's retrograde step. Whatever the reason, it seems to be being used widely in contexts in which opinion is not supposed to be being expressed. The use of the word "reform" implies that whatever change is being discussed is a change for the better (and, therefore, that the speaker supports the change). Something to remember next time you hear a BBC reporter discussing "necessary reforms".
Monday, 17 November 2014
Spelling
I've been thinking about spelling quite a lot recently. I've never had very many problems with spelling, and I think that's largely because I have always read a lot. If you read a lot, the patterns of the words, however illogical the spelling of many English words may be, fix themselves somehow on your retina or in your memory and you can reproduce them without too much difficulty. Spelling in English is incredibly inconsistent, for all sorts of historical reasons, so learning rules probably doesn't get you very far. I remain in awe of people who learn it as a language which is not their first. Welsh is so much easier, despite all the silly jokes beloved of (usually, English, or at least Anglophone) journalists. Learn the rules and with a very few exceptions you can pronounce the words: hear the words and you can, usually, have a stab at spelling them accurately. Not so with English (or should that be Inglish?)
I've been trying to work out which words are likely to cause problems, particularly for anyone who doesn't read widely in English and/or for anyone whose language of education is not English (in order to help my son a little with his English, for one thing). How fortunate we are to have the outpourings of Twitter, comments on newspaper articles and other manifestations online to give us a clue. Here are a few versions of English words and phrases, all of which I have seen online recently:
draw [for furniture]
chester draws [ditto]
I don't give a dam
The damn has burst
To and throw
bi laws
flem
the church bizarre
These are all probably genuine misspellings rather than typos, and suggest a lack of understanding of the meaning of some of the expressions (if you can change "to and fro" to something quite different it suggests that you don't understand where the phrase comes from). They are certainly also the result of hearing, but not seeing, the words. There are plenty more to be seen all the time online.
In the face of all this, I might be wasting my time trying to convince my son that correct spelling matters. After all, he can see examples of mistakes every day, many of them made by adults (and many of those are quite well-educated adults). Perhaps I am just too fussy! I admit to pedantry - but there is still a point to spelling, even in a language which makes it so difficult for you by the divergence between its orthography and its pronunciation. How many online searches fail because of incorrect spelling, for instance? Google will often give you the accurate alternative, but not everything else does (including many library catalogues and databases).
Thoughts, and examples, welcome!
POSTSCRIPT:
Dr. Bethan Jenkins of Oxford has pointed me in the direction of eggcorns, which I hadn't come across before. It's a database of exactly what I was thinking of, but with citations. I haven't given any citations, largely because my examples are things I have spotted people I know either in real life or online using, and I think anonymity is, in that case, the wisest if not the most reliable course (so I can't back anything up!)
I've been trying to work out which words are likely to cause problems, particularly for anyone who doesn't read widely in English and/or for anyone whose language of education is not English (in order to help my son a little with his English, for one thing). How fortunate we are to have the outpourings of Twitter, comments on newspaper articles and other manifestations online to give us a clue. Here are a few versions of English words and phrases, all of which I have seen online recently:
draw [for furniture]
chester draws [ditto]
I don't give a dam
The damn has burst
To and throw
bi laws
flem
the church bizarre
These are all probably genuine misspellings rather than typos, and suggest a lack of understanding of the meaning of some of the expressions (if you can change "to and fro" to something quite different it suggests that you don't understand where the phrase comes from). They are certainly also the result of hearing, but not seeing, the words. There are plenty more to be seen all the time online.
In the face of all this, I might be wasting my time trying to convince my son that correct spelling matters. After all, he can see examples of mistakes every day, many of them made by adults (and many of those are quite well-educated adults). Perhaps I am just too fussy! I admit to pedantry - but there is still a point to spelling, even in a language which makes it so difficult for you by the divergence between its orthography and its pronunciation. How many online searches fail because of incorrect spelling, for instance? Google will often give you the accurate alternative, but not everything else does (including many library catalogues and databases).
Thoughts, and examples, welcome!
POSTSCRIPT:
Dr. Bethan Jenkins of Oxford has pointed me in the direction of eggcorns, which I hadn't come across before. It's a database of exactly what I was thinking of, but with citations. I haven't given any citations, largely because my examples are things I have spotted people I know either in real life or online using, and I think anonymity is, in that case, the wisest if not the most reliable course (so I can't back anything up!)
Friday, 25 July 2014
Cataloguers, the scapegoats of the library world
"People think librarians are odd, but even librarians think cataloguers are odd" - or words to that effect, said to me long ago when I (inadvertently) became a cataloguer in a prestigious university library in London. It's certainly true that cataloguers don't seem to have many friends, especially when the cuts bite. They are a discrete bunch, easy to separate from colleagues and perhaps easy to dispense with (this has certainly been the case over the years in public libraries). They tend to work out of sight of the rest of the library service (at Cardiff University cataloguers are in an office block some way away from most of the libraries we serve).
Out of sight doesn't necessarily mean out of mind, but it does mean that cataloguing can be seen as something isolated from the immediate role of the library. Out of sight also means that the quantity of books allegedly sitting on shelves and not reaching the readers can grow to mythical proportions. It's a difficult thing to counter once the belief becomes widespread in the library service. "Oh, it hasn't come yet, it's still in cataloguing" soon becomes "there must be quicker ways of doing this", "couldn't we get a student to do it for work experience?", and variations on the theme. How big does a backlog have to be before it can be said to be having a negative effect on the service and the end-user? Our backlog of current material, that is new books bought for research and teaching, including reading list titles, was about half a shelf at the beginning of this week. At no point during the last six months has it been more than four shelves at the most - it is usually less than that - yet in the minds of those who have not seen it it seems to rival the contents of an actual library.
As for the current material, cataloguers rarely catalogue from scratch: the new textbooks nearly always come with an existing record which simply needs some tidying up to conform to the requirements of the system. We classify them ourselves. Very little cataloguer time is spent on some of this material. The things which do take more time are the more esoteric publications, particularly overseas material, and audio-visual material. (If you don't spend time on these, your lovely new whizzy discovery platform won't work properly.) External companies which offer to provide a cataloguing service tend also to be quicker and stronger on the "bread-and-butter" textbooks, and less able to fulfil requirements when it comes to the more obscure material, as you would expect.
The cataloguer wastefully doing everything from the beginning every time, and duplicating the same work done in other libraries, is another myth which is hard to crack. Cataloguers have shared records for decades - and I do mean a long time (i.e. even before I was born!) - but this fact doesn't seem to be widely known even in libraries. Every now and then someone comes up with the brilliant idea of speeding things up by doing, yes, something we have already been doing for many years.
We do have a larger backlog of donated material, some of which arrives in large and unpredictable quantities (after a death, for instance, or the retirement of an academic). We catalogue this material as and when we can, but it isn't planned for in the way the usual throughput of new books is. Basic records are added to the catalogue by assistants before they reach the cataloguers' shelves, so they can be found on the catalogue and requested if wanted.
Cataloguers do not process the books themselves (again, perhaps something which is not fully understood), so once we have catalogued and classified we think our work is done and the books have become a processing backlog (and the processors' backlog is not large either, except at times of staff shortage). Turnaround for processed books is usually 24 hours.
Anecdotal comment is very hard to prove or disprove. We monitor our throughput (for the new material), so we have evidence of the amount of time taken, and of course our empty shelves are there to see, if anyone would like to come and look. Perhaps we should lure our colleagues down to our lair (with cake?), and dispel the myths. Any suggestions gratefully received!
Out of sight doesn't necessarily mean out of mind, but it does mean that cataloguing can be seen as something isolated from the immediate role of the library. Out of sight also means that the quantity of books allegedly sitting on shelves and not reaching the readers can grow to mythical proportions. It's a difficult thing to counter once the belief becomes widespread in the library service. "Oh, it hasn't come yet, it's still in cataloguing" soon becomes "there must be quicker ways of doing this", "couldn't we get a student to do it for work experience?", and variations on the theme. How big does a backlog have to be before it can be said to be having a negative effect on the service and the end-user? Our backlog of current material, that is new books bought for research and teaching, including reading list titles, was about half a shelf at the beginning of this week. At no point during the last six months has it been more than four shelves at the most - it is usually less than that - yet in the minds of those who have not seen it it seems to rival the contents of an actual library.
As for the current material, cataloguers rarely catalogue from scratch: the new textbooks nearly always come with an existing record which simply needs some tidying up to conform to the requirements of the system. We classify them ourselves. Very little cataloguer time is spent on some of this material. The things which do take more time are the more esoteric publications, particularly overseas material, and audio-visual material. (If you don't spend time on these, your lovely new whizzy discovery platform won't work properly.) External companies which offer to provide a cataloguing service tend also to be quicker and stronger on the "bread-and-butter" textbooks, and less able to fulfil requirements when it comes to the more obscure material, as you would expect.
The cataloguer wastefully doing everything from the beginning every time, and duplicating the same work done in other libraries, is another myth which is hard to crack. Cataloguers have shared records for decades - and I do mean a long time (i.e. even before I was born!) - but this fact doesn't seem to be widely known even in libraries. Every now and then someone comes up with the brilliant idea of speeding things up by doing, yes, something we have already been doing for many years.
We do have a larger backlog of donated material, some of which arrives in large and unpredictable quantities (after a death, for instance, or the retirement of an academic). We catalogue this material as and when we can, but it isn't planned for in the way the usual throughput of new books is. Basic records are added to the catalogue by assistants before they reach the cataloguers' shelves, so they can be found on the catalogue and requested if wanted.
Cataloguers do not process the books themselves (again, perhaps something which is not fully understood), so once we have catalogued and classified we think our work is done and the books have become a processing backlog (and the processors' backlog is not large either, except at times of staff shortage). Turnaround for processed books is usually 24 hours.
Anecdotal comment is very hard to prove or disprove. We monitor our throughput (for the new material), so we have evidence of the amount of time taken, and of course our empty shelves are there to see, if anyone would like to come and look. Perhaps we should lure our colleagues down to our lair (with cake?), and dispel the myths. Any suggestions gratefully received!
Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Words in vogue: Feedback
"Feedback" is a term borrowed from electronics, which isn't my forte, but if I have understood it correctly it means that information from a past occurrence is "fed" into the circuit or system to change or influence the next event. It is such a ubiquitous word now that its origins have been forgotten. Once upon a time it was not a word you ever heard, and I can remember thinking when I first heard it that it must have something to do with regurgitation - which, given the frequency with which our "feedback" is now invited, may not after all be far from the truth. Almost every activity today seems to involve the filling in of surveys, the often very arbitrary allocation of stars to just about anything, and the opportunity to let off steam. As commercial organisations try to gather information on their customers, they seem to be expecting those customers to spend a lot of time commenting on their products.
No one would question that companies and other services shouldn't aim to improve their services, but I wonder if one important element is not sometimes lost in the current "feedback" fetish: that it is supposed to contain actual information, not simply somebody's prejudices, or personal opinions which may not be based on any facts whatsoever. There are many surveys around at the moment inviting comments on public services, for instance (particularly ones which are under threat). People are told that there is less money to spend and, if they persist in saying that they would like to keep their existing services, are invited to suggest other economies, but often not with any hard facts about the budgets involved. It's an invitation for anyone to suggest that things they don't use themselves should be cut instead. Another peril for the public sector is the retreating of the state: central funds are cut, but locally that might mean that at the same time people are paying more (whether in council tax or in university tuition fees) - and it's not reasonable to expect every member of the public or student filling in surveys and providing "feedback" to be politically aware enough to know this.
It's a fairly unscientific process in the commercial world too. Book "reviews" on the best known book sites (such as Amazon and Goodreads) are the personal opinion of individuals, no more, no less - yet their prejudices might unduly influence the "rating" of an author, and if that author hasn't attracted many reviews (= opinion pieces) a negative one will have a disproportionate effect. This is obvious to many of us, and it doesn't mean we can't enjoy some of the reviews and sometimes value the opportunity to give our own opinion about books we have or haven't enjoyed, but it all needs to be taken with a generous dose of salt. If somebody doesn't like the idea that there are people in the United Kingdom who speak the Gaelic language on a daily basis, that's their personal opinion, not a valid criticism of a book set in the Outer Hebrides which makes this fact a part of the story. It doesn't mean the "feedback" is telling you anything at all other than that the reader has a certain set of opinions which don't coincide with those of the author of the book. I think authors should try to ignore these things, but that is easier said than done, especially if you might be at a stage in your career when you can't be sure that it won't make a difference.
Try remembering a B&B or hotel which you have stayed at and thought was perfectly acceptable, and then go and look at what some people have said about it on Tripadvisor. There are legitimate criticisms, of course, but there are many unreasonable people out there who seem to think that all hotels should be redecorated every year, that spiders in an English hotel in the autumn are somehow to be avoided in well-run establishments, and that bed linen should be changed daily. Some of the comments made must be very hurtful for small businesses working hard and trying to keep going in an unfriendly economic climate.
Then there's the irritation factor. Every time you visit some websites, or so it seems, you are biffing away pop-up messages wanting you to give feedback. It will only take ten minutes! We value your opinion! Isn't there any way these things could at least not pop up until you have had a chance to look at the thing? Even worse, shops which bombard you with emails requesting reviews for everything you buy. Start going down that route and you find yourself stumbling over more and more hurdles. You must have a password, AND a pen name, which must not be the same as anyone else's (four attempts later you hit on something nobody else has used), and then your review is too short, or too long. Excuse me, I don't actually work for your shop, so how about not making it so difficult!
One obvious other problem with all this is that it almost invites negativity. I recently filled in an official survey about a library service in which one of the questions related to what were the deficiencies of the service and how could it be improved. I left the question blank, but the survey wouldn't allow this - so I found a positive way of answering, but surely the question is framed in such a way that expects fault to be found? One recent question in a survey at my own place of work was answered along the lines of "I think the library is fantastic - of course you can never have everything you want and in an ideal world there would be more [books, facilities], but it is great" - and this was recorded as a negative response. You have to be very careful what answers you give, and think of the motivation of the people who might analyse them!
I'm going to be a bit more circumspect in 2014 in how much time I spend on surveys generally, and I'm going to be very careful about how I answer any leading questions. I'm also going to be very sure not to let off steam in a way that might damage someone's career or the service they are trying to provide, unless there is a genuine reason for negativity which I can back up with real facts and information. Generally, I'd like to make a plea for less spite and less malice in reviewing, across the spectrum of commercial and public spheres - and for a more cautious approach in interpreting "feedback".
No one would question that companies and other services shouldn't aim to improve their services, but I wonder if one important element is not sometimes lost in the current "feedback" fetish: that it is supposed to contain actual information, not simply somebody's prejudices, or personal opinions which may not be based on any facts whatsoever. There are many surveys around at the moment inviting comments on public services, for instance (particularly ones which are under threat). People are told that there is less money to spend and, if they persist in saying that they would like to keep their existing services, are invited to suggest other economies, but often not with any hard facts about the budgets involved. It's an invitation for anyone to suggest that things they don't use themselves should be cut instead. Another peril for the public sector is the retreating of the state: central funds are cut, but locally that might mean that at the same time people are paying more (whether in council tax or in university tuition fees) - and it's not reasonable to expect every member of the public or student filling in surveys and providing "feedback" to be politically aware enough to know this.
It's a fairly unscientific process in the commercial world too. Book "reviews" on the best known book sites (such as Amazon and Goodreads) are the personal opinion of individuals, no more, no less - yet their prejudices might unduly influence the "rating" of an author, and if that author hasn't attracted many reviews (= opinion pieces) a negative one will have a disproportionate effect. This is obvious to many of us, and it doesn't mean we can't enjoy some of the reviews and sometimes value the opportunity to give our own opinion about books we have or haven't enjoyed, but it all needs to be taken with a generous dose of salt. If somebody doesn't like the idea that there are people in the United Kingdom who speak the Gaelic language on a daily basis, that's their personal opinion, not a valid criticism of a book set in the Outer Hebrides which makes this fact a part of the story. It doesn't mean the "feedback" is telling you anything at all other than that the reader has a certain set of opinions which don't coincide with those of the author of the book. I think authors should try to ignore these things, but that is easier said than done, especially if you might be at a stage in your career when you can't be sure that it won't make a difference.
Try remembering a B&B or hotel which you have stayed at and thought was perfectly acceptable, and then go and look at what some people have said about it on Tripadvisor. There are legitimate criticisms, of course, but there are many unreasonable people out there who seem to think that all hotels should be redecorated every year, that spiders in an English hotel in the autumn are somehow to be avoided in well-run establishments, and that bed linen should be changed daily. Some of the comments made must be very hurtful for small businesses working hard and trying to keep going in an unfriendly economic climate.
Then there's the irritation factor. Every time you visit some websites, or so it seems, you are biffing away pop-up messages wanting you to give feedback. It will only take ten minutes! We value your opinion! Isn't there any way these things could at least not pop up until you have had a chance to look at the thing? Even worse, shops which bombard you with emails requesting reviews for everything you buy. Start going down that route and you find yourself stumbling over more and more hurdles. You must have a password, AND a pen name, which must not be the same as anyone else's (four attempts later you hit on something nobody else has used), and then your review is too short, or too long. Excuse me, I don't actually work for your shop, so how about not making it so difficult!
One obvious other problem with all this is that it almost invites negativity. I recently filled in an official survey about a library service in which one of the questions related to what were the deficiencies of the service and how could it be improved. I left the question blank, but the survey wouldn't allow this - so I found a positive way of answering, but surely the question is framed in such a way that expects fault to be found? One recent question in a survey at my own place of work was answered along the lines of "I think the library is fantastic - of course you can never have everything you want and in an ideal world there would be more [books, facilities], but it is great" - and this was recorded as a negative response. You have to be very careful what answers you give, and think of the motivation of the people who might analyse them!
I'm going to be a bit more circumspect in 2014 in how much time I spend on surveys generally, and I'm going to be very careful about how I answer any leading questions. I'm also going to be very sure not to let off steam in a way that might damage someone's career or the service they are trying to provide, unless there is a genuine reason for negativity which I can back up with real facts and information. Generally, I'd like to make a plea for less spite and less malice in reviewing, across the spectrum of commercial and public spheres - and for a more cautious approach in interpreting "feedback".
Thursday, 18 July 2013
There's an ap for that: what's in a (Welsh) name? or, why can't Wales be more like Iceland?
Some recent political silliness (read about it here if you haven't already) has sparked quite a bit of discussion on Twitter and elsewhere about Welsh names. Being a cataloguer of Welsh books - and, even more relevant perhaps, a librarian looking after a lot of shelves of books by Welsh authors - this is a subject dear to my heart. How often have I wished for fewer authors called Jones or Williams, who between them make our collection hard to shelve and use!
The modern trend away from Anglicised versions of Welsh surnames offers hope that one day names in Wales will not be dominated by the letters J, P and W (a long story, but this has more or less been the outcome of the end of the patronymic system). If you want to make your Anglicised Welsh name more Welsh, you have a number of options. You can simply use a Welsh form of the spelling (so Griffiths becomes Gruffydd, Jones becomes Iwan, and so on). Some use a Welsh version of their name in everyday life, but keep the Anglicised form for officialdom. Some people have dropped the surname and replaced it with a middle name which then becomes the family name for future generations. Some have adopted a place name, such as the name of a farm. Bardic names, the names by which poets distinguished themselves, were often place names.
Here convention as to how to cite names begins to break down a bit, and from a cataloguer's point of view has created an inconsistent muddle where sometimes people are referred to by their official, English, name with the bardic name in brackets, whereas others have suddenly metamorphosed into bardic name only. At the library at Cardiff University traditionally we used to follow the pattern of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography (surname, first name, bardic name in brackets). There no longer seems to be any consensus about whose name still follows this order and whose doesn't. There are many examples in Library of Congress authorities (the versions of names which are nearly always used in library catalogues) of both ways of doing it, including many where the bardic name is the main point of entry (such as Cynan, formerly Evans-Jones, Albert in our catalogue).
Names using "ap", the traditional marker of the patronymic, are another problematic area. The medieval examples (Dafydd ap Gwilym, Gruffydd ap Rhys) are straightforward. These are genuine patronymics (Gruffydd ap Rhys was the son of Rhys, and so on). The main name is the first name. If there had been a phone book in the fourteenth century Dafydd ap Gwilym would have appeared under "D". This is what still happens in Iceland to this day, where the first name is what counts, and a family of husband, wife, son and daughter will all have different names. Modern Welsh "ap" seems to be more ambivalent. There are examples of people who have gone all the way and resurrected the patronymic system (Myrddin ap Dafydd is the son of Dafydd Parri), but others, while embracing what looks at first sight to be a name which would not be out of place in twelfth century Wales, stop short of taking the final step and throwing off the concept of the surname altogether. If married with children, the whole family has the same "ap" name. This is not a genuine patronymic system (it's probably easier to live with from a bureaucratic point of view though!)
The modern "ap" names seem to cause all sorts of difficulties. Should the person's first name still be the main one? Should it be the last element? or, should they all be called "Mr. Ap ----" and filed and shelved under A? Are Welsh "Ap" names, in other words, like Scottish and Irish Mc/Mac (another source of much distress to librarians?) Back to LOC authorities for guidance (incidentally, although we can't expect the Library of Congress perhaps to be fully aware of all the nuances of Welsh naming, it's worth pointing out that our own National Library of Wales is the source of many of the Welsh authority records). Again, there is not much consistency, although a preference seems to be emerging for the first element of the name to go first (Myrddin ap Dafydd, Hedd ap Emlyn) - but what is one to make of "Ap Glyn, Ifor, see Ifor ap Glyn" appearing just above "Ap Gwilym, Ifor, 1951-"? A trawl down the "ap" list only confirms that there is no standard (and makes you wonder where the term "authority" applies in all this).
Of course, as a librarian, I am biased. I want to get away from hunting through shelves of books by authors whose names all begin with the same letter! I don't want to have to check and double-check which possible version of the name has been used before! Surely in a small country and with only a limited number of people affected it ought to be possible at least to achieve consistency. I must say that, apart from the thought of how UK bureaucracy might struggle with it, I'm all for the Icelandic system.
The modern trend away from Anglicised versions of Welsh surnames offers hope that one day names in Wales will not be dominated by the letters J, P and W (a long story, but this has more or less been the outcome of the end of the patronymic system). If you want to make your Anglicised Welsh name more Welsh, you have a number of options. You can simply use a Welsh form of the spelling (so Griffiths becomes Gruffydd, Jones becomes Iwan, and so on). Some use a Welsh version of their name in everyday life, but keep the Anglicised form for officialdom. Some people have dropped the surname and replaced it with a middle name which then becomes the family name for future generations. Some have adopted a place name, such as the name of a farm. Bardic names, the names by which poets distinguished themselves, were often place names.
Here convention as to how to cite names begins to break down a bit, and from a cataloguer's point of view has created an inconsistent muddle where sometimes people are referred to by their official, English, name with the bardic name in brackets, whereas others have suddenly metamorphosed into bardic name only. At the library at Cardiff University traditionally we used to follow the pattern of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography (surname, first name, bardic name in brackets). There no longer seems to be any consensus about whose name still follows this order and whose doesn't. There are many examples in Library of Congress authorities (the versions of names which are nearly always used in library catalogues) of both ways of doing it, including many where the bardic name is the main point of entry (such as Cynan, formerly Evans-Jones, Albert in our catalogue).
Names using "ap", the traditional marker of the patronymic, are another problematic area. The medieval examples (Dafydd ap Gwilym, Gruffydd ap Rhys) are straightforward. These are genuine patronymics (Gruffydd ap Rhys was the son of Rhys, and so on). The main name is the first name. If there had been a phone book in the fourteenth century Dafydd ap Gwilym would have appeared under "D". This is what still happens in Iceland to this day, where the first name is what counts, and a family of husband, wife, son and daughter will all have different names. Modern Welsh "ap" seems to be more ambivalent. There are examples of people who have gone all the way and resurrected the patronymic system (Myrddin ap Dafydd is the son of Dafydd Parri), but others, while embracing what looks at first sight to be a name which would not be out of place in twelfth century Wales, stop short of taking the final step and throwing off the concept of the surname altogether. If married with children, the whole family has the same "ap" name. This is not a genuine patronymic system (it's probably easier to live with from a bureaucratic point of view though!)
The modern "ap" names seem to cause all sorts of difficulties. Should the person's first name still be the main one? Should it be the last element? or, should they all be called "Mr. Ap ----" and filed and shelved under A? Are Welsh "Ap" names, in other words, like Scottish and Irish Mc/Mac (another source of much distress to librarians?) Back to LOC authorities for guidance (incidentally, although we can't expect the Library of Congress perhaps to be fully aware of all the nuances of Welsh naming, it's worth pointing out that our own National Library of Wales is the source of many of the Welsh authority records). Again, there is not much consistency, although a preference seems to be emerging for the first element of the name to go first (Myrddin ap Dafydd, Hedd ap Emlyn) - but what is one to make of "Ap Glyn, Ifor, see Ifor ap Glyn" appearing just above "Ap Gwilym, Ifor, 1951-"? A trawl down the "ap" list only confirms that there is no standard (and makes you wonder where the term "authority" applies in all this).
Of course, as a librarian, I am biased. I want to get away from hunting through shelves of books by authors whose names all begin with the same letter! I don't want to have to check and double-check which possible version of the name has been used before! Surely in a small country and with only a limited number of people affected it ought to be possible at least to achieve consistency. I must say that, apart from the thought of how UK bureaucracy might struggle with it, I'm all for the Icelandic system.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
The weird world of secondhand bookselling online: or, why we can't buy everything on your reading list
As my colleagues and my Twitter followers will know, I am constantly (it must seem - sorry!) complaining about the difficulty of obtaining copies of old, out-of-print material which is still required, sometimes in unobtainable quantity, for the university library where I work. It's a big problem for a humanities subject, where ageing textbooks may still in fact be the most recent, or the most influential, in their field, something not always appreciated by the publishing world. Academic interest lasts longer than commercial interest, and sometimes it grows over time. Lecturers will of course often recommend books they found useful themselves (this is probably true in many subject areas), without realising just how scarce they may have become. It's a problem which has been exacerbated in libraries where there has been a lot of weeding done by people who are not perhaps the best judges of what is or may be wanted in particular subject areas (that's a whole separate subject for consideration!).
I've recently been trawling through reading lists (again) and sighing with exasperation at the sheer difficulty of getting hold of some of the items on them. The really frustrating thing is that I know that somewhere, in a secondhand bookshop which is not online, or even a charity shop, the very items I am trying to find to satisfy students' demands are probably languishing unbought at a low price. If only they could be put together with the customers who actually want them!
You would think that the online listing of secondhand books would provide a perfect solution. A recent search for a 1989 edition of a good, but perfectly ordinary, English language book (of which we already have two copies in stock in the library) produced the startling fact that the only copy currently being offered for sale online comes at a price of between £800 and £900. There are several copies of a 51-page Welsh booklet available - original price £3 - but the cheapest costs £90. These are not collector's items printed on handmade paper and bound in cloth of gold - they are ordinary books! In one rare instance a lecturer planning a new module did a bit of research and realised that the book he wanted to put on his reading list was just going to be too expensive for either the library or the students to afford. It doesn't always happen, though, and it's an immensely frustrating situation for everyone concerned.
I am no economist, but I am deeply suspicious of those gods of modern times, the mysterious "market forces" which are supposed to make everything find its right level according to demand. The market certainly isn't working as far as out-of-print books are concerned (and no, dear students, we cannot simply make copies of everything we want, still less can we "just scan it and put it all on the Internet" - there are laws about that sort of thing. Publishers who consider books not to be worth reprinting are still eager to protect their own interests by not giving stuff away.)
For a more in-depth look at what I am talking about, enjoy this blog post from Michael Eisen. I haven't found any prices quite as extreme as the eye-watering sums he has come across, but I have seen some which are quite bad enough. I cannot see the point of making things unaffordable like this. Dogs and mangers!
I've recently been trawling through reading lists (again) and sighing with exasperation at the sheer difficulty of getting hold of some of the items on them. The really frustrating thing is that I know that somewhere, in a secondhand bookshop which is not online, or even a charity shop, the very items I am trying to find to satisfy students' demands are probably languishing unbought at a low price. If only they could be put together with the customers who actually want them!
You would think that the online listing of secondhand books would provide a perfect solution. A recent search for a 1989 edition of a good, but perfectly ordinary, English language book (of which we already have two copies in stock in the library) produced the startling fact that the only copy currently being offered for sale online comes at a price of between £800 and £900. There are several copies of a 51-page Welsh booklet available - original price £3 - but the cheapest costs £90. These are not collector's items printed on handmade paper and bound in cloth of gold - they are ordinary books! In one rare instance a lecturer planning a new module did a bit of research and realised that the book he wanted to put on his reading list was just going to be too expensive for either the library or the students to afford. It doesn't always happen, though, and it's an immensely frustrating situation for everyone concerned.
I am no economist, but I am deeply suspicious of those gods of modern times, the mysterious "market forces" which are supposed to make everything find its right level according to demand. The market certainly isn't working as far as out-of-print books are concerned (and no, dear students, we cannot simply make copies of everything we want, still less can we "just scan it and put it all on the Internet" - there are laws about that sort of thing. Publishers who consider books not to be worth reprinting are still eager to protect their own interests by not giving stuff away.)
For a more in-depth look at what I am talking about, enjoy this blog post from Michael Eisen. I haven't found any prices quite as extreme as the eye-watering sums he has come across, but I have seen some which are quite bad enough. I cannot see the point of making things unaffordable like this. Dogs and mangers!
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