Weeknote #38: Shadows

Shadowy steps.

This note was meant to be shorter as the week was very long.

What happened this week?

GovCamp Scotland on Monday went well. I enjoyed being on the welcome desk but had to jump into a few meetings and missed the afternoon sessions. Some good vibes overviews here and here.

On Tuesday morning I took part in Carbon Literacy training before then catching up with our newly-appointed technical consultants scoping ATR solutions.

After work I headed immediately next door to Riddle’s Court for a Heritage Fund reception discussing the challenges facing Scotland’s heritage scetor. Chief Librarian (and my boss) Amina Shah spoke about the value of culture and a quotation from Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain stuck with me:

“One cannot know the rivers till one has seen them at their sources; but this journey to sources is not to be undertaken lightly. One walks among elementals, and elementals are not governable. There are awakened also in oneself by the contact elementals that are as unpredictable as wind or snow.”

Wednesday was focussed on Legal Deposit with positive updates on the restoration of access to digital publications and the UK Web Archive. The shadow of longer-term governance and funding are among the many challenges waiting the British Library's new Chief Executive.

Thursday morning brought an unplanned walk to work with a neighbour, followed by another unplanned (but long overdue) morning coffee with my friend Fiona. A highlight of the week.

The rest of the day was spent project wrangling with some tough conversations around scope and ownership. There is clarity emerging around CRM, but also recognition of inevitable compromise and the need to plan and fund the next phase. I ended the day a little overwhelmed at the scale of the task facing the digital team tackling legacy systems and managing an unsustainable amount of technology.

With impeccable timing, Ash Mann's Hidden Cost report was published this week, surfacing the burden of additional labour for digital teams working outside their planned responsibilities and operating horizontally in organisations that are structured vertically. Lots of valuable insight and I'm hoping there will be an accompanying slidedeck to help share with others (hint, hint Ash).

In more positive news, I had a really good catch up with the Digirati team exploring their multi-year transformation project with University of Leeds Library. There's work for me across the rest of this year to set out what similar transformation could look like in our context - and the right operational model to support it.

Friday was spent in Glasgow at our Kelvinhall venue for a workshop with the Intelligent Systems for Screen Archives (ISSA) team from Kings College London. With support from the BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund there's some great work happening around the automated segmentation, description and transcription of TV archives. I was impressed.

Btw

The Library is looking for two content-focussed roles in the Digital Experience team where a lot of good stuff is happening. If you appreciate these weeknotes (all 8 of you), please share far and wide.

Interesting things

The Scottish Government's Public Service Leadership Statement.
A nice overview of the UK Government's AI Scenarios 2030 report.
Catherine Howe, CEX at Dorset Council, on possible AI futures: "The first job of AI is to clear up the mess that the other technology has made."
John Fitzgerald has drafted guidelines on Responsible AI use and the environment.
An interesting mix of headlines from FutureScot this week - from Scottish Government banking on AI and automation to a former NHS boss questioning whether institutions are ready for autonomous AI. Who to believe?
Meanwhile Renfrewshire Council are going all in with a £5 million, three-year AI investment programme.
One Further have updated their report on the impact of AI overviews on traffic to cultural organisations. TL;DR: traffic continues to trend down.
AI is an unhelpful term but the kids are using “that is so AI” to signal anything that feels cheap, inauthentic or just a bit s**t.
The washing line index: find out if it's worth putting your clothes outside to dry.