Weeknotes #12: Monsters Only
A week of interesting chats, admin churn and unexpected tribulations.
What happened this week?
Monday began with a useful chat with one of our Board members about a large-scale AI roll-out across a multi-national organisation. Initial scepticism has been replaced by seeing dedicated agents delivering huge time savings. Context is key, focusing on identifying which admin-heavy pinch points to carefully standardise.
This chat was followed by lunch with our new Chair, Christopher Smith. With a clear-eyed focus on the value of Libraries as vital research infrastructure, he seems like the right person at the right time.
The rest of the day was subsumed by further procurement wrangling. We managed to re-publish a CRM tender at rapid speed, but it felt more painful than it needed to be. The pause before submissions come in will provide the team with much needed downtime.
On Tuesday I was back with the Heritage Fund sitting in on a funding allocation meeting. It's interesting attending in a purely observatory capacity and knowing how and when to feed in. I think I got the balance just about right, identifying longer-term archive requirements for multiple oral history and digitisation projects.
Throughout the week I was jumping on various calls to catch up on the Creative Content Exchange programme which is aiming to create a "shared marketplace" for cultural heritage data. It's a complex area and a one-size-fits all model is inevitably hitting up against the specificity of systems, data and licensing/rights across the national collections. It was interesting to see the Open Data Institute's small-scale prototype of the National Data Library as a way to surface the challenges and opportunities of a similar large-scale initiative.
After an admin-heavy Wednesday churning through the to-do list, I managed to catch up with past colleagues from National Musuems Scotland - and leave at the right time before the whisky was poured!
On Thursday I attended an AWS-hosted event, AI You Can Trust, seeing some friendly faces from across the public sector. Lots to ponder and it can be hard to stay focussed on your specific context and opportunities. In general, I still feel uneasy with the language deployed in the AI space, including assigning human attributes to predictive models and agents. Phrases like "agentic hospital" and “upsell opportunities” felt uncomfortable when applied to critical public services.
A planned day of annual leave on Friday was scuppered by alerts pinging my phone in the early hours of the morning. Temperatures in the main data centre had reached critical levels and the heroic actions of colleagues prevented multiple servers shutting down. I headed on site to catch up with the team, look at some flashing lights and start the incident logging process.
Interesting things
- The Library has started to receive a few examples of AI-generated published material, requiring formal attribution and author headings for the likes of Grok and ChatGPT. Interesting/terrifying times...
- The Library's Access team have given names to our collection trolleys including: Trolly Parton, George Orwheel, Wheeliam Shakespeare, Daphne du Trollier, Rene Descart, Cart Cobain, JRR Trollkein, Cart Vader, and Mary Wheelstonecraft.
- Paul Christie from Registers of Scotland has provided some useful insights into the Gartner CIO and IT Leadership Conference, including: "Most organisations won’t fail on technology, they'll fail on culture and structure."
- The final report from the Scottish AI Alliance
- Major Museums in England considering a charging foreign tourists
- Flickr is good at urls
- A thought about scrambled eggs
Watching, listening, reading, doing
📖 I've started The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks as a page-turner I don't have to think too deeply about.
🎭 With my Heritage Fund hat on, I attended the celebration event from Edinburgh Festival Carnival showcasing community groups performing traditional dance. Lots of cute kids, intricate skills and fab costumes.
📺 I'm very slowly watching Breaking Bad with the boy, nearing the end of Season 4. We're geeking out on how Walt's transformation is conveyed through the use of colour and camera work.
🎧 I enjoyed the latest Origin Story on Introverts/Extroverts, having been through both Myers Briggs and Personal Insights evaluations. Key takeaway: the framing can help understand each other in different environments, but there aren't just two types of people.
🏃New trainers arrived and were taken for a spin on Friday afternoon. So far, so bouncy.
