Weeknotes #7-8: Emergency response
After a relaxing half-term break in Fife, this week was all about catching up, planning for the worst and responding to unexpected changes.
What happened this week?
- The week started by reporting into the Library's Audit Committee on our cyber security plans. Recognition of progress was balanced with the awareness that it's a case of when, not if when it comes managing cyber risk. It's encouraging that Board members are switched on to the issues and also undertaking additional training.
- On Wednesday I took part in a Library-wide emergency response scenario involving a critical incident. Facilitators drilled hom the mantra that "no plan survives contact with the enemy" as we tested our response documentation and processes. AI-generated footage of the incident was disturbing in several ways but brought home the need to focus on people throughout.
- Another type of emergency response involved a software license running out unexpectedly taking down our printing service in the Reading Room. A solution involved some rapid decision-making and deciding where to compromise across security, costs, and user experience.
- It was great to welcome Geoff Huggins and some of the team behind ScotAccount and the new government app to tour the Library - including a showcase of the Mackinnon photography collections with amazing highlights of Edinburgh in the 1860s. I've always loved hearing curators talk with passion about a specialist subject (thanks, Alison!). The group had further positive conversations about our long-term ambition of delivering a Digital Library Card to the people of Scotland.
- Global supply line issues are affecting the delivery of some essential hardware, delaying the replacement of our virtual environment. It's frustrating to sit and wait, especially when the delay could have big budget implications.
- I managed to complete my AI Fundamentals for Public Servants online course from Stanford. Nothing revelatory, but a good grounding across ethical assessment, regulatory frameworks and use cases in the public sector.
- I joined a team briefing with the Heritage Fund, focussing on the significant challenges facing places of worship across Scotland. The session included a tour of the grounds of Greyfriars Kirk where I got married (at some point in the distant past).
- The week was rounded off with a discussion on GovCamp Scotland and how to run the event again this year. It was great to join folk from across central and local government who are committed to making it happen. Watch this space...
Interesting things
Posts that caught my eye on holiday and through this week:
- Microsoft are experimenting with glass for digital preservation.
Stone, parchment or laser-written glass? Scientists find new way to preserve data
Hard disks and magnetic tape have a limited lifespan, but glass storage developed by Microsoft could last millennia
Nicola Davis
- I enjoyed the latest post from Hugh Wallace questioning why people are still persisting with Twitter/X - a position increasingly hard to justify.
X: why are you still here?
Twitter is no longer with us, but X lives on. In the run up to what would’ve been Twitter’s 20th birthday, why does X’s influence endure?
Hugh Wallace
- Neil Williams' blog on his fourth anniversary at BFI summed up the mix of still being energised by vision/purpose whilst struggling with day-to-day realities of a complex role. Or, as he puts it "the tedium of navigating inadequate resourcing, and the frustrations of operating in a context so devoid of the fundamentals it’s hard to know which problem to fix first."
- A short post from John Cutler pointing out that high-level themes aren't an adequate subsititute for effective strategy.
- Understanding levels of change is a helpful reminder that "transformation" rarely happens at the organisation-wide, foundational level.
AI thinking
There's so much noise around AI right now that it's hard to get a sense of ground truth between warnings of apocalyptic scenarios and economic meltdown. FOMO (or just general fear) is not a strategy and I'm trying to stay focussed on our specific context and the next small steps. That said...
- With Anthropic sticking to their red lines in the face of US Government pressure I think we can all agree that "No LLM, anywhere, in its current form, should be considered for use in a fully lethal autonomous weapon system."
- I agree with Martha Lane Fox's latest post that "Libraries are one of the few inventions that still feel unequivocally on the side of human flourishing." They will have an important role to play in "putting secure, supervised AI tools in people’s hands".
- David Ok's counter-article to Matt Schumer's popular Something Big is Happening suggests that everything might be ok - for now - when it comes to job loses and workplace adaptation.
- There's lots of collated wisdom in Neil Williams' Position on AI
- An interesting post on re-processing digitised collections with modern OCR models by our AI-technologist in residence, Daniel van Strien. There are cheap and effective solutions, but challenges remain across upscaling and quality control. Also, newspapers are a whole different ballgame.
Re-OCR Your Digitised Collections for ~$0.002/Page – Daniel van Strien
A guide to re-processing digitised collections with open-source VLM-based OCR models.
Daniel van StrienWatching, listening, reading, doing
📖 I'm re-reading Small Things Like These as it's very short and also on the English higher course.
📺 I watched Trainspotting with the boy and it still felt pretty fresh. In other film-consumption news I reckon I could write 10,000 words on why People We Meet on Vacation represents everything wrong with modern content production. Maybe these real-time 105 thoughts are all it deserves.
🎧 More dad-splaining as we've been listening to Wilco's Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot, whilst also watching the making-of documentary, I am Trying to Break your Heart (available in full on YouTube).
🏃 The legs are feeling very heavy. These last few weeks have been about just getting out there. Onwards...
