Posts by Tamsin6
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Up Front: P.A. Story, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Tamsin lurched under the force of her boss' wrath.
That's uncanny - have you been following me to work?
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The lovely Ayesha Kee (Bella Kalolo) will be staying in my house (on the floor if I don't get organised to sort out a spare bed by next weekend) after her stint at Glasto and can't wait to hear how it goes for her. Just hope she packed her gumboots!
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Oh, and also from S&P (via Morningstar)
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/markets/newsfeeditem.aspx?id=148573656205739
New Zealand has historically had favourable reinsurance pricing compared with
other regions globally, partly as a result of relatively benign climatic and
natural disaster conditions in years prior to the Christchurch event. Indeed,
some primary insurers would have benefited from discounts for loss-free
records, which now will not be available. New Zealand rate increases have and
will be substantial, especially at lower reinsurance layers, and for insurers
biased to South Island, Christchurch, and Wellington risks. To recoup some of
the reinsurance price increases, major insurers have already put through
significant price increases of the order of 20% for property-related cover,
with no material loss of customers. -
Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Yip Yip,
Excuse me while my heart bleeds for the insurance industry held to ransom by the evil reinsurers. Meanwhile, in other news, Fitch are saying that Australian non-life insurers with exposure to NZ will be ok with balance sheets "well protected through the maintenance of reinsurance covers and the New Zealand Earthquake Commission" - and don't worry little insurance companies because "Moreover, Fitch believes the Australian majors will seek to ultimately pass on higher reinsurance costs through via premium rate increases."
Yippee for the insurance industry and the "well-capitalized" global reinsurance industry and hard luck for all you policy holders.
Nope, I guess we don't understand the insurance industry at all.
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I remember the lovely controversy over the interview conducted by Mrs Naipaul with the former Mrs Mandela last year.
There are a few clues in that piece about how Naipaul views women, and just other people generally.
My nerves were playing up: my husband does not like to be kept waiting at the best of times. He is punctilious and has been known to walk away from a delayed meeting, leaving me to deal with the fallout.
It is quite a dreadful piece of writing in general actually - IMHO of course.
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I had a brilliant time 'learning' Old English at University, and spent alot of time wishing I'd studied German as well as French at school. I have a vague memory that it wasn't actually possible to study more than one language at school because of the way the timetable was structured. Although I studied French at school I can't actually speak it, though I can make a fist of reading it.
I currently work at a Swiss company and am surrounded by people who speak at least three languages. Very, very envious of this.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Emma Hart,
Pop quiz. Is this:
Key said the Government had a "clear picture" of what land would have to be abandoned but refused to name these areas or put a timeline on when the information would be available to the public.
more "10 000 homes will have to go, a number which I just pulled out of my arse", or actual... I don't know what to call that. Idiocy?
Or something like 'We are waiting for the insurance/reinsurance industry to make all our decisions for us, and are just pretending to know secret stuff until they tell us what to think'?
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Sacha,
I know and respect some funky librarians. However they seem to have little influence over the priorities of their institutions’ collections and engaging the public in those.
I have also worked with librarians who seemed to spend their careers reinforcing their own particular, ahem, style over collections. For a time in the '90's, the Hutt City libraries had a very impressive collection of early Church music, and Gregorian chants in particular. I'm not sure how popular some of these were in the Wainuiomata branch, but they did make acquisitions librarians very happy. Any attempts to influence this? Doomed.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Russell Brown,
In that context, allowing that he and others in the industry could “extend” something done by proper librarians is patronising. The fact is, most of the moves on documenting and preserving recent popular music culture are being made outside the institutional sector.
I'm really sorry that I came across as patronising. I am not that great at expressing myself in this kind of medium (right back to Usenet days, so you'd think I'd have improved, sadly, no.) - I agree that librarian vs everyone else isn't constructive. I hadn't seen that I was doing that - really, I was trying to correct what I saw as your misunderstanding of what librarians and archivists do, and can do. When I ventured to suggest that the archive could be in place and then extended, I certainly never suggested that this would have to be done by 'proper' librarians. What I was saying was that the skills and professional standing of archivists should be used and made use of in whatever way you can envision. That's what we DO - create and make available resources. I am saying that we know how to do this stuff, and can and should be involved - so that TOGETHER we can make something great happen.
Exchanging ideas, creating something fantastic - this is all incredibly exciting, and if it isn't happening now, please, please don't assume it's because of our lack of skills or interest. Those who work in public institutions are simply not always allowed/able to formally pursue these things. Lobby politicians on this, get involved in the restructuring of the archives, get informed about what the future direction of these resources could be. But please don't assume that we don't know how archives and libraries work. That really is patronising.
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At the risk of repeating myself again, and repeating what Russell has said too, we – as in those who have and are closely involved in the local music industry – are not looking for a filing, collating or collecting process as an archive, nor a way of making recordings publicly available.
A two pronged entity is desirable. One is simply a repository of what has been recorded by record labels and studios etc – a physical and digital vault if you will. This is first and foremost to retrieve, preserve and prevent decay. It has much in common with what has been done by the film archive.
I keep getting interrupted, so I am probably not getting to grips with this as I should, but the first prong, if you will, is simply an archive. As a librarian, I may not be the best to judge – libraries and archives are different beasts, which gets back to the issue about the merger of archives and libraries and the implications of this – but I don’t see the problem, aside from funding, of creating this kind of archive within the existing framework. The beginnings of this kind of depository is already there. The National Library has been doing this, as far as is practical, for years.
Part of the problem with including the whole range of musical genres (Kiwi pop, rock, etc. etc as described by Sacha above – on a side note, again with the stereotypes – librarians and archivists are just people, you think we don’t listen to music, engage with music, have mates who are in bands, in the recording industry, have ourselves been in the recording industry in a previous career etc etc etc? So yes, experience with and expertise in all kinds of music) is the issue of what legal deposit entails. Publishers HAVE to provide material to the National library. Recorded music? Not so sure this has always happened. A National librarian will be better placed to comment.
The second prong, the living database part, is an extension to what archives can do and should do – but there has to be some kind of incentive for this to happen. Again, I can’t see any reason why there can’t be some industry-based project which extends and makes use of a music archive in this way. It’s a good thing to have stakeholders and communities involved in archives and to put them to all kinds of exciting uses, to create a project which uses and extends the parameters of the archive. It sounds fantastic – but don’t underestimate the uses and talents of a good archivist – you may be surprised to find that they are already dying to do something like this, but haven’t had the opportunity.
This is a political, rather than professional issue.
Apologies again, for the lack of coherence. My brain hurts.