{"id":13773,"date":"2014-12-19T10:25:03","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T10:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=13773"},"modified":"2014-12-19T10:25:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T10:25:03","slug":"and-the-tide-rushes-in-now-self-service-photography-arrives-at-the-british-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2014\/12\/19\/and-the-tide-rushes-in-now-self-service-photography-arrives-at-the-british-library\/","title":{"rendered":"And the tide rushes in: now self-service photography arrives at the British Library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">About ten years ago, when digital cameras had appeared, I went down to the British Library and asked if I could use mine to photograph manuscript items.\u00a0 The female librarian to whom I spoke looked very angry and rudely and indignantly refused.\u00a0 I remember thinking that the response was more or less as if I had casually asked for the loan of her daughter for the night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Not long afterwards mobile phones acquired digital cameras.\u00a0 But still the hard-faced refusal went on.\u00a0 I commented, in these pages, on this nonsense.\u00a0 Only last year I went to examine Ms. BL addit. 12150, but had to resort to verbally describing various paragraphing marks, because I had no means to take a snap of the pages.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But the tide has been with us, and finally sense has prevailed.\u00a0 Yesterday I learned via a correspondent of an update to the British Library policies, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/reshelp\/inrrooms\/stp\/copy\/selfsrvcopy\/selfservcopy.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Self-service photography<\/p>\n<p>From <strong>5 January 2015<\/strong> you will be able to photograph collection items using compact cameras, tablets and mobile phones in the following Reading Rooms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Humanities \u2013 floors 1 and 2<\/li>\n<li>Newsroom<\/li>\n<li>Science \u2013 floors 2 and 3<\/li>\n<li>Social Sciences<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Photographic copies made may be used for personal reference purposes only and must not be used for a commercial purpose. Copyright and data protection laws may still apply.<\/p>\n<p>Some material will be excluded from self-service photography, including items at risk of damage, or further damage. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In March 2015 we will extend this service to include the following Reading Rooms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Asian &amp; African Studies<\/li>\n<li>Business &amp; IP Centre<\/li>\n<li>Manuscripts<\/li>\n<li>Maps<\/li>\n<li>Philatelic<\/li>\n<li>Rare Books &amp; Music<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It is very good news.\u00a0 No doubt there will be teething problems, as the staff get used to the idea that snapping is normal.\u00a0 But it should mean that a lot of material starts to appear online that might otherwise wait for years to appear in someone&#8217;s priority queue.<\/p>\n<p>We live in fortunate times.\u00a0 In the 19th century editors had to pay for collations of manuscripts, and thank the owners of the mss fulsomely for even being allowed to have such a thing.\u00a0 It seems unthinkable now.\u00a0 So also the nuisances of very recent times will quickly become historical curiosities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About ten years ago, when digital cameras had appeared, I went down to the British Library and asked if I could use mine to photograph manuscript items.\u00a0 The female librarian to whom I spoke looked very angry and rudely and indignantly refused.\u00a0 I remember thinking that the response was more or less as if I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[338,889,1075],"class_list":["post-13773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-british-library","tag-information-access","tag-manuscripts"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}