Events approaching
In April last year I reblogged Crimepieces post about the Petrona Award for Scandinavian crime novels. I failed to follow it up and find out who won. Never mind: the award has come around again (as they do) and the shortlist was published in March. As usual I want to read most of the books on the list, but I know I won’t have time. Would a life spent reading be good? or would I get tired of even the best books
This year the winner will be announced at Crimefest, which starts this coming Thursday. The announcement will apparently be made at the Gala dinner, so any attendees will have to do some serious eating as well as listening.
Another event I’ve stumbled across is run by the British Library and is dedicated to Golden Age crime fiction. It is Bodies From The Library which is a very suitable name. This event is only one day (17 June), but it has a very full programme.
I’m sure there are many other events that I’ve missed reading about. Literary festivals and conventions seem to be multiplying apace; soon we’ll be able to go to one every day of the summer and most of the winter too. But would the bank balance and stamina hold out?
e a m harris 
Poetry in dark archives
Browsing through the British Library website, as I do from time to time, I came across an entry entitled A Page but not as We Know It and in it was the following wonderful phrase:
To me it sounded like a cross between the title of a fantasy novel and a line of Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry. It also seems mysterious and enticing – I’d never heard of dark archives and I imagined librarians creeping between long shelves of ancient books lit only by a guttering candles (too much Harry Potter here, perhaps).
Actually dark archives are, according to Webopedia, data stores not generally accessible. Access is either restricted to a few people or completely denied. Their main purpose is to act as a back up during disaster recovery. A sensible precaution for any organisation. The Analytical Access is a project of the British Library and several other academic organisations.
This common sense description doesn’t reduce their mysteries. I’d love to know how many there are, what’s in them, who has access to them, who created them.
I bet the CIA has a huge one. Ditto other security services. Then there are the digitisation programmes of major libraries. And don’t companies have them?
What will become of them in the long term if only a few people can care for them? Will they float forever in the electronic ether, lit only occasionally by the computer of a visiting historian? Or will they fade slowly into nothing? If their creators die without telling anyone the passwords, will armies of hackers have to work them out?
Or will they just be deleted?
Share this:
Like this: