Alternative link

It seems my ex-employers website has been redesigned and the link I gave doesn't work. I've searched in vain to find a site with a picture so here's a link to a copy of one of the books on Amazon - unfortunately not one of the facsimile volumes but along the same vein (and I was in charge of this part too).

BGS and the Gutenburg Press

Last Thursday I took part in our local SfEP group's trip to the British Geological Survey in Nottinghamshire. I was busy with work but had promised to go along (my attendance is sketchy at best) and I needed a break so I dragged myself away from the laptop (and the phone - more about that later) for a tedious queue along the M1 and an argument with the SatNav on the Nottingham ring road to a strange university campus type building that houses BGS.

I am so glad I did as the trip included two of my favourite things - fossils and books. In fact more than a couple of us were commenting about how libraries, particularly old libraries, make the little hairs on the back of our arms stand on end. Pre-children we made a trip to Dublin with some friends and while the rest of our party were happy to sit around in bars, sampling the Guinness, the highlight of my trip was the Book of Kells - in fact my 80 year old grandmother went recently on a bus trip and as I enthused that she must go and see it she looked at me rather strangely (she never made it but her trip was more tea shops than pubs). I get as excited as Stephen Fry did at the prospect of seeing a Gutenberg bible on his recent program about it (which was repeated on Friday so will still be available on iPlayer if you didn't catch it). I used to be able to indulge in this excitement in my in-house job as I was the editor in charge of producing this series (amongst others) which, at times involved handling originals to make up the facsimile texts - it made all the problems of dealing with the volume and series editors and the libraries worthwhile to hold history in my hands.

Looking at blogs (such as here and here) and sites by other freelance editors and writers a love of books seems to be a recurring theme. I think most of us would say we do the job because we care about the written (typed) word rather than the author or publisher of the final result!

Facebook and LinkedIn

I'm up to my eyes at the moment (great after the recent dry spell). The reason - because I've had some work from unexpected sources, namely Facebook and LinkedIn.

I've been a fan of Facebook for a while - but a lot of people aren't. There's a lot of discussion out there about whether it is a distraction from work rather than a source of work (and even support). As a freelancer it has been a lifeline as I hook up with other freelancers and we post (talk) about anything and everything but it has also put me in touch with prospective and past work contacts. Equally if I ever need to pass work on it is highly likely I will recommend one of my Facebook contacts because I know more about them.

I've recently signed up to LinkedIn and pop in every now and again to answer some of the questions that people post up. This has led to me linking with more people and some exciting work opportunities. Though there isn't really the social side of Facebook it is a useful tool.

So from my point of view it is worth a try!

Death by Blog

I just came across this and had to share it. Yes it is sad that these prolific bloggers have died but I found the article very tongue in cheek - look at the quotes! - I even checked the date to see if it was posted April 1st :-)

Spring cleaning

I've been suffering from blogger's block.

Mainly because I've not had much on. I've moaned a lot about the lack of work about over many of my posts in the past so I'm not going to harp on about the fact that the only pings in my inbox are from Facebook and Freecycle (but if you do have any work going spare please send it my way - OH is starting to read out night shift jobs in the local paper!).

As I've had a bit of time on my hands I've been doing some Spring cleaning. Last week I updated my CV - always a good thing to do every 6 months or so - and I felt a lot better after adding all the 'great job' comments I've had over the last few months. I then trawled the Internet for publishing companies who stated on their websites that they were looking for freelancers and sent them my newly honed CV. In this search I was surprised by how many websites there are out there that profess to advertise freelancers to those looking for freelancers and at how high the fee was - I think at that price I'd rather start my own website (one of those things I really must do but keep running out of time and finances to get around to it!).

Then came the physical cleaning as, for reasons known only to ourselves, the OH and I have decided to move our bedrooms around which involved completely emptying the study and getting rid of my desk. I think I need to take Heather Boerner's advice and scan and shred!

Thanks to Wordsmith for the link to 'What punctuation are you?' I'm a semi-colon - which just about sums me up really.