Globally Yours

A packed lecture room in Leeds was the venue for the series' second birthday, when Richard Lucier gave his well-received talk The University as Library.

Developed from an idea put forward by members of JISC's Follett Implementation Group on Information Technology (chaired by Lynne Brindley), the series began with Clifford Lynch's lecture on The Role of Libraries in the Networked Information Age.

It has always been the aim to take the lectures to the audience. So far venues have ranged northwards from London, through Birmingham, Manchester, and now Leeds, to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Venues later this year will open up the series to Northern Ireland and the South West.

The speakers themselves have found the experience a challenge and a delight. Miriam Drake felt the challenge was to present material which would stimulate thought and discussion. And, for her, the delight was in meeting and talking with colleagues and friends. Colin Steele remembers intellectual stimulus and warm hospitality, plus the audience's surprise at hearing a speaker from Australia with a north-eastern English accent.

The venues, too, have become memorable to the speakers. Bill Arms was particularly pleased to be lecturing at the Western Infirmary at Glasgow, with its scholarly traditions. While Peter Lyman, facing his audience in the British Library's Novello Room, felt he should be singing, but despite the mysterious and fascinating link between computing and music, remembered just in time that he cannot carry a tune!

We look forward to our first visit 'across the water' in September. Sheila Creth of the University of Iowa will speak at Limavady as part of the Irish Information Systems Symposium, and will then repeat her lecture in London.

Organised by UKOLN on behalf of JISC, full details of previous lectures, speakers' papers, and the future programme, are at:- http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/follett_lectures/intro.html