Stuff to read

My journey home last night (line problems in the West Midlands area, delay to inbound train, relief crew, no hot drinks...) was made more pleasant than it might have been by catching up on some of my professional reading. Here's some stuff I found well worth reading.

NextSpace, a freebie magazine from OCLC, has an interesting article (in issue no 8) by Tom Storey - Changing on purpose: six breakthrough practices for a high-impact future - based on a new book looking at the key success factors which determine the impact made by non-profit organisations. Just the thing for your next corporate planning awayday. Find it as www.oclc.org/nextspace

Discover nls (another freebie magazine, this one from the National Library of Scotland) is always a good read, although the NLS does seem a mite obsessed with the John Murray Archive - "NLS: an ace archive with a library attached," to misquote a famous ad for the V&A. True to form, the latest issue (no 8 Spring 2008) has a good article by John Murray Archive Curator David McClay on Samuel Smiles' "Self-help" heroes . Smiles has a claim to be regarded as the founder of the now-massive "Let me help you be the person you always wanted to be" industry and he produced an international bestseller for the John Murray publishing house, having previously been rejected by Routledge (as Decca Records to the Beatles, so Routledge to Samuel Smiles...). Thrift, duty, hard work and perseverance formed the Smiles recipe for success: not a bad antidote to today's unhappy culture of spin, celebrity, selfishness and instant gratification.

Just to show that it's not all about the John Murray Archive, Discover nls also has a fine article by Assistant Purchase Curator John Birch about the evolution of the graphic novel - Culture in the year 3794 - in which John suggests that our sometimes po-faced approach to graphic novels has its origins in the Anglo-American view that comic books are only for children or delinquents. Interesting...

Discover nls is also online at http://www.nls.uk/about/discover-nls/index.html although last time I looked (yesterday) they hadn't yet posted issue no 8 onto the site. Some day soon, no doubt...

Happy reading!