Away with the fairies

Poor old Henry Irving's had a fun meeting. He's project-managing the setting up of a local heritage web site, which involves him having to work closely with the closeted orders of the Museum Service. I don't envy him one bit: I've worked in museums and since then have been involved in a few pieces of work involving partnership working with Helminthdale Museum Service. I've found that partnership relationship is pretty much like that between the cat and the tapeworm and if there's one group of people with a logarithmically greater need than librarians to say that they are professional with the least empirical evidence of professionalism it's museums "professionals."

The gem of the meeting came as Henry was pointing out the need to check the provenance of the materials going onto the web site to make sure that they were working within copyright requirements.

"There's a philosophical case for saying that we can put whatever we want onto the internet," says one of the Ivory Tower Maidens.

"We are local government officers and we will work within the laws concerning intellectual property rights," explained Henry.

At which point the Maidens threatened to take their toys away.

Little do they suspect that Henry is shortly going to become their boss...