Watching the SHARP 2023 conference on catchup

I’m a book historian, with a PhD in historic Scottish reading habits. For many years I have been a member of SHARP, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing. I have also attended numerous SHARP academic conferences in person, since 2005, presenting papers at a number of them. Though now attendance in person isn’t feasible any more for me, given my progressive neurological disease.

During the Covid pandemic era some of the SHARP conference content has been available to view online, though this has been varied by year in terms of number of online events. However this year, 2023, the conference was run completely online, organised by the University of Otago in New Zealand, but streaming worldwide, both to watch live and on catchup. This way speakers and attendees from all over the world could participate.

I was too ill to offer a talk this year, and also too ill in late June to watch the conference live. However I’ve just enjoyed watching it on catchup. Talks as originally streamed via Zoom were available for paid attendees to watch on catchup through August, using a web browser Zoom interface (which my laptop browser was a bit flaky over, but we got there!). I had also printed out the programme, and noted which talks were of most interest to me to watch, given my limited time. Here are the panels I watched over the last couple of months:

• Readers on Bookstagram
• Eighteenth-century Libraries Online: An Introduction and Showcase
• Special Collections’ Pedagogies as Immersive Encounters
• Dickens as Author and Publisher
• Networks of Support
• ‘They Are Books to Me’ (Until they Aren’t): Reader Experiences of the Realness of Electronic Books.
• Traces of Readers
• Black Voices in North American Colonial Print
• Counterculture and Collections
• Censorship in Spain and Mexico
• Reading Together and On Screen
• Digital Platforms and New Opportunities in Book History

Most of these panels had a couple of speakers plus a chair. I must thank all the speakers and chairs I saw, for what was a very efficiently run series of talks. Plus thanks to the people taking part after in the Q&A sessions for each panel, even if as a catchup viewer I was not able to take part in the live Q&As myself. And enormous thanks to the technical team keeping things running smoothly, and to the organisers of the conference. Though I was surprised there was no directly provided chat facility to assist networking and communications between attendees. For example a Discord facility could have helped here.

My own book history research focuses on reading habits, primarily in seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century Scotland. However I have wider book history interests, both in time and space, and also theme. So I was delighted to watch many talks from this conference. Every single talk I watched inspired me in some way or another, whether it be research questions, interesting areas new to me to follow up, or methodology or presentation. I was constantly taking screen shots of interesting things for later followup.

A particular highlight for me was Laura Dietz’s keynote on electronic books. Due to my progressive neurological disease I have struggled increasingly with print books since the late 1990s, including throughout my PhD. I am a passionate advocate of ebooks as a valid form of reading, and angry that this can be dismissed too readily by some readers and also some academic book historians. If I’d given a talk to SHARP this year it was going to be a very personal one about my own experiences as a disabled reader who is both academic book historian and enthusiastic reader, and relies on ebooks for accessibility reasons. Laura’s talk touched on this, discussing results from a survey researching in this reader. And some of the people who had responded echoed my views. So I felt represented.

I am also an enthusiastic member of online book groups, so talks about Bookstagram and communal book club reading appealed. Likewise learning about Black book history topics was enlightening. And of course familiar areas to me, such as the Liverpool Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online group presenting a demo of their database plus initial findings.

I know that there is a push back towards face to face conferences, including in SHARP. But I hope that online streaming – and some form of hybrid – will continue to allow access to the conference for people who cannot be there in person, whether for economic reasons, disability or health risks, family or caring commitments, or aspects of geography. SHARP 2023 has been a delight for me, even on catchup. I hope that SHARP 2024 will be too.

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Watching the Cymera writing festival on catchup

This passed me by in previous years, but this year I was lucky to find out in time about the Cymera festival of fantasy, scifi and horror writing. It takes place in Edinburgh, but in recent years due to Covid has been online too. It took place in early June and I bought a digital weekend pass. This let me watch events streamed live, but more importantly let me also watch after on catchup. I had until today, 3rd July, to watch them, and have been putting in the time in recent weeks to get through as many as I could. Today I watched my last talk, my 22nd. This is a quite incredible tally for seriously ill me to have managed. And as someone with a very restricting neurological illness (I am mostly bedbound now, and asleep most of the time) it was a marvellous opportunity to watch and enjoy things from home at my own convenience that in the past you would have to be there in person to see.

I watched a huge list of panels and author chats, as listed below. Initially looking through the programme before the event I spotted 3-5 events that immediately jumped out to me. Events taking place live in Edinburgh that were streaming too, or Zoom chats that would be available to watch either live or on catchup for digital ticket holders later. However because I bought a digital weekend pass (£50, though available earlier at £40) I could watch *everything* recorded live and on catchup. And in practice I ended up watching way, way more than even I could hope. Not all the talks aired, but a huge number of them.

• Folkways with JJA Harwood and Kit Whitfield
• Cityscapes with Adrian Tchaikovsky, E.C. Hibbs and J.L. Worrad
• Expanding Universes with Aliette De Bodard and Ann Leckie
• Dead Weird with Gemma Amor, John McGlade and Heather Parry
• Unlikely Friendships with Travis Baldree and Heather Fawcett
• Haunted and Hunted with Fiona Barnett, Anya Bergman and Catriona Ward
• Catching Up With Helen Sedgwick
• War Stories with Gareth Hanrahan, Anna Smith Spark and Ian Whates
• The Epic’s New Clothes with Sharon Emmerichs, Juliet McKenna and Claire North
• It’s Grim up Norse with Thilde Kold Holdt, Shauna Lawless and Suzie Wilde
• N.K. Jemisin in conversation with Tasha Suri
• Daring Deeds with Justin Lee Anderson and Sebastien de Castell
• Adventures in Time and Space with A.G. Riddle and Gareth Worthington
• Catching Up With Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Connection, Interrupted with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow and Ian McDonald
• Catching Up With Brent Weeks
• Yesterday’s Tomorrow with Nicholas Binge and Christopher Priest
• New Scottish Stories with Paul Tonner, Letty Wilson and Ell J Walker
• Of Gods and Dragons with Amie Kaufman and L.R. Lam
• Dangerous Magics with Chelsea Abdullah and Hadeer Elsbai
• Underworld with C.K. McDonnell, Sarah Painter and Adam Simcox
• CyberJunk with M.R. Carey, Dave Cook and Ever Dundas

The order in which I watched the events above isn’t representative of what I was most intrigued by. I could flit from event to event, and saved some of the best to last. Many were two or three-author panels based around a theme with a chair person. Others were single author chats with a chair by Zoom.

The range of fantasy, scifi and horror writing covered was immense. There would rarely be a panel where I wouldn’t be adding titles to my book watch list, or even buying something immediately. Some authors I knew already, but I discovered many authors new to me, whose works I now want to read. And despite watching so many of author events I was impressed by how little overlap there was in terms of content. Every panel or chat would give me new insights and experiences into the writing process, as well as touch on the specific themes of that panel and introduce me to the writers and their books.

I would like to thank the organisers for allowing streamed access like this. It was so enabling for me, and as a reader and writer myself I am throughly inspired by having watched these. I would also like to thank the festival team for managing the technology and practicalities so well. This was a very smooth operation. I will definitely be back to watch next year. Though aiming to book my digital weekend earlier so I can benefit from the reduced early bird weekend pass price!

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Evusheld and private versus public healthcare in the UK

Really shocked at the cost of someone else receiving Evusheld privately in the UK, a preventative medicine against Covid to help immunosuppressed patients, many of whom do not generate any antibodies from vaccines. Unlike other countries the UK is not providing this publicly.

A single treatment of Evusheld lasts 6 months. It would cost up to £800 to the NHS but it’s not approved unlike so many other countries. It’s newly approved privately in the UK, and we’d been told £1000. Well someone I know has just got it. And it’s way way more than that.

£500 for consultation with a private doctor, £1600 for the drug, £160 administration. So about £2400, out of someone’s private coffers and that’s I think for just 6 months protection. This drug could save thousands of extremely vulnerable lives. Normal people can’t afford this.

I’m extremely lucky I’m getting some good antibodies, after 6 Covid vaccines (yes 6!). Though Covid vaccines trigger a devastating 3-month long neurological flare for me every single time. But Evusheld would make me feel safer, and protect others far more. Provide it on the NHS now!

Evusheld could be provided on the NHS to patients at considerably less cost per dose than private providers are selling it to patients directly. Yes it has a cost but for 500K people who are not being protected enough by vaccines and still at phenomenal risk it is needed now.

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A retrospective look at my Scottish Historical Review academic journal paper 10 years ago, on book ownership in Scotland in the late 18th century, and Dumfriesshire especially

10 years ago this month in 2012 my Scottish Historical Review journal paper was published. Sole authored, it looked at book ownership in Scotland in the late eighteenth century, using a local case study of Dumfriesshire after-death wills and inventories. This was part of my PhD research into reading habits in Scotland in this period, and this was one of the first journal papers I published after completing my PhD at Dundee University in 2010.

I thought it might be nice to do a retrospective blog about this journal paper. The paper was published in Scottish Historical Review, and the full published PDF version is available on my website, in green Open Access form on my publications web page.

This research arose from my belief that testaments – Scottish after-death wills and inventories – could be a useful guide to the books people owned. To be fair I hadn’t always thought this way. But from my research assistant work on Bob Harris’s small towns project, researching Angus towns in the late 18th and early 19th century, I had discovered that Scottish testaments often mentioned books, in particular testaments with lists of personal possessions. Not consistently, not totally reliably, but enough to be informative. Sometimes only e.g. a “bundle of books” might be valued. But in other cases you might get a detailed list of titles owned. I was grateful for any clues at all. Note this is very different from the situation in England at the same time, where comparable probate records rarely record any great details of personal possessions after the 1720s.

I couldn’t possibly research testaments across the whole of Scotland, just for the practicality of the scale of it. Nor was a random based approach suitable, given the scarcity of references. I needed to study a local area’s complete testaments over a given time period, but in a manner that had to be feasible and practical for me to tackle as a small part of my PhD. In the end I settled for Dumfriesshire, which is semi-rural, but with some towns and many villages. And logistically it was feasible for me to study this area.

I persuaded the then National Archives of Scotland (now National Records of Scotland) to lend me digital images of testaments for Dumfries Commissary Court between 1750 and 1800. At that time they had never lent such a set of records, and only agreed somewhat reluctantly because of my disability situation – my progressive neurological illness meant that it was essential I could do the bulk of this research from home. But this loan also set the precedent for similar loans for other (less disabled) Scottish academics in future.

In total I borrowed digital images of 1,379 testaments, including 345 with detailed inventories and 82 with wills. I also did a manual check in the Edinburgh search room of warrants of inventories, additional papers of appraisements and inventories, for lists including books not copied into the registers of testaments.

As I wrote in the published journal paper:

References to books were found in over a third of the detailed inventories of personal possessions recorded in a quarter of the testaments in the court’s register.

i.e. where there was a surviving detailed inventory of personal possessions then a third of the time that would contain references to books.

Most of these found references were detailed lists of books, including their titles. In other cases there were passing references to books, or in some cases valuations of book furniture (e.g. book cases). In total I had details of 156 different book owners, including considerable information about them, and in many cases also about the books that they owned.

The bulk of the paper looks at the Dumfriesshire book owners found in a variety of ways. For example their spread through time and space is considered, and also their range of occupations. Unsurprisingly many were from generally more prosperous occupations, but the list also included others like a gardener, a smith, a labourer, and a servant.

The lists of books recorded allowed the types of books owned to be considered, both in a broader pattern, and for individual owners. Ownership of religious books was a constant feature, but over time other books appeared more and more in the lists, fitting with wider trends in books and reading at this time in Scotland. Many books could also be linked to the occupations of their owners, for example legal reference works owned by solicitors (“writers”), and also the work-related books owned by merchants, etc.

Alongside religious books classical books remained an ongoing presence, but they were also accompanied by other language books, especially French. Well-known Enlightenment books were owned, as well as many books of history, and voyages and travels. Periodicals and magazines were also a frequent presence.

One of my favourite sections of the paper looked at the very largest book collections recorded in these records. Perhaps unsurprisingly these also often were the references that mentioned book furniture, given the practical implications of storing a large collection of books. The question of where people bought the books was considered in this section too, drawing briefly on a local Dumfries bookseller who appears – with his entire detailed stock list – in the Dumfriesshire testaments I studied, having died in 1788.

Preparing my paper for publication was a delight, reworking things and strengthening the analysis and contextualisation. I would like to thank Catriona Macdonald who was the then journal editor for an easy and very systematic editorial process. And thanks too to the peer reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions.

The only downside was that the final pre-publication proofs came through as I was undergoing a summer of gruelling chemotherapy infusions at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. In fact I ended up having to proofread the journal paper one-handed, hooked up to a chemotherapy drip! It was that or I probably wouldn’t turn them around in time, given how ill I was likely to be (and indeed very much was) with side effects in subsequent days.

Looking back I am very proud of this paper. I hope to publish again in Scottish Historical Review in future. But this was a very positive experience, and one that I look back on fondly.

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Living with anxiety #WorldMentalHealthDay

For #WorldMentalHealthDay I live with generalised anxiety disorder, diagnosed nearly 15 years ago. My GP thought it was no wonder living with a life threatening neurological disease since 1994. Many people live with mental health issues. Talk about it. End the stigma.

I’d also like to see more awareness of how medication can help mental health patients. Sure it’s not the answer for all, but SSRI Sertraline keeps my severe anxiety in order. There needs to be less fear about drugs that can help. Especially with a shortage of availability of talking therapies.

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Reading a book about a stroke survivor and recognising so many things

I’ve been reading a book about a stroke survivor, a neurologist actually. His stroke was really catastrophic, so different what I’ve experienced from my cerebral vasculitis since 1994. But there are so many shared experiences.

For example late on in his rehabilitation he would often get stuck, knowing what he wanted to do, but needing encouragement to do it. So eg sitting on the edge of the bed, but unable to stand up without encouragement. That is so familiar to me. Often I just ask my husband to encourage me to do something, like stand, or move my leg etc. I’ll typically say “I’m stuck. Help!” Often it happens when we get home from an outing, and it’s an almighty mind over matter effort to encourage me to move my legs out of the car, get up, and walk into the house, carefully. I could just vegetate there indefinitely on the spot.

Anyway an interesting book for me. I have had lots of mini strokes, and a bigger one in 2004. But I’ve had no neurology support re understanding what is going on with me, or for recovery or rehabilitation. So I battle on! But I wish I understood more about it.

The book is Surviving Stroke: The Story of a Neurologist and His Family by Helen Kennerley and Udo Kischka.

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Gather meeting software accessibility concerns re NarraScope 2022 interactive fiction conference

I was hoping to see some of this year’s online NarraScope interactive fiction conference in July. But I’ve just found out that it’s running on Gather this year, a meeting/conference system based largely on a virtual model of a conference area in the computer, top-down old-style graphics with little person avatars etc. Which all sounds fine and dandy, but I’ve known people struggle with it at large events. And for disability reasons I don’t think I could manage it successfully. It can also work very poorly sometimes on mobile devices, and I would be tuning in from bed. Luckily the talks will be recorded for later viewing, speaker permissions allowing. But I’m not signing up to attend this live. I have voiced my concerns about this software to the organisers, but it would be too late to change their plans now. Interactive fiction has a very large number of disabled users, many of whom might struggle to use Gather, for different reasons eg blind or partially sighted, hand control problems, cognitive issues re processing lots of info etc.

Gather meeting software in action

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5th Covid vaccine coming up

I’ve my 5th Covid vaccine coming up this week. 5th vaccine because I am eligible for the Spring Booster because I am severely immunosuppressed. Previously I had the usual first two Covid vaccines, then a special bonus 3rd primary because I’m severely immunosuppressed, then my first booster just after Christmas.

It is very likely – well almost certain – I will flare neurologically again after Covid vaccine #5. I have after the previous four Covid vaccines. If so that will probably wipe me out almost totally for another three months, starting about a week after my vaccine this week.

So this is probably my last week of a bit of respite – a bit because I am often waking up late afternoon even in this brief respite phase since the start of April after my symptoms finally eased after my 4th Covid vaccine in December.

I may seem bonkers putting myself through this repeatedly with the vaccines. But they could save my life. My medics and I are agreed that I should keep getting vaccinated. My neurological flares I can recover from, even if it takes three months each time. It is also very likely I will get a 6th Covid vaccine in the autumn …

In no way is this an anti vaccination post. Vaccines save lives, and especially people like me who are severely immunosuppressed. I had a very poor vaccine response to the first two vaccines, but my bonus 3rd one (a special pre booster one needed because I’m severely immunosuppressed) gave me a healthy dose of antibodies, which could save my life. My first booster then extended that protection. Many severely immunosuppressed people have not had such a good response, despite loads of vaccines.

But the Covid vaccines take a terrible toll on me, because my auto immune neurological disease cerebral vasculitis is in my case so unstable. Each time I have a Covid vaccine I have three months of dramatically increased bladder incontinence, crippling headaches, sleeping up to 18 hours a day and phenomenal sedation even when awake, and appalling arm and leg control. It is amazing that I am not raging about this more. In my old consultant’s words I’m just too “phlegmatic”, which I eventually realised was a bit of a compliment!

I can access antiviral treatment if I catch Covid. I can also still access free testing to help me get treatment in time. What would really help though is to have the Evusheld preventative antibody treatment, which is designed to prevent severely immunosuppressed people like me catching Covid in the first place. But the UK government hasn’t bought any Evusheld yet, unlike just about every other comparable country.

Just don’t anyone say to me we are living with Covid, or even worse Covid is over, as a dental hygienist said to me the other week. I am getting through the pandemic, but at a terrible cost in terms of how the vaccines affect me. No way is it over for me, and many other people like me.

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Looking back at past inequalities in PhD funding and support

I’ve been taking part in an interesting Twitter thread today about problems faced by non affiliated or barely affiliated academics, essentially independent scholars without university support, including financial. It digressed slightly into different funding arrangements for postgraduates. I remembered how during my Dundee history PhD (2003-2010) many Scotland-wide PhD training events were for a long time only open to funded PhD students. I was initially unfunded for my history PhD, but later won AHRC funding. Even then as a part timer I got no stipend, unlike full timers. My PhD supervisor campaigned with others to get AHRC to provide stipends to part timers. This happened in time for me to benefit before the end of my PhD. As a part timer I was also initially ineligible for the Disabled Students Allowance, which at that time could only go to full timers. Fortunately that changed too. To be fair this is a long time ago, and much has changed. But still.

I could also go off on one about the poor support for me as a computer science PhD student from EPSRC when I fell long term ill. But that’s another story …

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Living with Covid

Much of the current political discourse, especially in England, is about how Covid isn’t a problem any more, something we can live with. This is accompanied by removal of testing, so people will have Covid but not know. Likewise mask wearing isn’t being enforced, and many people stopped long ago. Note wearing a mask primarily protects others, not you, including the clinically extremely vulnerable you aren’t aware of just by looking at them. And this is all supposedly ok.

I’m one of those at greatest risk from Covid, being severely immunosuppressed for life, due to treatment controlling my incurable neurological disease and keeping me alive. I have been told very clearly by my medics that Covid could kill me and I must avoid catching it.

The first two Covid vaccines left me with very little protection against the vaccine. I am very lucky to have finally after my 3rd primary vaccine (an extra bonus vaccine given to the severely immunosuppressed in the UK) developed a good number of antibodies. But Covid could still potentially kill me, and I still need to avoid it.

I have been stuck in the house for two years, partly due to the risks out there, partly as my neurological disease rages. Both during the official shielding periods when I was advised by the NHS to shield, and after. The inequalities of so-called “living with Covid” are immense. It isn’t safe for me to go into a dining environment or coffee shop, or a general shop, or anywhere where people may be unmasked. Nor can I easily meet family or friends.

Yet even vaccines that may save my life have a high price. My unstable life threatening neurological disease has flared after all four past Covid vaccines. It takes me three months each time to recover. I have just about recovered from the December jab 4. I have jab 5 (Spring Booster) due any time now, which will almost certainly cause me to flare for another three months. But my medics and I are all agreed I need these vaccines.

It is no wonder I am so bitter at politicians and some of the public blithely dismissing Covid as a threat. If you haven’t lived in the shoes of someone extremely vulnerable, especially severely immunosuppressed, you can’t grasp what we’re facing, and why the risks are so high for us, especially now. In the last few weeks I have known many friends and clinically extremely vulnerable catch Covid. One friend with zero antibodies from four vaccines is fighting it now. The dangers to us are huge, but according to many politicians and the public it is just fine.

This post was prompted by a blog post from fellow academic Martin Paul Eve. He has even lower protection from the vaccines than me, and describes the situation he finds himself in eloquently.

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