Things in the library 12 June ...

Things about inequality...

Following on from the death of George Floyd, the King's Fund have expressed their solidarity with and support for Black colleagues working across health and care. They say "These events are the latest manifestation of deep and long-term inequalities that exist across the whole of society, including in our health and care systems. In the past few days we have also seen clear evidence of the terrible and disproportionate toll Covid-19 has taken on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities." They have 

responses to the stark inequalities exposed by the Covid-19 crisis, details of their ongoing project on discrimination faced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues working in the NHS, and their podcast with Professor David Williams on racism and its impact on health.

Things for children to read...

The National Literacy Trust has brought together a series of book lists for children and young people of all ages to share black stories and promote black voices. The book lists available are:

Book list for ages 0-4

Book list for ages 5-8

Book list for ages 9-12

Book list for ages 13-16

Book list for ages 16+

Things about bullying...

A recent article looked at whether relative age was associated with bullying involvement and whether the associations were independent of child psychiatric symptoms. They found that when the relatively youngest children were compared with the relatively oldest the youngest children had increased odds of being victims according to child and parent reports. The youngest also had decreased odds of being perpetrators according to child and teacher reports. These findings were independent of psychiatric symptoms; the article concludes that considering this newly recognized risk factor for victimisation is important within anti-bullying practices.

Things about science fiction...

I was interested in this recent item about E M Forster's little known book The Machine Stops published in 1909. The short story is set in what must have seemed a futuristic world to Forster but won't to you. People live alone in identikit homes (globalisation) where they choose to isolate (his word), send messages by pneumatic post (a proto email or WhatsApp), and chat online via a video interface uncannily similar to Zoom or Skype. Not what you expect from the writer of  'A Passage to India'. I have certainly added it to  my 'things to read' list.

Interestingly, looking back at the books our Reading Group read during 2019/20 our most highly scored book we read was 'The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham...it was the last book we read before lockdown though we continue to meet virtually.

Things published...

We have some prolific writers/contributors to articles in the SCH Trust. We now add all SCH attributed author publications to our library catalogue as an ongoing repository. The catalogue entries link to the PubMed record of the articles. You can view all these items via this link . Or if you search the catalogue for your subject interests these items will be shown along with other resources on that topic.

Things to cook...

With the current weather I thought a nice warming soup recipe Mary Berry's butternut squash soup