Carolina Conversations on a Cambridge Train

I’ve been really busy putting in grants and helping to building the Quixote system (which will revolutionize the management of compchem data) that I haven’t had time to blog. So here’s something from about two weeks ago.

I’m sitting on the 0920 from Cambridge (the first that oldies can get cheap fares) to London en route to the Imperial War Museum. (All will be revealed later, dear reader). Because I get there early I’m in my favourite seat (no, I shall not tell you why as I don’t want others knowing, though it’s less critical than it used to be). I’ve sat down when the person in front sees why I’m sitting there and remarks on it. I’ve got permission to report the conversation though I shan’t give complete names unless my companions wish to identify themselves on this blog.

P: Hi, I’m Peter.

J [apparently US accent though I’m awful on accents]: I’m J.

P: Are you visiting Cambridge? [A safe gambit – they might be living there, anything…]

J: Yes, we’re over here from North Carolina – this is D [introduces D sitting across the aisle.]

P: Hi. How long are you in Cambridge?

J: We’re here for six months – I’m a visiting fellow in [College].

P: Ah! What’s your subject?

J: I’m studying New Orleans [IIRC] in the 1920’s. Cambridge Library is a great place to study…

[Discussion of subject… then PMR starts traditional rant on copyright, etc.]

J: Yes, it can be very difficult to publish images. For example the [Museum of Art] will sell photos of its pictures for 15 USD. But you aren’t allowed to reproduce them without lots of effort and money.

P: So what do you do?

J: Most of the time we simply give up and don’t publish the pictures.

[P comments that this destroys useful scholarship. But readers of this blog know that already and you are spared the details. Conversation turns to D. We chat in similar vein. P explains he is a scientist/informatician]

P. But today I’m off to the Imperial War Museum. We are putting in a grant to catalogue War memorials [more on this later].

D: I’m very interested in War memorials. Yesterday I visited Madingley Memorial.

[from Wikipedia]

D: there are over 30,000 US servicemen commemorated in East Anglia. Most of them flew out of the airfields. There are lots of memorials. Whenever I’m over I try to visit them….

… but there isn’t a comprehensive map of them. I’d like to know where they are so I can make sure of visiting them.

P. Well it’s the UKNational Inventory of War Memorials I’ve been talking with. I think they cover all War memorials on UK soil or in territorial waters. They’ve got over 60,000 in the catalogue but they reckon there are probably about 100,000 altogether. I’ll ask [UPDATE: Yes, UKNIWM does catalogue US memorials.]

P. This has been so exciting. It’s wonderful to discover new people through shared interests. I’ll copy you into the staff at UKNIWM. And I’ll let you know how our grant proposal gets on. Maybe there is scope for future collaboration.

…

And you’ll learn more about UKNIWM and our grant proposal in future posts.