It includes reflections on the Chartership Workshop at NLS, a report on a visit to Sighthill Library and on a Web 2.0 course at Napier University. There’s also a column written by a school librarian.

TACIT January 2010

Do you carry your poem in your: purse or wallet? in your heart? in your head? in your diary? or on your fridge door!

As part of the Carry a Poem campaign organised by One Book – One Edinburgh, the Scottish Centre for the Book at Edinburgh Napier University is running a competition for all Edinburgh primary-school children. We want the children to draw how they carry their favourite poem. This may be from an image of a poem they have in their imagination or how they actually carry it.

All the entries will be made into an exciting exhibition. This is scheduled for display at the end of February when we will also hold an award ceremony for the winners (with special guests). We need your help to publicise this venture and to encourage as many people as possible to take part. Please post, blog and pass on this information to all the young people you know! All entries must be in by 27 January 2010. For the application form and more information, please visit the Scottish Centre for the Book website .

If only

Fiona and Jackie are busy learning the ins and outs of updating this site under the watchful eye of Wendy.

The event takes place under the auspices of the ELISA Staff Development Group and so sharing of the information gleaned from the day is a priority objective. The organising team shall be working on this over the next two weeks but in the meantime, Jane Furness, Reader Services Librarian at Edinburgh College of Art, has kindly sent her notes on the event as a Wordle. (www.wordle.net)

Following Jane’s lead, I have been collating the feedback from the event and was interested to see how the comments were weighted. Wordle of course is a fun way to see this and this is what happened when I submitted the unedited text of everyone’s answers to the question “What did you like most about the day?”

What’s in a name?

ELISA – also spelt Elissa or Elisha – was an ancient Phoenician princess, the sister (or according to some versions, the daughter) of Pumayatton, King of the island state Tyre just off the Lebanese coast. Unusually for a princess – or, indeed, for any women of that time or since – Elisa was also one of the world’s major maritime venturers: a Phoenician Christopher Columbus. She was married to Synchaeus, a fellow Phoenician, but her brother/father King Pumayatton had Synchaeus murdered, possibly because he was a rival claimant to the Tyrian throne through his marriage to Elisa. Hence, Elisa was forced to flee her homeland and set sail for the West with a small group of followers. On landing on a distant North African shore in 814 BC, Elisa founded a new city, called Qart Hadasht which in her native Phoenician language means exactly that – ‘new city’. It was destined to become one of the great cities of the Mediterranean, more familiar from the Latin variant of its name, Carthage.

Then Latin mythology takes up the story. Here Elisa is better known – to Purcell and to opera, as well as to the Romans – as Dido. The love affair in Carthage of Dido with a hero fleeing from the burning walls of Troy was the subject of Berlioz’s great epic opera – the Prince Aeneas. From this celebrated encounter with this Phoenician princess, Aeneas sails on to found another city that was destined to become Europe’s greatest: Rome itself.

Elisa’s brother/father, Pumayatton, also has his fair share of associated legends. Just as Elisa is better known in the West under a different name, Pumayatton entered Greek mythology under the Greek variant: Pygmalion. According to one version of the legend, Pygmalion was in love with the goddess Aphrodite and made a statue in her image. Pygmalion fell passionately in love with his creation; Aphrodite took pity on him and so brought the statue to life for a brief time, bearing children by Pygmalion. Thus, sister or daughter of Pygmalion, Elisa is a catalyst where Phoenician, Anatolian, Greek and Roman mythologies draw together. Which is why in George Bernard Shaw’s version of the story, the main protagonist is called: Eliza.

So we have Greece, Rome, Carthage, Troy and Tyre; love, murder, art and war; Purcell, Berlioz and Shaw; and now libraries – all in the one short name – ELISA!

Warwick Ball