Happy St Teilo’s Day!

For those of you wondering which particular kind of festivity to bestow on to this day, know this: St Teilo is the patron saint of apples and horses. Adjust your schedules accordingly.

See his life story depicted in an intricate, technicolour carving at the St Teilo minisite.

Italian Memories in Wales, Our new exhibition in Oriel 1, St Fagans:National History Museum opened on Saturday January 30 and will run until May. It's a lovely exhibition so please come and visit!

As part of the exhibition we have been collecting feedback about people's thoughts on the exhibtion as well as their stories of leaving a country. Here are some that we have had so far:

Tina and Angela Minoli wrote:

'My father Giuseppo Minoli came to the Welsh valleys from Brugnoli in the Bardi region of Emilia-Romagna when he was 5 years old in 1914.'

Paulo Nuzzo wrote:

'My father left Italy in 1956 to work in the steel works of S.Wales - lovely to see what he had to go through to stay in S.Wales.'

Paulo also commented on the exhibition, saying it was: 'Very interesting and moving.'

Roberto Pastore wrote:

'My mother and father left Italy in the early 70s after getting married. They came to the UK and had my brother and me, and found work as a boutique owner and hairdresser, respectively.'

He also commented on the exhibition: 'Some beautiful images and such distinctive expressions + faces of Italy.'

Angelina Cooper wrote:

'My Grandmother and mother left Bardi 59 years ago - we visited Bardi for the first time in Sept 09. Fantastic!!'

If you would like to comment on the exhibtion please do so below or fill in one of the postcards in Oriel 1.

It was really refreshing to see so many people out in the sun at St Fagans on Friday. The place really felt revived and busy - it's so easy to forget, over the winter, quite how many visitors we see once Spring kicks in.

Even though there's been plenty of coming and going over the last few months, it has been work done behind the scenes: securing thatch, digging trenches, conserving and installing objects. The site seems to have been reclaimed, by now, by the general public. A trip down to Cosmeston lakes over the weekend confirmed that half of the south east had finally emerged from hibernation, as there were more people about than mallards.

In St Teilo's church, artist Fleur Kelly has been back again to work on some painted panels in the chancel. Since this part of the church was - and still is in some cases - considered as the most sacred, the decoration relfects the taste and preoccupations of sixteenth century Clergy, rather than Laity. The wall-paintings depict the Archbishop Thomas Beckett, and the chaste, pious St George (for those of you wondering why St George appears in a Welsh church, there'll be a post on that soon!). We have chosen musical angels, playing instruments sourced from 1500-30, and linenfold motifs for the wooden panels on the parclose screens.

I took the Learning Department's new camera up to the building in the hope of getting some footage of Fleur at work, to share with you on the blog. Scorsese I am not, and so I present you with some stills from my otherwise wobbly film debut. Fleur will be back in a few weeks' time to put the finishing touches on the paintings. Traditional pigment paint dries very slowly indeed - hopefully by then I will have had a chance to practice with the camera and can bring you a little film that's more 'The Agony and the Ecstasy' and a bit less 'Pollock'...

How disappointing to find out that, in one aspect, Apple are no different from Amazon. At the moment, no books are available for iBook in the UK. It seems Apple are just as behind as Amazon in negotiating publishing rights for the UK territory.

Disappointing, but understandable I guess. They're both American companies, based in the USA so it makes sense that they sort their domestic market out first. Also, as I've commented before, the iBook isn't being promoted as the iPad's primary feature anyway. It's just that, for some of us, that was what we've been waiting for! There's no way ereading will move towards the mainstream until we have a decent colour multi-touchscreen, multifunctionality and an intuitive UI. At the moment the devices on the market work for fiction (no images, minimum functionality needed) and the academic market (especially with the specialist Kindle Tablet for students). I'm looking forward to being able to browse my reading material in the way we now 'browse' the web.

As predicted, Apple have launched their new product, what we were expecting to be their version of an ereader, with suggestions for names like 'Tablet' and 'iSlate'. In fact, the iPad isn't even marketed as an ereader but as a tool for engaging with media all-round. Jobs describes it as a "third category", and the promotional video highlights three aspects to the iPad experience:

• a web browser
• email
• and lastly an ereader, featuring, inevitably, iBook.

Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and S&S have signed on provide content through iBook. Apple has offered a more attractive deal than Amazon by agreeing to link the ebook price to the print price. They'll split the sale 30/70. Initially publishers will still earn less from the iPad, but the agreement gives longer-term control and helps still fears that Amazon are driving prices even lower over time - and gives publishers some leverage.

Of course there are other features, and the larger touchscreen makes this a much better tool for enjoying your images in iPhoto and the most feasible device yet for downloading and watching films.

Perhaps one reason why Apple avoided positioning the iPad directly into the ereader market is the size. Although the 25cm multitouch colour screen is clearly easier to read from, ereaders have so far been promoted for their convenience, which includes being highly portable - more so than a pile of books. The iPad is nearer the size of a netbook, although at 1.25cm much slimmer (and prettier!). Another reason will be the price: although initial guesses at the cost were around 1,000$, at 499$ for the basic model the iPad is still a wee bit pricier than other ereaders, and the 3G 64GB model will be 849$.

Industry comments so far have questioned whether consumers actually want a "third category" device, especially at those prices. Publishers, however, seem to breathing a sigh of relief: at last, an attractive device and a publishing model that protects our profits. And as Jobs says, the 75m people who've bought iPods and iPhones already know how to use an iPad. The questions are, can they afford to, and do they want to?

The art cart was busy on Saturday and we made some beautiful cards! Here are just a few.

A couple of years ago we were being told that everyone was talking about changes to the supply chain. Today the book industry "buzz" is undoubtedly ebooks. In fact, I'd bet that more words are being written about this issue than are being e-read – estimates on the size of the market are still 1%-2%, even in the USA. This first wave of users are the 'early adopters', people who habitually use new technology, whatever it's for.

First, there were the usual 'death of the book' noises, which have been emerging every now and then ever since the invention of newspapers (or probably since the invention of moveable type itself). Curiously, the fact that this premise has been discredited several times doesn't stop it re-emerging. In reality books align themsleves fairly quickly and eventually benefit from whatever was meant to sound the death-knell (remember how after VHS videos came out, cinema attendance rose?). The content crosses the platforms, whatever the medium or the technology. Newspapers publish books. Films and tv programmes have tie-ins. And publishers are exploring ways of spreading their content across online, broadcast and print. The online content adds value to the book experience, it's not yet replacing it.

Booksellers now have to find a way to maximize on these opportunities, as selling coffee and DVDs isn't the answer (just ask Borders UK – oh, you can't). Some publishers are already blurring the lines, or even eradicating the traditional route to market – booksellers – entirely. Amazon, playing cuckoo in the nest, is simply gobbling up other people's content and selling it packaged as an Amazon product. It buys rights to content and publishes ebooks that can only be read by the ebook reader Kindle – produced by Amazon. The same will be true of the forthcoming Kindle 2. And when you download your book you don't actually own it, you just sort of licence it – if it's deleted or withdrawn you lose access to the content. Imagine buying a new book from Blackwell's only for a bookshop assistant to turn up at your house some time later and take it back! (Actually that wouldn't happen if only because they don't get paid enough to make house calls. Booksellers are among the best qualified, best-informed and worst paid employees anywhere.)

The Kindle and other ebook readers are probably the reason ebook reading is still marginal to the market. The reading experience isn't great, as on the whole the screens are smallish and black and white. As pieces of kit they're expensive (average £250-£400) and limited in what they do (no video, for example). In fact most ebook users (53%) are using their laptop instead. Another common complaint is the lack of quality and range of books available. There are only 250,000 titles available for Kindle in the UK (350,000 in the USA, none in Canada); that might sound a lot but over 100,000 new titles are published every year in the UK.

For publishers, the pricing is the major issue. We can't for the life of us decide what ebooks should cost. Most existing and potential readers – over 80% - believe ebooks should be cheaper than print books. But, cheaper compared to what? Paperback? Hardback? Book club edition? And should it be available before or after the paperback release? Publishers have already seen supermarkets loss-leading on trade titles, should the value­ (not price) of their product, brand or author be even further undermined? And then there's the debate over author royalties, which the Society of Authors believe should be higher than the current 15%-20%, given the larger margins available to the publishers.

Soon, however (March, actually), a new ereader enters the market. We're going to get the long-awaited 'iPod moment'. Apple are making a press announcement on 27 January, which is expected to end much speculation and say that in March they launch their own ereader. An ereader is already available as one of the thousands of Apps for the iPhone, and it will probably be the kind of multifunctionality and style we expect from Apple that will change the ebook reader landscape, for the better, if more expensive – the Apple version is expected to retail at about blog:index,000. By doing more and doing it better, Apple will bring the 'added value' to the experience that other ereaders haven't. Apple don't launch products until Steve Jobs believes they've got something special. Some years ago he said he wasn't interested in the ereader market – but, a long time ago, he said that about mobile phones… At least one very major publisher, HarperCollins, is already in talks about making ebooks available for the Apple hardware (iSlate?), possibly via iTunes.

Of course, there are still the whines of "you can't read an ebook in the bath" and so on; hey - only 6% of us say that the bath is our favourite place to read, so there goes that argument. Sustainability is a more valid concern: I wonder how much carbon we'll using as we charge up our ebook readers, what nasty materials they're made out of and what happens to them all when we thrown them away.

Once we get to know and, undoubtedly, love the iSlate, answers will emerge for some of these issues, and publishers can continue their experimenting with multiple, complimentary formats, while hopefully maintaining the true value of creative, high-quality content.

How the weather has changed since my last blog. Just before Christmas, we were reporting on the warm wet weather and how the bulbs had started to grow early as a result.

Since then, temperatures have dropped and snow has fallen all over the country! Most schools have been closed and our young scientists have had the chance to play in the snow. For schools that have been open, it’s been difficult to record, with many reports of ‘frozen thermometers’ or bulbs deep below the snow.

So what does all this cold weather mean for our bulbs, farmers and global warming?

For the bulbs: If your bulb started to grow before Christmas, it will probably still be the same height today. In other words, it will have stopped growing – until it gets warmer again. Some plants may be damaged by the frost and as a result may not flower – but most should be ok.

Farmers from the Really Welsh farm reported: ‘We should have started picking the earliest variety of Daffodils already and they are normally out in the supermarkets by now. If you look at the picture taken on the farm – you will see that they are nowhere near ready for picking. 

The daffodils that were a week or two ahead at the end of November have not grown at all since before Christmas. This is because Daffodils need temperatures of above 6 degrees in order to grow. If this weather continues we will not have any daffodils for a few weeks.’

Is global warming still happening? You could be forgiven for questioning if our planet is warming when it’s so cold outside, but sadly the overall temperature of our planet is still set to rise as carbon dioxide levels continue to increase.  Global warming is about the overall temperature of the planet rising. There will always be some colder winters and hotter summers – that’s a natural variation. But when we look at the average temperature of the planet over the last century it is definitely rising and scientists are in no doubt it will continue to rise.

For Wales, global warming doesn’t mean more sunshine, but warmer and wetter summers and more erratic weather like flash floods and gales.

Daffodils from Taiwan. Here is a picture sent to us from Chao-mei an environmental teacher based in Taiwan. She says: Hello, Professor Plant, Do you know the daffodils have bloomed in Taiwan? It reminds me of the beautiful UK spring. I have shown children in Taiwan how to keep a nature diary by looking at your blog. It’s very helpful. I teach children at the Cheng-long Wetland Education Centre and this is our blog page, it’s only in Chinese sorry.

Feed the birds. Visit our woodland blog to see pictures of St.Fagans wildlife in the snow. Plus find out how to help your garden birds to survive this winter or take part in the Big Schools' Birdwatch.

Many Thanks

Professor Plant

 

As you may have seen reported in the press, I have decided to take up the post of Chief Executive at the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. It has been far from easy to reach this decision for a variety of personal and professional reasons; and, to say that it represents a big step would be something of an understatement.

It has been a privilege to serve as Director General of Amgueddfa Cymru. During this time, I have truly come to appreciate how integral culture is to Wales's national psyche and how we should never lose sight of its importance in underpinning Welsh society and shaping the nation’s future. Our recent work regarding the positive contribution our museums make to Wales highlighted this fact, and we are committed as an organisation to working with other cultural organisations in Wales to take this research forward. Wales has strong cultural assets, and there is a job to be done in turning these into a more distinct brand and marketing them more effectively, both within Wales and beyond. There is a real danger, particularly during recession, of thinking that it’s not worth worrying about culture but it is incredibly important to our country and our economy.

I am excited about the challenges and different perspectives that I will face in this new role, but undoubtedly my approach will be shaped by my experiences here in Wales and Northern Ireland. Museums can't shy away from telling national stories, no matter how intricate or controversial they may be, and Te Papa is world famous for its innovative approach to demonstrating how culture and community memory has moulded the history and identity of New Zealand's communities.

I won't be leaving immediately. Over the next six months, I will continue to update this blog and look forward to remaining involved with a variety of projects including St Fagans and the redevelopment of the West Wing.

Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a happy 2010! If you live in the UK you’d have to have been trapped in a time warp not to notice that we are going through one of the worst cold snaps in recent memory. The newspapers are rife with photos of glacial Britannia and warnings of impending doom as we run out of stocks of grit/salt/gas/branston pickle. Still, the children seem to enjoy it and I can’t deny the thrill of waking up to a world turned white.

There’s no denying that this kind of weather can be tough, but it’s even harder for your average resident of the hedgerow, who must eat as much as possible every day in order to avoid freezing to death every night! Of course we humans can help by throwing out food for the birds and beasts, those of you with a surplus of kitchen scraps may find this article on feeding garden birds helpful.

In fact, with food being harder to find and the wild creatures needing to stock up for the night this is a great time to go wildlife watching in your local area. The pressure really is on for the animals to find their food and so they are much less likely to worry about being shy around people – they simply can’t afford to stop looking! This means you may find it easier to get close to wildlife that is normally elusive. The other great thing about snow is that it makes an excellent canvas for animal footprints. If you need some assistance telling a hare from a housecat have a look here and here for some handy guides.

Coming up this month we’ve got the Big Garden Birdwatch all day on Sunday January the 24th in Tŷ Gwyrdd. Come along and take part in the world's largest bird survey and get stuck into some birdie activities.In the meatime why not brush up on your birds by visiting the webcam? See you all soon!