In September last, our Librarian Helen Shenton spoke to over 2000 attendees at TEDx Dublin 2014, held at the Bord Gáis Theatre, and now you can see her presenting Collaboratories and bubbles of shush; how libraries are transforming. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an annual event bringing together the world’s leading thinkers and doers to spread ideas important to them. Past speakers at TED include Bill Clinton, Bono and Richard Branson.
TEDx Dublin provides an independently organised TED-like experience, and this year’s group of live speakers represented a broad range of interests and concerns, from a sociolinguist to an astrophysicist, a prison governor to a “gender discombobulator” and of course our very own Librarian and College Archivist. The website says “Helen is passionate about the power of collections and the role of information in people’s lives in this new digital landscape” and this formed the basis of her talk.
As of January 2015, the abstracting and indexing database, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, is moving to the EBSCO platform. As a result of this move, RILM contents are now included in Stella search results.
This trial is now live for 30 days from 16/01/15. It is accessible from the Trial Databases tab on the Databases and E-books page.
The PsycTESTS database is produced by the American Psychological Association (APA). PsycTESTS is a research database that provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the test and its development and administration. This is a bibliographic database, which also contains full text and multimedia. (76% of test records contain the actual test or test items.)
The Friends of the Library – Trinity College Dublin are delighted to announce their next lecture. Admission is €5 (Members & Concessions €2.50). All welcome!
Charles Lysaght & Alyson Gavin
19:30, Thursday 19 February 2015
Thomas Davis Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin
on “Irish Scholars at Cambridge. The Strange Story of the Gardiner Scholarship”
At Cambridge, Charles Lysaght, barrister and biographer, held the Robert Gardiner Memorial Scholarship, which is open only to students and graduates of Irish universities with preference given to those from Trinity, gifted students of literature and descendants of Irish landed proprietors.
Alyson Gavin took her moderatorship in Russian and Spanish at Trinity and now works for the Labour Relations Commission. She has a diploma in genealogy from UCD.
UPDATE: see podcast of the talk below.
Trinity College Library Dublin will host Stewardship and Preservation of Collections in the Digital Age on Monday, 26th January at 1:00pm in the Neill Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.
The talk will be delivered by Cliff Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information since 1997. CNI, jointly sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and EDUCAUSE, includes about 200 member organizations concerned with the intelligent uses of information technology and networked information to enhance scholarship and intellectual life. CNI’s wide-ranging agenda includes work in digital preservation, data intensive scholarship, teaching, learning and technology, and infrastructure and standards development and since its founding has facilitated interaction and dialogue between librarians and information technologists in areas of common interest.
Prof. Lynch, holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information. He is an internationally recognised expert in the area of networked information and has a unique understanding of the cultural trends and technological developments impacting today’s global information ecosystem. In his talk Prof. Lynch will discuss the role of institutions in serving as digital stewards of the cultural and intellectual records they hold in trust and what stewardship means in the digital age. He will explore the challenges facing higher education and research sectors in developing the necessary strategies and supporting infrastructure to deal with these demands effectively, affordably, and at the requisite scale. Event Details: Date: Monday, 26 January 2015 Time: 1:00pm Venue: Neill Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
For further information please e-mail dutylib@tcd.ie.
Each month the Edward Worth Library, which is affiliated to TCD, describes a “book of the month”. December’s is about the Abbey of St Denis and is by Neasa Mc Garrigle.
See it here, together with previous “books of the month”.
A major new exhibition of children’s books celebrating the wondrous ways in which writers and illustrators have used myth to engage and excite young readers was launched in the Long Room, Trinity College Library Dublin, on Thursday, October 23rd, 2014. The exhibition is open to the public and runs until April 2015.
The exhibition, entitled ‘Upon the Wild Waves: A Journey through Myth In Children’s Books’ presents material from the 17th century to the present day and was prepared by Dr Pádraic Whyte, Assistant Professor in English and co-director of the Masters programme in Children’s Literature at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.
From Walter Crane’s superb images of Greek heroes battling monsters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, through to Beatrice Elvery’s enchanting depiction of Niamh riding out from Tír na nÓg in Violet Russell’s Heroes of the dawn, the exhibition brings visitors on a magical journey through a diverse range of fascinating children’s books. The display, which is primarily aimed at adult visitors, features myths from around the world, with a particular emphasis on English-language books and on tales by Irish authors and illustrators. All the texts are drawn from the Library which holds over 150,000 children’s books – approximately 10,500 of which are from the Pollard Collection of Children’s Books. This collection was bequeathed to the Library in 2005 by a former Keeper of Early Printed Books, Mary ‘Paul’ Pollard.
Commenting on the significance of the exhibition, Dr Whyte said:
“Children’s literature is a central and vital part of our cultural heritage and this exhibition reveals the sophisticated ways in which myth in children’s books can be used to explore everything from gender and same-sex-relationships through to historical revisionism and 1916. I’m delighted that we have the opportunity to display for visitors many of the treasures held at the Trinity College Library, and to highlight some of the research in children’s literature taking place at the School of English.”
The exhibition is also available to view online, click here
October 16th, 2014 − A new 24-hour Study Hall was marked today at Trinity College Library Dublin at a special ceremony. The Study Hall has been made possible through significant endowment funding which also supports scholarships for up to six engineering students simultaneously as they pursue their education. These initiatives were made possible through the generous private support of the Chief Executive of Jones Engineering Group, Eric Kinsella, and his wife Barbara.
The state-of-the-art Kinsella Hall comprises three floors of 24-hour study space in the Ussher Library for all students and researchers in Trinity to access day and night, and remains open throughout the year except over Christmas. It will allow for up to 600 study spaces for the students to study in a specially designed space. The three floors are being opened on a phased basis this term and will be fully functioning later this term.
The Student Study Hall is named in honour of Mr Kinsella’s parents, William and Kathleen Kinsella.
“We believe in the importance of supporting students achieve their full potential in the course of their studies. The Study Hall represents this in the most practical of ways, enabling students to study intensively throughout the year in a state-of-the-art facility. I am gratified that the Study Hall is going to be named in honour of my own parents, as a means of marking their own outstanding commitment and dedication to the education and wellbeing of their children,” said Mr Kinsella on the occasion of the unveiling of the plaque for the new facility.
Trinity College Library Dublin has announced the purchase of the most extensive collection of Samuel Beckett letters ever to have been offered for public sale.
The collection comprises 347 items and was sold by a private seller.
The Library now holds the largest collection of Beckett letters of any research library in the world and is a fitting home for the correspondence of one of Trinity College Dublin’s most famous alumni.
The letters and cards were sent from the Nobel Prize-winning author to artists Henri and Josette Hayden.
Beckett and his wife, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, met the Haydens when both couples were in southern France evading discovery by the Nazis during WWII.
The letters, dating from a period beginning in 1947, cover a troubled time in Beckett’s life, which saw the death of both his mother and his brother Frank.
“These Beckett letters are very significant for Beckett scholarship at Trinity College, as well as nationally and internationally,” said Helen Shanton, Librarian and College Archivist.
“We have been developing collections of significant Irish creative writers, and these letters build on the existing Beckett collections the library already holds. We welcome the opportunity to be able to share these collections with students of Beckett and researchers across the globe.”
