New Journal Titles

We have a couple of new additions to our journal shelves this month, SLD Experience and Music Education Research. The former is not currently available in electronic format but Music Education Research can be accessed and searched as far back as 1999 from the journals page on our website, with all articles available in full-text.

One other change - one of our current subscriptions, Journal of In-Service Education has changed title and is now called Professional Development in Education and is shelved accordingly.

Apocalypse and Utopia

The 2009 Irish Seminar, a series of lectures for scholars of Irish Studies is currently underway at the Keough Naughton Notre Dame Centre in Merrion Square and runs to July 3rd.

While most of the lectures are limited to students participating in the Seminar, each week contains one lecture open to the public held in the National Gallery of Ireland on Thursday at 7pm.

This year's theme is Apocalypse and Utopia and deals with:

"complex histories, present disturbances, and imagined futures...the rhetorics of progress and catastrophe, apocalypse and utopia, millenarianism and anti-millenarianism, in Irish culture from the early modern period to the twenty-first century."

The lectures open to the public are:

Elizabeth Butler Cullingford - Catholicism in Crisis: Representing the Abuse Scandals in Ireland and Irish-America (June 18)

Declan Kiberd - After Ireland: The Death of a National Literature? (June 25)

Paul Bové - Misprisions of Utopia—Messianism, Apocalypse, and Allegory (July 2)

IMPAC Award Winner Announced

Boston-born writer Michael Thomas has won the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his debut novel Man Gone Down.

The story is narrated by an unnamed young black father of three in an inter-racial marraige in Boston. We meet him on the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, broke and living in the bedroom of a friend’s six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money necessary to keep his family together.

The judges said of the book that "tuned urgently to the way we live now, [it] is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth."

The prize is the richest literary award in the world. Its nomination process is unique as nominations are made by selected libraries in capital and major cities throughout the world. For more information on the award and a list of the nominees visit http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/index.htm.

Yeats Events

"Dance there upon the shore
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?"

This month sees the 70th anniversary of the death of W.B. Yeats. To mark the occasion the National Library of Ireland are presenting Summer's Wreath '09, a series of events throughout June celebrating his life and works.

All the events are free to attend (though it's advised to book early) and those involved in the readings, lectures and performances include Bob Geldof, Neil Jordan, Edna O'Brien and Roy Foster.

For a full listing of events click here. Their website also contains a wonderful online version of their acclaimed Yeats exhibition which is well worth a look - click here to see it.

Can You Believe What You Read?

Valerie Kendlin and Ursula Byrne from UCD Library had an interesting opinion piece published last month in the Irish Times.

The title of the article is ‘Verification vanishing as data goes electronic’ and it discusses various issues for both Libraries and researchers relating to the use of the web as a source of information.

It is a follow up to a previous article written by a UCD student of sociology on May 7th about Wikipedia and the Internet.