Library Open Wed, Dec 22

The Library is open for business from 9am-1pm today (Wednesday). We are closed from tomorrow and reopen on Jan 4, 2011.

Library Closed Due to Weather

The Library has closed for today (Tuesday, Dec 21) due to the continued bad weather. Please check the College website as regards opening tomorrow (Wednesday).

National Archive of Irish Composers

High quality digital copies of sheet music dating from the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth century are now available for open access on the recently launched National Archive of Irish Composers (www.naic.ie).

The resource aims to make the pieces widely available while preserving the valuable source materials held in the National Library of Ireland's collections. The project has drawn on expertise from librarianship to historical music research and performance, partnered with cutting-edge digital technology.

At present over fifty pieces of historical piano music using Irish airs can be downloaded from the site, the majority of which were composed by Irish or visiting composers of the time, along with complementary audio and video files.

The National Archive of Irish Composers consortium comprises the National Library of Ireland, DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, DIT Digital Media Centre and Heritage Music Productions Ltd.

Christmas Opening Hours

The Library is open for the following hours this week:

Mon, Dec 20: 9am-5pm
Tue, Dec 21: 9am-5pm
Wed, Dec22: 9am-1pm

We are closed from Thursday, Dec 23 until Monday, Jan 3 inclusive.

The Library re-opens on Tuesday, Jan 4th for full term-time hours. We also have extended hours on Friday and Saturday of that study week (Jan 7 & 8) when will open until 10pm and 5pm respectively.

See our full opening hours on our website.

We wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our users, see you in 2011!

Library Closed This Saturday

Due to circumstances beyond our control the Library will be closed this Saturday, December 18. We will reopen at 9am on Monday, December 20.

We apologise for any inconvenience to our users.

Get a Short Loan for Christmas!

From 9am this Wednesday (Dec 15) all of our 24hr Loan items will be issuing until Wednesday, January 5.

Please note that we are unable to renew short loan items, so any students not intending to return to campus during study week (Jan 4-8) should ensure they return 24hr loans before the due date.

Library System Unavailable Dec 11

Due to work being carried out on the College network, the Library Management System (Talis) will be unavailable on Saturday, December 11 from 11.00am to 12.30am approximately.

Basic issuing of books will still be possible in these hours but some services such as renewals and reservations will not be available from the Issue Desk. The Catalogue will also be unavailable for those on-campus, so make sure to get in early and do your searching before the work starts! We are open for our usual Saturday hours of 10am-1pm.

Apologies for any inconvenience to our users at this busy time.

Trial Access to Education Resource

Up until the Christmas break we have obtained trial access to British Education Index, an independent subject and author index of the contents of significant education journals published in the UK since 1975. The resource is hosted for us via Dialogue's Data Star resource at www.datastar.com.

The index contains bibliographic details of over 150,000 articles from education-related journals as well as conference papers, research reports and electronic texts.

While it does not contain full text versions of articles, the index acts as a useful filter for those researching specialised areas within education and looking for articles and publications relevant to their study. Article or journal references returned by the index may of course be available via one of our online journal databases or, failing that, by inter-library loan.

To access the resource you will require our trial login which can be obtained simply by contacting the Information Desk (info.library@mail.dcu.ie). Once you've entered your login details just enter BREI in the database field and click 'select' and you're on your way!

We'd be glad to hear any comments you have regarding the resource.

2009/10 Exam Papers Available

Exam papers for the 2009-10 academic year (along with previous years) are now available in most subjects for students to read or print from the Exam Papers section of our website.

If there are papers missing for your subjects in particular years it may be because the department concerned regard certain papers as not relevant or suitable for reference.

Library Closed until Dec 6

Due to the adverse weather conditions the Library will close today at 6pm and will not reopen until 1pm tomorrow (Thursday, Dec 2).
**UPDATE 2/11/2010: The Library will not reopen until Monday, Dec 6th due to continued bad weather.

Library Closed Dec 8th

The Library will be closed on Wednesday, December 8th for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Thank You!

Our recent book sale raised a total of €1,200, all of which will be donated to Barnardos. Many thanks to all who took part and donated generously to a worthy cause.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Some users of Naxos Music Library have occasionally encountered a 'try again later' message when trying to access the site.

Access to this particular resource is limited to a certain number of simultaneous users, so if you receive this message it is because this limit has been reached at that time.

Anyone who encounters this problem should simply exit the site try accessing again at a later time.

For those using the resource, we ask that once you've finished your session on Naxos you either

• close the browser window
  or
  
• click on the red Log-Out button at the top of the screen

Doing either one of these will ensure that you are not unnecessarily occupying a 'slot' and will enable access for our full quota of users. Thanks for your co-operation.

Liam Ó Muirthile Display

To mark his recent appointment as Writer in Residence 2010/11 we are currently displaying a selection of works by Liam Ó Muirthile, one of the foremost contemporary Irish-language poets and prose writers, at the entrance to the main Library.

Click here for a list of Liam's titles currently in stock in the Library.

E-books Access

Our e-books are available once again. Many thanks to our colleagues in DCU for their work in resolving the technical problems.

If you have any access problems with any of our online resources please let us know either in person or by email or phone (01-8842170).

Get In With The PIN-Crowd

Any students that don't have their Library PIN should make sure to get the next time you're in with us; it'll make your Library-life a whole lot easier:

• renew books from on or off campus
  
• reserve books that are out on loan
• save searches and individual references
• see your loan history
  

The renew and reserve options help you manage your Library account and keep your record clear of fines. The search and loan history facilities can be a big help for assignment or research bibliographies - our records contain all the publisher and item details you'll need.

So if you don't know your PIN, just present your College ID card at the Issue or Information Desk and we'll show you the ropes...

E-books Back Again...

Our e-books are now available again.

If you have problems accessing e-books or any of our online resources please let us know either in person at the Information Desk or via email or phone (8842170).

UPDATE 11/11/2010: We are continuing to experience access problems. This is currently being investigated and access will be restored as soon as possible. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Ebooks Unavailable

Due to a technical problem our Dawsonera e-books are currently unavailable. Apologies for any inconvenience, we hope to have access restored as soon as possible.

Library Closed Fri/Sat

The Library is closed on Friday and Saturday of this week due to the College's 2010 graduation conferrals taking place on those days. We re-open for normal term-time hours next Monday, November 8th.

A Century of E-books...

We've passed the 100 mark in our e-book collection, all viewable from on or off-campus using your usual SPD login. You can see the full list by clicking the "SPD E-books" icon on our Catalogue.

Any users with questions about how to view or use them can contact our Information Desk either in person or by phone (8842170) or email. Any staff who wish to link to relevant e-books from within their Moodle page can contact Liam O'Dwyer for assistance.

3rd-Years Are Getting ILLs

This year we have extended our InterLibrary Loans (ILLs) service to 3rd-year undergraduate students. Previously ILLs were available only to staff and postgraduate students.

We have widened the service in order to facilitate and assist 3rd-year students in their dissertation and research projects. The ILL service is a system whereby on your behalf we can borrow an item from another library on a temporary basis.

The terms of the service for 3rd-year students are as normal:

• 3 ILLs free of charge
• thereafter apply charges of €12 (book) or €10 (journal article)
• items held in SPD Library cannot be requested
  

The ILL form is available for download on the Library website http://leabharlann.spd.dcu.ie/EnglishSite/Services/interlibraryloans.html and the completed and signed forms may be handed in at the Issue Desk or Information desk in the Library. If you have any questions please contact Interloan.Library@spd.dcu.ie

Book Sale

The Library is holding a book sale next Tuesday and Wednesday, 2nd and 3rd of November, in the corridor outside the Library. Books will be available for a recession-friendly €2 and all proceeds will go to Barnardos.

Come along next week, give a book a friendly home and help a really worthy cause at the same time. It's a win-win!

RIAN Research Portal Launched

RIAN (www.rian.ie), an open access portal for Irish research, was officially launched yesterday by the Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan.

RIAN allows federated searching of the Institutional Repositories of the 7 Irish Universities as well as that of Dublin Institute of Technology, making Irish research material freely accessible both here and internationally, thus increasing the research profiles of individual researchers and their institutions.

The site has been live since July of this year and is already showing extremely high usage rates. It provides enhanced searching and filtering on the contents of the repositories, which are also made available via other search engines such as Google Scholar.

RIAN is the end product of a 3-year project which included the completion of the individual University repositories within its remit. The project was equally funded by the Universities and the Government’s Strategic Innovation Fund which is administered by the Higher Education Authority. It was initiated and managed by the Irish Universities Association Librarians' Group. As RIAN develops it is intended to extend to other Irish research institutions.

October/November Opening Hours

The Library will be closed on the following days:

Monday, 25 Oct: Bank Holiday
Monday, 1st Nov: Church Holy Day
Friday, 5th Nov: Conferring
Saturday, 6th Nov: Conferring

For our full opening hours around these dates check our website.

Go See Us At The Moderns

Well not us, but our books!

We've let 6 of our most precious children (again, our books) go on holiday to live in the IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) for their wonderful new exhibition The Moderns. The books we have donated are rare first editions from our Dolmen Press Collection:

An Béal Bocht by Myles na gCopaleen;

Rough Field by John Montague;

Zone, Guillaume Apollinaire translated by Samuel Beckett;

Riders to the Sea by J.M. Synge;

The Táin by Thomas Kinsella;

Another September by Thomas Kinsella.

Dolmen Press produced some of the most beautiful and most sought-after books in the world. The first edition of Kinsella's Táin features beautiful lithographic brush drawings by Louis le Brocquy which the artist called "shadows thrown by the text", while Riders to the Sea contains colour linocuts by Tate Adams.

The Irish Times have an article on the exhibition here while IMMA themselves describe it as

"the biggest and most ambitious exhibition to be staged by IMMA...a brilliantly diverse collection of visual arts, books, design, architecture, film and music, it traces the development of Modernism in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s"

The Moderns opens today, October 20th and runs through to the end of Spring 2011. Our contribution is displayed in Room 17B so go along and show our celebrity books a friendly face!

Booker Booker On The Shelf...

"He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one…"

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobsen, winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, is now available for loan in the main lending section of the Library.

Notable as the first comic novel to win the prize, it was described by Andrew Motion, Chair of the judges as "very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize."

The other shortlisted titles for this year's prize are also available from the Library, including Room by Irish author Emma Donoghue. Check them out!

Maths Week Exhibition

To celebrate Maths Week we are currently displaying a variety of books, articles and posters relating to symmetry and other visual aspects of Mathematics at the entrance to the main library.

The collection is entitled Symmetry and Art and contains materials by and about people such as M.C. Escher, Hans Freudenthal and Hermann Weyl.

Many of the books have been donated to the Library by members of the Mathematics Department for the duration of the exhibition so please come up and have a look at them while you have the chance.

At different times during the day we are also displaying a related slideshow of symmetry-related art on our information screen.

Our thanks to Maurice O'Reilly, Head of Mathematics for his help and donations for the exhibition.

2010/11 Library Guides Now Available

Our new Library Guides are now available at our Information Desk. We've squashed all the essential information about our Library and Information Service into a handy super-slim A5 guide.

Great for those starting out in Pat's - we will also be providing them at our Library Inductions. Also for those who've been here a while but need a refresher, it's got (almost) everything you wanted to know about us but were afraid to ask...

New Irish Press Online Archive

Thirty years of back issues of the Irish Press (which began in 1931 and ceased operating in 1995) are now available via the Irish Newspaper Archives database.

The coverage is from 1930 to1960, with the remaining 35 years due to be added by the end of the year.

The Irish Newspaper Archive can be accessed via the Databases A-Z on our website and like all our online resources is available off-campus also.

We are able to provide access to this resource thanks to the IReL initiative. If you have any questions or problems regarding usage of this online resource please contact our Information Desk - info.library@spd.dcu.ie/8842175.

New DCU Referencing Guide

DCU Library have produced an updated version of their guide to citing and referencing using the Harvard style. It is available to download as a pdf file for staff and students of SPD from the citing and referencing section of our website. The guide has been completely revised and updated by two of DCU Library's subject librarians Amanda Halpin and Lisa Callaghan. It is specifically aimed at those using the Harvard style of referencing so students should check first with their lecturers or supervisors regarding their preferred style of referencing.

We also provide access to Refworks, the web-based reference management tool which can help you manage your references and create the bibliographies you need for your assignments in a variety of styles. If you have any questions or problems regarding the use of Refworks please contact the Information Desk info.library@spd.dcu.ie/01-8842170.

Fáilte!

The Library would like to welcome our new students to St. Patrick's College and wish them every success for the year ahead. Library tours and inductions are available at the beginning of term. B.Ed's and postgraduate students will have time slots allocated to them in the first few weeks while B.A. students can come to the Information Desk in the Library to book a slot for themselves.

Please ask a member of Library Staff for help if you need it - it's what we're here for!

Encyclopaedia Britannica

As part of a government initiative providing the resource to all national schools, Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition is now freely available to members of St. Patrick's College.

To access the resource just click on the link above and enter your 8-digit College ID number for verification.

You can search the entire encyclopaedia or, alternatively, use the three sub-sites offered which filter material suitable for either primary school, secondary school or 'A-level' students. It also contains a Teacher's Resources section and Britannica Learning Zone for early learners.

Our thanks to Encyclopædia Britannica and also to NCTE for providing us with access to this excellent resource.

Bank Holiday Weekend

The Library will be closed on Monday, August 2 for the bank holiday. We re-open on Tuesday, August 3 at 10am. For our full opening hours click here.

Even more to Muse over...

Project MUSE is expanding its online archives of over 80 journals titles. Over half of the titles involved will have their complete archive available and the increased content is being made available at no additional cost.

Some of the titles already expanded to the level of a complete archive are:

• Children's Literature (1972-)
  
• Children's Literature Association Quarterly(1976-)
  
• The Emily Dickinson Journal (1992-)
  
• The Henry James Review (1979-)
• Journal of Early Christian Studies (1993-)
• Journal of Women's History (1989-)
• Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology (1994-)
  

Other titles currently being expanded include:

• a/b: Autobiography Studies
• Civil War History
• Eighteenth Century Fiction
• Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
• Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
• Journal of Narrative Theory
• Nabokov Studies
• Nineteenth Century French Studies
• Philip Roth Studies
• Philosophy and Literature
• Philosophy of Music Education Review
• Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture

You can browse Project Muse's complete journals collection here. If you are accessing the resource from off-campus you should link to it via the databases page on the Library website.

Project Muse is available to us through the IReL initiative.

RIAN - A New Open Access Tool

RIAN (www.rian.ie) - is a new national portal for Open Access to Irish published research. It harvests content from the Institutional Repositories of the 7 Irish Universities as well as that of Dublin Institute of Technology. It allows federated searching of all of those repositories and provides enhanced searching and excellent statistics on the contents of the repositories.

This is an important development for promotion of Irish research and the knowledge economy.

The development of RIAN was managed by the Irish Universities Association Librarians' Group and is supported by the Association. This three year project was equally funded by the Universities and the Irish Government’s Strategic Innovation Fund which is administered by the Higher Education Authority.

"It is in the national interest to extend access to Irish research output at institutional and sectoral level so as to maximise the long-term strategic impact and thereby help develop a knowledge society."
Professor Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, President, DCU

Bank Holiday & Summer Hours

The Library is closed over the bank holiday weekend from Saturday, June 5 to Monday, June 7 inclusive. We re-open on Tuesday, June 8 for our vacation opening hours of 10am-5pm (closed 1-2 for lunch).

A New Tool for Re-Searchers

With the number of online databases to choose from it's often hard to know the best place to start looking for relevant material. We now have access to a great new tool called Searcher which allows multiple databases to be searched in one go!

Search results are listed by database, giving a good idea of which resources warrant further inspection. While Searcher doesn’t have some of the advanced searching features you'll find in individual databases, it can be very useful in the initial stages of research to help formulate your search strategy.

We have access to this tool via DCU's library website. You can link to it from the icon above and you can also find it in the online databases section of our own website.

Extra Opening Hours

To accommodate students preparing for exams, the Library will open for longer than normal over the next two weekends:

Fri, May 21: 9am-10pm
Sat, May 22: 10am - 5pm

Fri May 28: 9am-10pm
Sat, May 29: 10am - 5pm

Java City's campus shop will also be open for extra hours for refreshments when you're getting bleary-eyed or just need a break from the books...

Cad é an Gaelscéal?

Tá síntiús glactha ag an Leabharlann anois le haghaidh an nuachtáin nua Gaeilge, Gaelscéal. Tugann Gaelscéal spléachadh do léitheoirí fud fad oileán na hÉireann ar chúrsaí reatha, idirnáisiúnta, náisiúnta agus réigiúnach; oideachas, spórt, cúrsaí saoil, caitheamh aimsire mar aon le saol na Gaeilge agus na Gaeltachta. Tá sé i mbun táirgíochta ó dheireadh mí an Mhárta. Foilsítear é ar an Aoine agus is féidir teacht air (mar aon le cóip de Foinse) ach dul chuig áit na n-irisí.

Tá an leagan leictreonach de ar fáil saor in aisce faoi láthair ar www.gaelsceal.ie. Bíonn fáil ar an leagan leictreonach dhá lá i ndiaidh fhoilsiú an leagain chlóite.

24hr Loans for Study Week

From 5.15pm on Thursday, May 13 our 24-hour loan items will be issued until Monday, May 24. This includes items from our DVD collection.

E-Books Galore!

Almost 50 titles from our short-loan collection are now available in e-book format! To see the list of titles go to our Catalogue page and click on the SPD E-books icon.

You'll also see an 'ebook available' label on print versions of available titles to alert you. The e-books are viewed through your web browser and offer some handy functions:

• word/phrase searches
• export references to a RefWorks account
• ReadAloud tool for users with impaired vision
• download a title for up to 7 days for offline access
• copy/print within copyright limitations
• staff can link directly to an ebook from Moodle

With these titles we hope to increase accessiblity of core titles for St. Pat's students and staff:

• when you're off-campus
  
• outside of Library opening hours
• if all print copies of a book are out on loan
• if you have your full quota of books out
  
• and there's no fines!
  

All the titles require you to login whether on or off campus. For staff this is their novell login while for students it is their normal login (as used for everything Moodle, email etc.). If you don't know your login details please contact IT support.

If you would like a run-through of the format please contact info.library@spd.dcu.ie or ask for Ben or Ronan at the Library Information desk.

Our thanks to the Quality Promotion Committee for their support of this initiative.

Bank Holiday

The Library is closed on Monday, May 3rd for the bank holiday. Items issued from our Short Loan Collection from Thursday evening onwards will be issued until Tuesday, May 4th.

Rare Henry Morris Collection on Display

From today Thursday 22 April, and for a number of weeks, our collection of Henry Morris [1874-1945] papers is on view by appointment in the Special Collections room in the Library Please contact Tommy Murtagh in the library to organise a viewing time - Tommy.Murtagh@spd.dcu.ie.

This collection is usually stored in the College archive - don't miss the opportunity to view the collection in its current form!

Henry Morris was a writer and Irish scholar, born in 1874 in Co. Monaghan. He was a student of St. Patrick's College from September 1899 until July 1900.

He founded the first branch of the Gaelic League in Co. Monaghan and was a founder member of the Louth Historical and Archaeological Society. He served as a departmental inspector and became deputy chief inspector in the primary branch of the DES. His academic publications include Greann na Gaeilge (1901-7), Seanfhocail Uladh (1907), Donn Bó agus Scéalta Eile (1908), Dhá Céad de Cheoltaibh Uladh (1934), Amhráin na Midhe (1933) and Dánta Diadha Uladh (1936).

This small collection consists of letters written to Henry Morris by notable figures such as Patrick Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt, Charles McNeill, Torna, Eoin Mac Neill, Kuno Meyer, P.W. Joyce , Francis Joseph Bigger, E.J. Gwynn, Timothy Michael Healy, RAS Macalister, Úna Ní Ógáin, Eoin O'Duffy, Denis Carolan Rushe and others. Much of the correspondence relates to Conradh na Gaeilge, with which Morris was heavily involved.

Some other gems collected by Morris himself include:

• a legal document written by Daniel O'Connell
• a Repeal Association of Ireland Membership card
• a signed receipt by Henry Grattan
• letters written by Isaac Butt, Michael Davitt, William Gladstone, Cardinal Manning and Thomas Moore.

The letters were gathered in a scrapbook by Henry Morris and while a basic catalogue list of content exists the joy will be to browse the collection. Don't miss this rare opportunity!

School Visit to Library

To celebrate UNESCO World Book Day (a bit later than usual!) children from St. Laurence O'Toole's, BNS, Seville Place in Dublin will join us here in the library tomorrow for some fun and games.

The children will design and produce their own books as well as take part in other library related activities. Please feel free to join in - all are very welcome. The madness begins at 10.30am.

Short Loans Items Available for Easter Break

To accommodate students and staff not on campus over the Easter break, from 5.15pm today (Thursday, March 25) all items from our 24-hour loan collection (including DVDs) will be issued until Monday, April 12th.

We wish all our users a very happy Easter!

Easter Opening Hours

The Library's Easter vacation hours are as follows:

Mon, March 29th: 10am-5pm
Tues, March 30th: 10am-5pm
Wed, March 31st: 10am-1pm
Thu, April 1st -
Tuesday April 6th: Closed
Wed, April 7th: 10am-5pm
Thu, April 8th: 10am-5pm
Fri, April 9th: 10am-5pm
Sat, April 10th: Closed
Sun, April 11th: Closed

We return to full term-time hours (9am-10pm) on Monday, April 12th. You can see our full March/April opening hours on our website.

SPD Theses Abstracts Online

We've updated the theses section of our website so that it now includes links to abstracts (where provided) for our complete theses holdings.

To view an abstract, simply click on the title of the theses you want and the file will open in pdf format. If you don't have a pdf reader you can download Adobe's reader for free from their website.

The file quality may vary depending on whether the abstract was submitted or available to us in electronic format; many were individually scanned from the hard copies in the Library.

A big thanks to Genevieve Larkin and Orlaith Casey in the Library for all their work on this and also to Maria Thornbury in Administration for her assistance.

In addition to this we have made a submission of theses to Index To Theses for inclusion in the next update of their online catalogue of theses from Universities in Britain and Ireland. We hope that this will help increase visibility and awareness of the high level of research produced in St. Patrick's College.

Magill / Village Archives on Politico.ie

We currently have trial access to premium content of Politico, which offers online access to archives of Magill, Village and Unsight publications going back to 1968, as well as their own news section which is updated daily.

There is also a video section where you can view footage from channels or programmes such as Tonight with Vincent Browne, CNN International and New Scientist.

The trial can also be accessed from the Trial Databases page on our website. Have a look and let us know what you think!

What Web Animal Are YOU?

BBC's recent 4-part series The Virtual Revolution marked 20 years since the conception of the web by looking at how it has reshaped almost every aspect of our lives and how our methods of working and learning have changed as a result.

As part of their investigation BBC's LabUK and the Dept of Information Studies in University of London are conducting a huge online survey to find out how different people interact with the web. They have found that eight different web species have evolved over the last 20 years.

Have a look at BBC LabUK's site and find out what kind of web animal you are!

Free Movie - Happy Go Lucky

To mark both Library Ireland Week and the end of Teaching Practice, the Library is screening Mike Leigh's acclaimed comedy Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). The film tells the story of Poppy, a primary school teacher, as she negotiates modern life, love and a deeply psychotic driving instructor.


Screening times are:

Wed, March 10 @ 6pm (D115)

Thur, March 18 @ 6pm (D210)

And...there'll be free popcorn!!! (To guarantee your bag, let us know you're coming at info.library@spd.dcu.ie).

Philosophers' Imprint

"Edited by philosophers
Published by librarians"

Philosophers' Imprint is an open access resource from University of Michigan Library that may be of interest to our students and staff in Human Development, or anyone with a passing interest in philosophy.

It is an online collection of original papers in philosophy published on the web with no subscription or licence requirement. Articles are refereed and selected for publication on the basis of their "estimated long-term significance". At present there are about sixty articles on subjects such as The Nature of Noise (Kulvicki, J.), How Actions Govern Intention (Shah, N.) and Nietzsche's Theory of the Will (Leiter, B.).

Items are added at irregular intervals, though for the last few years they have been pretty much monthly and there is a mailing list if you want to be notified when a new article is posted.

Book Sale March 1-3

Are your books gathering dust at home?
Got a secret classic you'd like to share?
Why not free up your shelves and bring some of your old favourites to the Library this week?

In return you'll get a voucher for €1 off the price of a book in our Book Sale, being held next week (alternatively, you can just bring your book(s) along to the sale itself).

The sale will take place outside the Library entrance on Monday-Wednesday (March 1-3) from 10am-4pm each day.

All proceeds of the Book Sale are going to St. Michael's House, which provides vital services to those with intellectual disability and their families. The sale is part of their 2010 Bring a Book, Buy a Book campaign.

CECDE Collection

The Library has acquired the entire contents of the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education (CECDE) Library. The Collection is housed in the Resource Centre at present. Anyone wishing to access items in the collection or with any queries regarding its content should contact Ramune Kuzminiene in the Library by email (ramune.kuzminiene@spd.dcu.ie) or phone (8842170).

The contents of the CECDE Library Collection is specific to Early Childhood Care and Education and contains over 2,000 resources on this area. It may be
of interest to staff and also to students, at both undergraduate and post-graduate level, undertaking research in the area of early childhood provision or practice.

The CECDE was established in 2002 by the Department of Education and Science with the aim of developing and co-ordinating early childhood care and education. It played a vital role in the development and implementation of the national policy approach to learning and development in early childhood. In November 2008 the Centre closed when Government funding for the organisation was withdrawn.

Dictionary of Irish Biography

‘...an epoch-making event in the history of Irish scholarship’
Seamus Heaney

The Library is delighted to have obtained both the print and online editions of Dictionary of Irish Biography, a truly seminal work for Irish scholarship.

The 9-volume print edition is currently on display at the entrance to the main library with accompanying articles and posters relating to the work while also acknowledging the significant contribution to the Dictionary from St. Patrick's College staff, past and present.

The Dictionary was recently reviewed by Roy Foster in the TLS and is a joint project of the Royal Irish Academy and Cambridge University Press. After the exhibition the 9 volumes will live in our Reference section at 920.0415/DIC while the online version can be accessed from the Online Resources section of our website.

Attention New Postgrads!

Library tours are being held this week for students beginning their Postgraduate Diploma in Education. If you haven't had yours yet you can check the remaining slots here. Just turn up at one of the times allotted for your group and we'll take it from there!

Easter Rising Online Resource

Continuing on from their wonderful Yeats Online Exhibition, the National Library of Ireland bring 1916 to your web browser with The 1916 Rising: Personalities and Perspectives - an online exhibition.

The exhibition features, studies and analyses over 500 images from the Library’s rich holdings of books, newspapers, photographs, drawings, proclamations and manuscript material. It looks at those who set the stage for the events of Easter Week 1916, the seven signatories of the proclamation, the others executed in the aftermath of the Rising, the casualties and the survivors.

Click here or on the image above to access the exhibition. (It requires Flash Player 7)

British Periodicals Trial

The Library has acquired trial access to Proquest's British Periodicals Databases. You will require a password to access this resource which can be obtained from our Information Desk.

This resource contains digital reproductions of journals dating from the 17th century up to the 1930's and includes articles authored by Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens and George Eliot, to name but a few.

The Collection is divided into Periodicals I (covering mainly literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences) and Periodicals II (covering literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture).

Our trial access is available until March 12th. You can always see what we have on trial on the trial databases section of our website, and we welcome suggestions for new resources from staff or students.

Pathé News Archive

A wonderful digitised video archive of British Pathé's newsreels containing over 3,500 hours of footage, can be viewed free of charge at www.britishpathe.com.

British Pathé began in the 1890s and from 1900 onwards they produced an Irish edition. This searchable digital archive allows you to sift through remarkable footage of seminal moments in history.

You can see footage of things like Queen Victoria visiting Ireland in 1900, O'Connell Street after the 1916 Rising or even Kilkenny losing an all-Ireland final.

Ask About Ireland...

AskAboutIreland.ie is a free open access resource that could be useful for those studying in Education, English, History or Geography.

A couple of areas of particular relevance to St. Pat's are:

Learning Zone - online activities and games for primary school students

Griffith's Valuation - a digitised version of 19th Century land valuations

Excellent articles on Irish history, myth and culture can be found by browsing through the Reading Room - things like Ghost Stories of Dublin, Cúchalainn's wooing of Emer or the Seven Septs of Laois. There's an article on Irish Authors by Dr. Derek Hand from our English Department.

The site is an initiative of public libraries, museums and archives in Ireland to digitally preserve our cultural resources. It was founded in 2008 and resources are still being added to it as they become available in digital form.

The project is managed by An Comhairle Leabharlanna and supported by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government with funding from the Information Society Fund.

Children's Literature Resource

As well as alerting you to subscribed or trial databases, we like to draw your attention to worthwhile open access resources which are available online free of charge.

One we've come across recently is International Children's Digital Library (ICDL), a project of the University of Maryland founded with the Internet Archive.

The ICDL Foundation aims to make "the best in children's literature available online free of charge" and it currently contains 4365 books in 54 languages, all readable not just in full text but with quality scanned images of every page.

The collection can be searched or browsed in various ways - by location, language, year, author or reader age. The books could be used with a projector and there's a teacher training manual with ideas on how to apply the resource in the classroom. There's even an iphone application which allows you to browse and read titles from the ICDL on the move!

Have a look!

Check out Chekhov

This Friday sees the 150th anniversary of the birth of Anton Chekhov. To mark the occasion, at the entrance to the main Library we currently have a display of items written by or about him.

All items displayed are available for loan so why not pick one up and familiarise yourself with one of the true greats of literature and drama.

New E-Books

The following course texts can now be accessed in e-book format as well as in hard copy:

Holy Terror (Eagleton)

Developing Language and Literacy with Young Children (Whitehead)

Developing Thinking and Understanding in Young Children (Robson)

Commonsense Methods for Children with Special Educational Needs (Westwood)

E-book titles are accessed by searching our Catalogue as you would for a print title. Whenever you see an e-book icon and/or "[electronic resource]" after the title, click on the icon or the text link to access the title.

You are required to login to access the online version - students login with their usual username and password; staff should use their novell login.

HCPP Online Trial

We have obtained trial access to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP). The resource requires a password to access it which can be obtained by emailing info.library@spd.dcu.ie.

Over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present are contained in this resource, with supplementary material going back to 1688.

The collection includes pre-Hansard debates, House of Lords and Commons journals as well as reports and papers presented to both Houses. All papers are fully indexed and searchable and high-quality scans of the original printed papers allow users to see accompanying illustrations, statistics and maps.

The trial access is available until February 20.

To see our trial databases at any time check our website. We welcome suggestions from staff or students for any resources that may be relevant.

New Extended Opening Hours

To facilitate students during exam time, the Library will now open for full term-time hours (9am-10pm) on Monday and Tuesday of next week (January 18 and 19).

For the remainder of the week, we will be open for vacation hours (10am-5pm) and the Library will be closed on Saturday, January 23.

To see our updated January opening hours click here.

Women's Literature Database

". . . a little square book bound in red cloth fell from the breast of her leather jacket—her poem The Oak Tree."

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

We have obtained trial access to Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, Cambridge's database on women's writing in the UK through the centuries.

Orlando is a rich resource for anyone with an interest in literature, women's writing, or cultural history more generally. It provides new biographical and critical accounts of the lives and works of its subjects, together with contextual materials relevant to critical and historical readings.

The trial ends on February 11 so have a nose while we have it!

Extended January Opening Hours

We're opening for longer than normal this Friday and Saturday to accommodate those studying for exams. Our weekend hours are:

Friday, Jan 8: 9am - 10pm
Saturday, Jan 9: 10am - 5pm

We wish all in St. Pat's a happy 2010, and of course the best of luck to students doing exams next week!