Thursday, February 25, 2010

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.

Monday, February 22, 2010

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 In November 2008 the Centre closed when Government funding for the organisation was withdrawn.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

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.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

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!

Monday, February 15, 2010

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)

Friday, February 12, 2010

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.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

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.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

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!