Brian Ború Exhibition

Joining in the nationwide commemorations of the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf and the death of Brian Ború, High King of Ireland, the following treasures from the Library's special collections will be on display alongside other titles of interest until Easter:

• Mac-ghníomhartha Bhriain / Tomás Ó Concheanainn (Conradh na Gaeilge, 1905) 
• Brian Bóirmhe : a shaoghal agus a bheatha / Seán Ua Ceallaigh (Conradh na Gaeilge, 1906) 
• Programme for Kincora by Lady Gregory at the Abbey Theatre (Irish National Theatre Society, 1905) 
• Niamh / Peadar Ua Laoghaire (Muintir na Leabhar Gaedhilge, 1907) 
• A new song for Peggy & Brendan : to the tune of 'Brian Boru's harp' (St. Sepulchre's Press, 1969) 

For many of the items, it is their first time on display and they both welcome and warrant a visit. Look for the table decked in blue and gold in the Library foyer!

Cambridge E-books Trial

We have obtained trial access for one month to Cambridge's complete online collection of e-books.

Cambridge Books Online contains thousands of e-books titles in the humanities, social sciences and education.

Chapters can be downloaded in pdf format and titles are indexed in such a way that they are easily discovered through commonly used search tools such as Google Scholar.

While the trial is live, why not dive straight in to http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ and browse or search your own areas of interest.

If you want to check a particular title or search for a term you can start right away by typing your terms in below:

• 
• Widget Search Keyword
• 

This trial is obtained for the purpose of assessment for any future purchase.  We'd be glad to hear from staff or students about how relevant these collections are to you or your department.

Remember to check our Trial Databases page on our website to see what is currently available in addition to our existing resources.

Chronicling America

History researchers may find the Library of Congress digital collections worth a look, a variety of open access resources offering various types of content covering different aspects of culture and history.

One of particular note is Chronicling America which allows you to search and view over 5.2 million digitised newspaper pages drawn from newspaper titles from 26 US states (3 more are to be added next year).  The collection currently covers 1836-1922.

At first glance we came across an article about Arthur Griffith written by Padraic Colum for the New York Tribune on December 25, 1921 - "The man who taught Erin to find herself".

Have a peek, who knows what you might find!

Mapping Your History

Historical maps are increasingly available in digital format these days but they are often difficult to find, tucked away in various locations on the web.

Old Maps Online is a new portal for web-based historical maps which aims to make that task a whole lot easier.

The interface allows you to browse and search old maps by panning and zooming across a world map.  A search bar and a date slider allow further narrowing of your search.  Alternatively the 'magnifying glass' icon allows you to highlight a particular area on the map (so you can just search for maps available of Ireland, for example).

Whatever search method you use, the results update accordingly in the right sidebar, which provides links to the maps in their hosting site or institution.

At present the maps contained are drawn from five different digital resources:

• A Vision of Britain through Time, Historical Map Library
• British Library, Map Library
• Cartography Associates, the David Rumsey Map Collection
• Moravian Library, Czech Republic
• National Library of Scotland, Maps of Scotland

It was created by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project in University of Portsmouth and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland with funding from JISC and will continue to add further digital map collections through 2012.

Irish History Online

 History students and staff may be interested to check out Irish History Online, an online bibliographic guide to what has been written on Irish History through the centuries.

Hosted by the Royal Irish Academy Library, this open access resource currently contains over 77,000 records relating to books, pamphlets, articles, proceedings and book chapters on all aspects of Irish History.

The resource forms part of a European network of historical bibliographies, currently contributed to by thirteen countries.

There's an ECCO in Here...

The Library has obtained trial access to two excellent research databases from Gale Digital Collections which offer a wealth of resources from the 18th,19th and early 20th centuries.

ECCO - Eighteenth Century Collections Online is an online library of over 136,000 titles and editions (over 155,000 volumes), published between 1701 and 1800. It provides full text searching of more than 26 million pages, giving immediate access to every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during that period, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.

It is a diverse collection, encompassing everything from books to sheet music to advertisements, from collections on the French Revolution to numerous editions of the works of Shakespeare. Multiple editions of individual works are offered to enable scholars to make textual comparisons of the works.

Subject areas provided for include English Literature, History, Geography, French, Philosophy, Sociology and Fine Arts.

Alongside ECCO, there is The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926, also from Gale Digital Collections. This contains fully indexed digitised versions of the Nineteenth Century Legal Treatises and Twentieth Century Legal Treatises collections.  It provides over 10 million pages of legal history from America and Britain, making it the world's most comprehensive full-text collection of Anglo-American legal treatises.

The trial access for both of these databases ends on November 25th so make sure to have a look while they're available!  We'd be glad to receive feedback about them or suggestions for other databases you'd like to try out.

Students and staff of St Patrick's College can access these resources from on or off campus by using the links above or via the Trial Databases page on our website.

St Patrick's Confessio

"My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers" 

Last month saw the launch of the St Patrick's Confessio Hypertext Stack Project (www.confessio.ie), an online representation of the 5th century writings of our patron saint.

This open access resource provides facsimiles, transcriptions, commentaries and translations of the oldest surviving texts written in Ireland in any language.  The manuscripts and printed editions can be viewed in original Latin, English, Irish and other languages.  Contextual material such as Muirchú's Latin Life of Saint Patrick, written 200 years after his death are available, as well as more recent pieces written especially for the project.

The site should be useful for students and researchers in relevant areas but also for those with a more general interest (the About section answers the eternal question "where are the snakes?").

The project was conceived and overseen by Dr Anthony Harvey, editor of the Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources with technical support from the DHO.

Even More From J-STOR

There was good news for scholars recently when our friends from J-STOR kindly opened their vault and made almost 500,000 articles from late 19th and early 20th century publications available free of charge. Better than a poke in the eye, as they say.

This open access content is from a corpus of scholarly articles published in the United States before 1923 and outside the US before 1870. You can see a full list of the free titles here, organised by discipline. Why not have a root around their archives and see what's available in your area? You won't even get dust in your eyes, or if you do you need to clean your keyboard...

 The video below gives a quick tutorial of how to tailor your search:

 You can link to J-STOR from the Databases A-Z on our website.

Get SmART with SmartHistory

SmartHistory (www.smarthistory.org) is an award-winning "web-book" which uses multimedia content - audio, video, images, text - as an alternative to the traditional textbook for students and teachers of art history.

The resource may be of interest to Education students taking the art elective, and it also features contextual discussions and articles concerning different aspects of english, geography, history and philosophy.

Even if you've only a passing interest in art history, it's worth a look to see how well multimedia can be used in an educational capacity.  The interface provides a number of entry points and navigation tools for the various topics, and offers related links depending on which area or era you find yourself delving into.

The site was started in 2005 by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker and has since grown to include contributions from numerous academics in art history - you can see the full list here.  Check it out!

Eneclann Display

We currently have a selection of Eneclann digital publications on display at the entrance to the main library. These titles are in CD-ROM format and contain digitised versions of various 18th, 19th and early 20th century works.

Titles available include:

• 1798 Rebellion, Claimants and Surrenders
• Pigot's Commercial Dictionary
• Slater's Commercial Directory
• Thom's Almanac & Directory
• The Dublin Almanac
• Confederation of Kilkenny
• Census Reports of Co. Dublin and Ireland
• and lots more...

Print editions of many of these titles are also in the Library and all of the CD-Rom versions are available to borrow as main lending items.

Go to Harvard For Free...

We like to point our users to open access resources on the web that might be of use for your study or research. One such recommendation is Academic Earth (academicearth.org), an excellent site containing (mostly) free access to courses and lectures recorded by professors from institutions such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Yale and other colleges.

You can watch an individual video or, if you're feeling ambitious, a full series of lectures on a single course. Topics vary from the philosophy of death to the American novel since 1945.

In total there are over 1,500 video hosted on the site, searchable by subject, university or instructor. Why not have a look to see what they have in your area of study or work? At least it's not hard to sneak out of the lecture halfway through...

New English Literature Articles

43 new articles on different aspects of English literature have been added to Literary Encyclopedia, including 3 by Irish-based authors:

• Anne Enright by Heather Ingman (TCD)
• Maeve Brennan by Dolores McLoughlin (TCD)
• Rawi Hage by Rita Sakr (UCD)

Other new additions include articles on J.M. Coetzee's debut novel Dusklands, Toni Morrison's Beloved and an excellent piece on Antrim poet Samuel Thomson (1766-1816), known as the "Bard of Cangranny" and described by author Jennifer Orr as a figure of "unique significance".

Literary Encyclopedia is an online collection of specially commissioned articles written by university teachers and academics around the world and relating to authors, works and themes of English Literature.

The full list of new articles can be seen here and the database is also accessible via the database A-Z on our website.

Let's Get Politico(.ie)

We now offer access to Politico (http://www.politico.ie), an online resource dealing with politics and current affairs in Ireland from 1968 up to the present day.

As well as daily articles and videos on current issues, the site includes fully searchable archives of magazines such as Magill and The Village which can be accessed from the Magazines or Archive links on the main navigation bar and the search results link to full text digital facsimiles of the original articles.

The resource is available from the links above or via our databases a-z on our website.

If you have any problems, questions or comments about using this resource please let us know at our information desk or by phone/ email at 01-8842170 / info.library@spd.dcu.ie.

An IAR to the Ground...

Irish Archives Resource (www.iar.ie) is a new web portal which allows cross-searching of some noteworthy online archives. The portal harvests content from 16 prominent repositories with material ranging from the 17th Century up to the present.

The searchable records and objects include contents of 11 County and 3 City archives as well as the Guinness Archive, Irish Film Archive and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

You can limit your search either to a single repository or to 'Collection Types' with options including Literary Papers, Theatre, Folklore, Trade Unions and Archives of Private Clubs and Societies.

The project was part-funded by the Heritage council and should be useful to researchers in a wide range of areas.

British State Prayers Project

Staff or students in Religion and History departments may be interested in a project being undertaken by researchers in Durham and Reading Universities involving a study of British state prayers and holy-days from the 1540s to the 1940s. Their work includes analysis of how the occasions were marked in Ireland and will explore their wider significance for politics, religion and culture over the four centuries. The website notes of the occasions that they "commanded considerable popular reverence but...could also be a focus for expressions of religious and political dissent".

The researchers are also studying the publication of the prayers and texts through the period including those published by the royal printers for the Church of Ireland before disestablishment.

The project will result in a book considering the significance of these occasions, typically summoned by the ruling monarch or government of the time, and their effect on all aspects of culture in Britain and Ireland. In addition, they will produce an authoritative edition of the original printed forms of the prayers and related texts.

JFK Online Archive

Scholars of American history (or anyone with a passing interest) may be interested in a new open access digital resource launched yesterday by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

The online archive of the 35th American president provides immediate access to hundreds of thousands of digital files such as documents, speeches, phone conversations and photographs.

A quick browse found an audio clip of JFK at Dublin Castle during his visit here in 1963, speaking about the importance of education to democracy and paying tribute to Ireland's educational heritage.

See an article in today's Irish Times about the resource here or go straight to the archive itself here.

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.

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.

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!

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.