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.

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...

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.

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.

NCE Access Restored

The New Catholic Encyclopedia online is now available again from our website. Once you are in the Gale Cengage site simpy click on 'Religion' to see the direct link to this e-book.

Update: The link has now been changed to go directly to the NCE Index page

New E-book

Students and staff of St. Patrick's College now have access to the New Catholic Encyclopedia in e-book format through the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

The Encyclopedia is prized for its scholarly presentation of persons and subjects related to Catholicism and the humanities. This 15 volume, second edition features revised and new articles. Among the 12,000 entries in the encyclopedia are articles on theology, philosophy, history, literary figures, saints, musicians and much more.

It is accessed simply by clicking here.
Happy browsing!