The HardiBlog

An Scríbhneoireacht Acadúil agus an Dátheangachas De bharr stádas mionlaithe na teanga, bíonn deacrachtaí le sárú ag duine ar bith a théann i mbun pinn sa Ghaeilge, cuma más cainteoir dúchais nó ‘nuachainteoir’ atá i gceist. Ach ainneoin na bhfadhbanna áirithe a bhaineann tuisle asainn ar fad, tuganntaighde shochtheangeolaíochta le fios gur buntáiste is ea an dátheangachas agus gur minic a bhíonn cumas cognaíoch níos airde ag an té a bhfuil dhá theanga ar a thoil aige. Sa cheardlann idirghníomhach seo, tabharfar aghaidh ar na príomhdheacrachtaí a bhíonn ag cuairteoirí ag an Ionad Scríbhneoireachta Acadúla. Ach, thairis sin, féachfar ar na bealaí ar féidir leas a bhaint as an gcumas dátheangach chun argóintí snoite a chur in iúl agus guth acadúil sainiúil a fhorbairt. Academic Writing and Bilingualism (For Irish/English Speakers) Due to the minority status of the language, writing in Irish entails various challenges for both native and non-native speakers. Yet despite t...

Find quality information for your projects & assignments Attend a workshop in the Library Tuesday, January 27th 19:30 - 20:30 Book you place here: http://www.eventbrite.ie/e/finding-quality-information-for-your-projects-assignments-tickets-15375064231

The Library is pleased to announce that from Monday 26th January 2015 all Inter Library Loans materials will be available for collection, and return, at the Library & IT Service Desk. This will extend the hours for Inter-Library Loan (ILL) collection from office hours, 9-5, to full Library opening hours. If you have a query relating to your ILL loans please continue to contact the ILL Office as usual at ill@nuigalway.ie or ext. 2541. Best wishes, Inter-Library Loans NUI Galway

Thursday January 29th 12-1pm Book a Place Monday February 2nd 730-830pm Book a Place Wednesday February 11th 4-5pm Book a Place Wednesday February 18th 1-2pm Book a Place All sessions held in the Library Training Room Check out all our Law Library Sessions this semester... Event Description: A session to help students find relevant journal sources for their extended law essays. Aimed primarily at Undergraduates. Not subject specific enough for LLM in Human Rights students. Event objective: Learn how to efficiently find: •Irish, UK, European and International Law Journals. Other secondary sources such as: •Law Reform Commission Reports. •Newspapers Book place

This Monday Jan. 26th we offer an introduction to using the library's search and discovery tools to find the books and journals you need for your study and assignments. This is aimed specifically at Mature Students, although all students are welcome. Sign up at: http://www.eventbrite.ie/e/finding-books-and-journals-mature-students-tickets-15420531224 or make your way to the Library Training Room on the ground floor for the 7.30pm start.

Here at the NUI Galway Library, we are further embracing digital initiatives by promoting academic partnerships, while also providing services for NUI Galway’s digital outputs and holdings. Our main aims are to enhance digital offerings to students, the teaching and learning community, and researchers. We believe this will build on our proud history of creating, providing support for, and promoting publications, research data, institutional data, archives, open access to research, and identifiers.  Over the next two years many of these digital programmes and services will be brought into operation. A summary of proposed initiatives and services are: Digital publications NUI Galway's open access repository of research publications collects, preserves, and makes freely available scholarly communication, including peer-reviewed articles, working papers and conference papers created by NUI Galway researchers. ARAN widens your research reach, discovery, citations, and the...

The Library now has access to a new Spanish e-book collection, EEO Edición Española Online. This collection contains 679 e-book titles primarily from the subject areas of Spanish language, literature, social sciences and history. Titles are from selected Spanish scholarly publishers. The e-book collection can be searched as a whole but there are also individual catalogue records available for each title.  Access to EEO Edición Española Online is available on the library catalogue via the library website.

The Special Collections Lunchtime Lectures Series 2014-2015 will continue on Wednesday Feb. 4th with "Bodies of knowledge : the early days of anatomy in Galway" by Alexander Black, Anatomy, School of Medicine. Anatomy was one of the founding departments of Queen's College Galway and was viewed at the time as a rather distasteful, if necessary, field of study, yet to be completely separated from its sibling discipline physiology. Anatomy is a visual and tactile subject, and perhaps relies on images and illustrations more than any other academic discipline.  This talk will cover the early days of anatomy in Galway, and will illustrate the importance of anatomy to society, society to anatomy, and medical imaging to medicine. A selection of anatomy material from the Old Library Collection will be on display during the talk, and all are welcome to the G011 Seminar Room in the Hardiman Building at 1pm. The accompanying "Art of the Unseen" exhibition of ...

Mobile technologies are becoming a standard teaching tool in the classroom. However, as an ever-growing range of devices and apps come on stream, many teachers are struggling with a technological skills gap. To help combat this gap, NUI Galway’s School of Education, will host the First International Conference on Mobile Technology in Initial Teacher Education (MiTE) on Friday and Saturday, 23 and 24 January, in the Galway Bay Hotel, Salthill. The two-day conference will celebrate the possibilities and explore the challenges of integrating mobile technology in teacher education and provide a forum for practitioners to come together to benchmark and share best practice. Speakers include experts in the field of mobile technology including representatives from CalStateTEACH, California State University, Apple, Google and national and international education institutions. Punya Mishra, Professor of Educational Technology and Director of the Master of Arts in Educational Technol...

All undergraduate students are invited to try their hand in the AWC Annual Writing Competition. Lecturers please promote to your students. The winner's essay will be published in the Sin newspaper and on the library website. He or she will also receive an iPAD. Other entrants will get feedback on their work. Further details: http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/awc/academicwritingcompetition/ Academic Writing Centre Services We offer free one-on-one tutorials on all aspects of academic writing. We can help you to get rid of grammatical errors and find a better way to express and organise your ideas. If you are blocked, we can help you to start writing. We can show you how to use secondary sources correctly and effectively Opening hours: 11-1 and 6-9 daily (except weekends and Friday nights) Irish-language service: 6-8 on Mondays and Tuesdays. DROP-IN TO THE AWC, AND LET US HELP YOU.

Aisling Keane Aisling Keane - Digital Archivist Aisling is the Digital Archivist at NUI Galway, and has worked in the James Hardiman Library since 2012.  Before that, she worked in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and in Met Eireann. Aisling is currently involved in the Abbey Theatre Archive Digitisation project, being a 4-year collaboration between the two institutions, in which NUI Galway is digitising and providing on-campus access to the rich archive of the Abbey Theatre.  The collection pre-dates the theatre’s foundation in 1904, with material from its predecessor, the Irish Literary Theatre included.  Programmes, scripts, set and costume designs, posters, as well as comprehensive financial and administrative records are all included in this archive.  The aim of the digital project is to expedite researchers’ engagement with the archive, meaning a keyword search for a particular production can open up all the records relating to that producti...

The Library is running a whole host of training events this semester. These sessions cross the spectrum of research and Library resources. Sessions include: Getting Published and Making an Impact (for researchers) Finding Information for Your Assignments (for students) Endnote  Using Microfiche Official Publications Using SFX to find fulltext content These are run during the day with many also taking place in the evening as part of our Ask the Librarian service. Some are restricted to certain modules or aimed at particular subject areas So take some time to check out what is available  and if you like what you see please book a place or recommend the sessions to your students.  Remember sessions are always being added so it is advisable to regularly check our  calendar and library blog .

The Library has recently subscribed to a number of new resources in the areas of theatre and popular culture, personal writing and social work. British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture This collection features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. North American Theatre Online  This is a comprehensive reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American It is the largest reference initiative ever undertaken in this subject area, a major reference tool containing tens of thousands of pages of key, in-copyright reference works available electronically for the first time. British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This online collection spans more than 400 years of personal writings of women from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.   Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work   This resource provides social work st...

                                      We can help you! Come to a training session in the Library. Topics covered will be: Finding books and journals Understanding your Reading List Searching for information by topic General database searching using JSTOR, ScienceDirect and Nexis Venue : James Hardiman Library Training Room Date : Wednesday 21 January 2014 Time: 19:30 Duration: 1 hour Feel free to drop in or Register here   

Tim Robinson In 2014, the social cartographer and writer Tim Robinson generously donated his archive to the James Hardiman Library.  This beautiful collection includes a comprehensive index of the town-lands of Connemara and the Aran Islands, several hundred maps, and almost 80 boxes of manuscript material.  Compiled over several years of walks through the landscapes of Connemara and the Aran Islands, the town-lands index records the geological, historical, and ecclesiastical features of each town-land.  It also notes local stories, legends, and anecdotes, and credits the local people who have given him the information.  A line can be traced between this index and Robinson’s maps, with many of the features that are described, plotted.  Tim’s papers, documenting his research, writings, and engagement with the local community, form a substantial part of the collection.  To celebrate this remarkable archive, a new book entitled Connemara and Elsewhe...

The Professor Kevin Boyle archive was formally launched at the Hardiman Library on 28 November 2014, by the Attorney General, Máire Whelan, S.C. The archive, kindly donated by the Boyle family since Kevin’s untimely passing in 2010, has now been catalogued by the University’s James Hardiman Library, and represents a major resource for the study and teaching of law and human rights. The Keynote speaker at the international symposium, ‘The Human Rights Scholar-Activist or Activist-Scholar?’ hosted by NUI Galway’s School of Law and the Irish Centre for Human Rights, was Professor Sir Nigel Rodley, Chair of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. In his keynote address he said of Kevin Boyle: “His involvement in resisting discrimination on grounds of religion during the early part of the troubles must have been the defining period of his life….He was scholar and activist and advocate; the dimensions were intricately connected.” Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, speaki...

As part of the Galway Music Residency Programme, a performance by the Contempo String Quartet will take place in the foyer of the Library at 1.00pm,Wednesday 21st January. The performance will include both contemporary and classical music from Egypt to Argentina.   All Welcome!

Dr. Niall O'Dochartaigh, Prof. Jim Browne, President, NUI Galway and Brendan Duddy Throughout over twenty years of violent conflict in Northern Ireland a secret channel of communication linked the IRA to the highest levels of the British government. At the heart of this channel was a single intermediary, Brendan Duddy. His house was the venue for secret negotiations between the British Government and the IRA throughout 1975. He managed the intense negotiations over the Republican hunger strikes in which ten men died (1980-1981) and he was at the heart of the contacts (1991-1993) that culminated in a secret offer of a ceasefire that was a precursor to the public IRA ceasefire of 1994. Deposited at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, the archive of Brendan Duddy provide a unique insight into this channel from the perspective of an individual who operated at the intersection of the two sides.  The papers include coded diaries of contact kept by Duddy throughout 1975 and early...

The AWC is now open. We offer free one-on-one tutorials on all aspects of academic writing. We can help you to get rid of grammatical errors and find a better way to express and organise your ideas. If you are blocked, we can help you to start writing. We can show you how to use secondary sources correctly and effectively ALL WELCOME Past users of the AWC include mature students, undergraduates, international students, Access students, and PhD students of various disciplines. Opening hours: 11-1 and 6-9 daily (except weekends and Friday nights) Irish-language service: 6-8 on Mondays and Tuesdays. DROP-IN TO THE AWC, AND LET US HELP YOU. All undergraduate students are invited to try their hand in the AWC Annual Writing Competition. The winner's essay will be published in the Sin newspaper and on the library website. He or she will also receive an I-Pad. Other entrants will get feedback on their work. Further details: http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/awc/acade...

Since 2010 our copyright license allows us to scan library material for use on Blackboard. Typically we can scan book chapters or journal articles with restrictions on the amounts that can be digitised. All instructors and teaching assistants with access to Blackboard can avail of the service. Please read on for more details. We can scan up to 5% of any library book (or a single chapter, whichever comes first) and make it available on specific Blackboard courses in high-quality, searchable PDF format. The service also applies to articles from print journals in the library - a single article or 5% of the issue. We can upload as many different chapters to your Blackboard course as you like - as long as no two chapters come from the same book. This all follows on from the library's Reading List Support Service . Every year, instructors are invited to submit the reading list for their course so that staff can check the availability of course material in the library. ...

Tim Robinson Late 2014 brought the exciting news that the exceptional writer and cartographer, Tim Robinson, would deposit his archive with the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway. Encapsulating a lifetime of work committed to documenting the Irish landscape and in particular the regions of Connemara and the Burren and also the Aran Islands, the Tim Robinson archive is an incredible insight and record of how the landscape has been studied, mapped and documented and now this archive will be catalogued and made accessible for research at the Hardiman Library. To celebrate this archive, a new book entitled  Connemara and Elsewhere , edited by Prof. Jane Conroy, was published by the Royal Irish Academy in association with NUI Galway. Also, Vincent Woods, host of RTE Radio's  Arts Tonight  series, visited the Hardiman Library to view and explore the archive as well as visit and interview Tim Robinson himself at his home in Roundstone, Co. Galway. You can listen back to the  ...

A great piece exploring the riches of the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway was aired on "Dúiche", programme, TG4 recently. "Duiche" presented by Síle Nic Chonaonaigh, features in-depth interviews with Hardiman Library Archivist Aisling Keane and Marianne Ní Chinnéide, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway, showcasing the scale and scope of the digitisation project and also its implications for teaching, research and learning at NUI Galway. With over one million items of multi-format material available at NUI Galway when the project is completed, it comprises one of the world's greatest theatre, literary and social history collections. You can watch the programme at the following link with the segment on the Abbey Theatre Archive beginning in the second-half of the programme at c. 11.30 minutes in. http://www.tg4.tv/play.php?pid=3990732475001&title=D%C3%BAiche&series=D%C3%BAiche For more on the Abbey Thea...

“Oxford Bibliographies: the ‘Anti-Google’? ” — The Chronicle of Higher Education "As a discipline grounded in social theory and the improvement of peoples’ lives, social work scholarship necessarily shifts and changes along with society, which leads, in turn, to an ever-growing body of literature. Scholars and professionals must keep abreast of new discoveries, interpretations, and theories in the field, and thus require access to the most recent developments. With  Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work, students and researchers will have a reliable and up-to-date place to start their research. Unlike traditional bibliographies and the online abstracting & indexing services,  Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work provides a much-needed filter to the avalanche of scholarly information now available." - extract from the website. Click here for access    

A multi-part online collection of over 1,000 hours of training videos, re-enactments and footage of actual therapy sessions. Click here for access!

Welcome to all the Students who have recently arrived in Galway. I'm afraid there's not much we can do about the weather, but come in out of the rain and let us show you around the Library.   To help you find your way around the Library and the Library's services, we are running Getting Started in the Library training sessions every day this week. This is essential training for all students - in just 30 minutes you will learn how to find your way around the Library, what services are available and how to find the books you need in the Library.  You will be shown how to search the library's catalogue to find out if the library has the books or journals you need.  You'll also be given a short tour of the library, so that you can learn how to find the books on the shelves. No booking required - this is a drop in session.  This training will be held in the Library Training Room on the ground floor of the Library at the follo...

Access to British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries is now available from the library website . This online collection spans more than 400 years of personal writings of women from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.   This edition of the collection includes approximately 90,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from 1500 to 1900, including several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from 290 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous. For further information click here .                    

What academic skills do you think first year students need for success at University?  Do you know of the supports available in NUI Galway to help students develop those skills?   There is an opinion widely held, that students entering third level education from secondary school are not well prepared for the needs of higher education and do not have the core academic skills they need.   The provision of support for academic skills development is recognised as a key factor in student engagement and retention, particularly in first year.   NUI Galway has a range of different services that provide support for these academic skills, e.g. : ·           Skills4Study Campus (online module available via The Learning Centre in Blackboard) ·          The Academic Writing Centre ·          SUMS: Mathematics drop-in support centre ·  ...

Access is now available to British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture (part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online) via  www.library.nuigalway.ie . This collection features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. These rare documents, many of them never before available, were sourced from the British Library and other renowned institutions, and curated by experts in British arts history. Covering more than a century, British Theatre, Music, and Literature is without equal as a resource for 19th century scholars. This unparalleled collection provides a detailed look at the state of the British art world with, for example, not only manuscripts and compositions, but also documents such as personal letters, annotated programs, meeting minutes, and financial records, offering scholars an unmatched glimpse into the inner workings of the arts world and life in Victor...

Access to North American Theatre Online is now available via the library website . North American Theatre Online is a comprehensive reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre. It includes some 40,000 pages of major reference materials, together with records to approximately 30,000 plays, 57,000 people, 5,400 theatres, 22,000 productions, and 2,500 production companies. Each year more than 20,000 new records will be added. The collection also includes approximately 10,500 images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources. Further information is available here.

Update: 16/1/15 This issue has been resolved. -------------------------------------------------- ISS has published the following bulletin : Issue with Notifications on Blackboard When users try to view Alerts in My Blackboard, there are no details being shown. There will be a badge indicating there are updates, and there are courses that show as having updates, but when clicking on the course to view the actual updates, no content is loaded. If all of the courses with updates have a problem, there will be a message that states nothing requires your attention. This has been confirmed by Blackboard as a known issue. Blackboard is working on a solution but there is no estimated date for when it will be resolved.

EndNote training for Business and Economics students will take place in the James Hardiman Library Training Room 17th February, 1930 -  2100 To book please go to http://www.eventbrite.com/o/james-hardiman-library-378278543 This training sessions is based on the 'Introduction to EndNote X7' guide which is available on the Library website at http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/media/jameshardimanlibrary/content/documents/endnote/EndNote_X7_IntroWord2007.pdf The sessions cover how to manage references using EndNote and how to use the 'cite while you write' feature. It is important that you are already familiar with searching databases (e.g. Business Source Complete) before doing this workshop. Trainer:  Trish Finnan, Subject Librarian, Business and Economics. Email: trish.finnan@nuigalway.ie Tel: 00 353 91 493564 (direct line)

Attend a brief training session in the Library.  Learn how to search the Library catalogue to find  books, journal articles and other information sources. Monday - Friday at 11.00, 2.00 and 7.30 Saturday 11.30 No booking required, just drop in to the Library Training Room

Risk of some temporary interruption to journal access Sadly, Swets, the company who have supplied many of our journals (print and electronic) for the last 15 years have entered into administration. We are currently in the process of transitioning our subscriptions to a new company, and during that time we may experience some loss of access to e-journals or interruption in the supply of print journals. Please note that the vast majority of our e-journals are provided to us via IReL and these are unaffected. If you notice a loss of access to a journal that the library catalogue indicates we should have access to, please let us know by logging a ticket at http://servicedesk.nuigalway.ie . Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this causes.

Bulletin update published by ISS: Updated as of 17:30 on Wednesday 7th January 2015: Some students cannot access their student email account this afternoon. Impacted students had two passwords – one password for their campus account (Blackboard) and a different password for their student email account. The change implemented today, replaced a student’s email password with their Campus Account (Blackboard) password. If you cannot access your student email account, please ensure you are using your Campus Account (Blackboard) password to log in to your student email account. If you have forgotten your Campus Account password, you can reset your password using CASS - https://cass.nuigalway.ie . Should you experience any further difficulties, please contact the Service Desk (Tel. x5777 Email servicedesk@nuigalway.ie