The HardiBlog

   Tuesday 10th January 2017, 1000-1200 G010 Hardiman Research Building All new staff (academic, research, administrative and technical) at NUI Galway are invited to attend this Library Induction event. For catering purposes please book Programme 1000               Welcome 1005               Library & IT Service Desk 1010               Academic Skills 1015               Academic Writing Centre 1020                Reading List Management System 1040                                       Tea/ Coffee 1100               Special Collections & Archives 1110               Research Support 1120               Digital Scholarship 1130               Open Access Publishing 1140                MakerSpace 1150               Q&A 1155               T our of the Library and Archives

  30,000 e-books added to the catalogue The James Hardiman Library has added nearly 30,000 e-book records to the catalogue under an initiative called Demand Driven Acquisition.   These e-books are discoverable in the catalogue and comprise of scholarly works published in the last three years across all subject areas that are relevant to NUI Galway.   While the books are fully accessible to users, the Library won't pay for these e-books unless they are used! A purchase is ‘triggered’ only when one of the books is used for more than 5 minutes, or part of a book is downloaded or printed. We hope that this will really open up access to the material you need, without us buying what we’re not sure you will use.  It gives you a role in selecting material to be added to the library's collection.  

NUI Galway wins CONUL Annual National Teaching and Learning Award for 2016 Congratulation to Barry Houlihan, James Hardiman Library, Paul Flynn, School of Education and CELT for winning the 2016 CONUL Teaching & Learning Award for their Explore project - ‘ Breaking the SEAL’ – Student Engagement with Archives through Learning. The project received a glowing citation from the award judges with particular points highlighting the innovation in breaking down barriers to academia, from third to second level, the focus on critical thinking and learning, digital literacy innovation and partnership between the Library, School of Education and also the community of schools involved. The prize fund of €1000 will be used to expand the project to additional schools, along with presenting at next year’s CONUL conference and an opportunity to publish findings of the project in the Journal of Information Literacy . Barry and Paul would like to thank Mary Fleming, Scho

On  Tuesday 17th January 2017 ,  we will continue our  series of lunchtime brown - bag events   to focus on   Duanaire, A Treasury of Digital Data for Irish Economic History .  Duanaire   is the work of Dr Aidan Kane and his team.  This innovate project  has  unearth ed  a wealth of Irish fiscal history data  and made it  accessible online in a range of form ats . At its core are the detailed accounts of revenues and expenditures  from  the  Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland  throughout the 1700s. These remarkably sophisticated and consistent accounts give unique insights into the evolution of the Irish economy and the press of political and military events during this fascinating period. Dr Kane   has assembled  a unique infrastructure for the imaginative curation, exploration and sharing of significant tranches of Irish economic history data. Its construction grew from collaboration between Dr Kane and his team with Moore Institute, Digital Techno

Christmas has inspired personal stories and writings for so many of Ireland's writers. From playwrights to novelists, the story of Christmas and what it means, in comedy and tragedy, for so many has resulted in great works, many of which are within the Archives of the Hardiman Library here at NUI Galway. Draft of story,  Christmas , by John McGahern The writer John McGahern explored this particular time of year in one of his short stories. How that story even came to be is a story in itself.  Christmas  is the story of the young boy deposited to a family at Christmas time from an orphanage. He rejects a gift he is given, that of a toy aeroplane and this act forms the centre of McGahern's attention in the drafting of the story. The McGahern Archive contains numerous drafts of the story which was first published in the  Irish Press  in 1968. Numerous titles range from  Santa Claus ,  A Gift for Himself ,  The Aeroplane , before finally being published as  Christmas  in t

Season's greetings to all from the Library Staff If you are planning on studying over the festive period the Library Reading Room at basement level will be open as follows: Monday 19th - Saturday 24th December 2016: 07.00 - midnight Sunday 25th - Monday 26th December 2016:   Closed Tuesday 27th - Saturday 31st December 2016:   07.00 - midnight Sunday 1st January - Monday 2nd January 2017: Closed Tuesday 3rd January 2017 onwards normal opening hours (07.00 - 02.30) resume

Library Christmas/New Year Opening Hours Friday 16th December 2016 - Sunday 8th January 2017     Fri 16th Dec:   08.30 - 17.30     Sat 17th Dec  / Sun 18th Dec:   Closed   Mon 19th Dec - Thurs 22nd Dec:   08.30-17.30   Friday 23rd Dec - Monday 2nd Jan: Closed   Tues 3rd Jan - Friday 6th Jan: 08.30-17.30   Sat 7th Jan / Sun 8th Jan: Closed     Normal Opening Hours will resume on Monday 9th January 2017   Please note that the Library Reading Room, at basement level, is open over the Christmas/New Year period, please see related blog post for full details 

This post continues the theme of Library Ireland Week, 'Empowering Through Online Access'. One of the services the Library provides to improve your online experience is the bX Article Recommender. bX is a very effective way to help you discover other articles that you might find useful in your research. How Does It work? Think of it like using a shopping site such as Amazon - when you look for an item, you often find some information on the page saying 'People who viewed this item also viewed these similar items'. There you'll see a list of items similar to the one you're looking at. bX works the same way; taking information from institutions across the globe, bX makes recommendations based on the article you're linking to. So essentially bX is a list of articles that other users around the world viewed in addition to the one that you're linking to. It's a great way to discover more information on a topic that you mightn't have been a

The James Hardiman Library at National University of Ireland, Galway, hosted a seminar on Tuesday 4 October which told the story of the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive, created by one of the largest theatre archive digitisation projects undertaken worldwide. It reflected on challenges faced, lessons learned, new opportunities and impact on academic mission, library and archives. All talks have been recorded with audio podcasts available at the following link: https://digital.library.nuigalway.ie/islandora/object/nuigalway%3Aabbeydigitalseminar  Slides from many of the presentations are available here: http://library.nuigalway.ie/about/events/past/digitisingtheabbeytheatrearchive/ PROGRAMME 1100    Welcome and Introduction (John Cox, University Librarian, NUI Galway) 1110    A brief history of the Abbey Theatre archive (Mairéad Delaney, Archivist, Abbey Theatre) 1140    Digitising the archive (Martin Bradley, Archives Consultant, and Aisling Keane, Digital Archivist, N

On Tuesday 17th January ,  we will continue our series of lunchtime brown - bag events to focus on Duanaire, A Treasury of Digital Data for Irish Economic History .  Duanaire is the work of Dr Aidan Kane and his team. This innovate project has unearth ed a wealth of Irish fiscal history data and made it accessible online in a range of form ats . At its core are the detailed accounts of revenues and expenditures from the Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland throughout the 1700s. These remarkably sophisticated and consistent accounts give unique insights into the evolution of the Irish economy and the press of political and military events during this fascinating period. Dr Kane has assembled a unique infrastructure for the imaginative curation, exploration and sharing of significant tranches of Irish economic history data. Its construction grew from collaboration between Dr Kane and his team with Moore Institute, Digital Technologist David Kel