The HardiBlog

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: Saturday 23rd - Sunday 24th December 2017: 07.00 - midnight Monday 25th - Tuesday 26th December 2017: Closed Wednesday 27th - Sunday 31st December 2017: 07.00 - midnight Monday 1st January 2018: Closed Tuesday 2nd January 2018: 07.00 - midnight Wednesday 3rd January 2018 onwards normal opening hours (07.00 - 02.30) resume  

New Library Management System Important Notice Due to the installation of a new Library Management Sy stem, the following Library services will be unavailable from Friday, 15 December, 1730 until Tuesday, 19 December, 0900:   Library User Accounts Real-time information regarding items on loan or their availability Book circulation via Self Issue and High Use Books machines.  Please note however that you can borrow a book by coming to the Library & IT Service Desk during Library opening hours. Inter-Library Loans Booking of Group Study Rooms Placing of hold requests Online book renewal Online fine payment facilities We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. More information is available here . Should you have any queries, please contact Service Desk -Tel. 091-495777 or Email  servicedesk@nuigalway.ie

There's currently a global problem for Westlaw UK which prevents people from accessing the resource from off-campus. While the issue is being fixed, we have a temporary workaround. Just look for Westlaw in the Library catalogue, and follow the instructions on the page that appears.

James Hardiman Library  invites you to Explore your Archive   Wednesday 22nd November 11:30-13:00  (Bridge Room), Hardiman Research Building Four of NUIG Library Archivists will give a 10-minute talk (see below) and you will have an opportunity to view exhibits and ask questions. Tea/Coffee will be served from 11:30  Please book here Muintir na Tíre Periodical literature – Fiona Kearney Muintir na Tíre is a national voluntary organisation dedicated to promoting the process of community development. The archive consists of material from the foundation of Muintir na Tíre Limited in 1931,the foundation of Muintir na Tíre in 1937 to the end of the 20th century. Sir Peter Freyer - Kieran Hoare Sir Peter Freyer was born on 2 July 1851 and was baptized in the parish church at Ballinakill, Co Galway on 26 July.  He was the eldest of the children of Samuel Freyer, a small landholder of Sellerna, near Cleggan and his ...

Muintir na Tíre have been involved in many initiatives and projects throughout its history. Some of the projects they have been involved in include rural electrification, building of community halls and centres, EEC Pilot Project for the Training of Trainers and The Tidy Towns competition. Further information on the many projects they have been involved in can be found here . Some of the files that I have recently catalogued have dealt with two big initiatives that Muintir na Tíre have been involved in. Both of these initiatives involved community development and empowering the local community to work together. The first initiative is Community Alert which Muintir na Tíre are still involved with today. Muintir na Tíre became involved with Community Crime Prevention back in 1985. The idea of Community Alert was Muintir’s response to a number of vicious attacks on elderly people in 1984 and 1985 in rural Ireland.  Muintir na Tíre worked with An Garda Síochana to establish the co...

The James Hardiman Library is a member of the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) . The OLH's mission is to make scholarly publishing fairer, more accessible, and rigorously preserved for the digital future. It is a charitable organisation dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). The OLH's publishing platform supports academic journals from across the humanities disciplines, as well as hosting its own multidisciplinary journal, Open Library of Humanities. All of OLH's academic articles are subject to rigorous peer review and the scholarship it publishes showcases some of the most dynamic research taking place in the humanities disciplines including: digital humanities film and new media studies history modern languages and cultures philosophy political theory sociology OLH's articles benefit from the latest advances in online journal publishing – with high-quality presenta...

This year’s culture night takes place on the 22 September. Culture night is an annual all-island public event that celebrates culture, creativity and the arts. The James Hardiman Library is holding an evening of talks and an exhibition to celebrate culture. The focus of the talks is on community development with the focus on materials from the Muintir na Tíre collection as well as volumes from the 19 th century printed collections. The James Hardiman Library’s collections hold a rich source of material on local and community studies. In the archives we have collections from The Abbey Theatre, The Gate Theatre, Professor Kevin Boyle, Brendan Duddy, Ritchie-Pickow, Éamon de Buitléar, Tim Robinson and Druid Theatre company to name but a few. The James Hardiman Library has recently acquired the archive of Muintir na Tíre, a national voluntary organisation dedicated to promoting the process of community development. A series of blogs have been written about the work to d...

The library hosted a pleasant hand-over event on 8 September, when members of the extended Colohan family, living in Australia and the UK, visited Special Collections. They were here to present us with a bible that had first left Galway 154 years ago, when it was presented to John Colohan by his father, Professor Nicholas Colohan. John had graduated in Medicine from what was then Queen's College, Galway in 1857. He subsequently took a post as Surgeon General in the British Army. His work took him to various parts of the world including South Africa, before he settled in Australia. His descendant, Seán Colohan, and his family, have now decided that the bible should be kept in the care of the library's Special Collections. They had first visited the University on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of its opening in 1999 and have been back to Galway several times since. Our picture shows Seán with the historic bible. On his right is Monica Crump, our Head of Collections, and to...

In my last blog I wrote about the various stages of work that an archivist does in preparing a collection to make it accessible in the reading room. Having completed the arrangement (almost) I have now started describing the collection. These descriptions will provide researchers with sign posts to what is contained in a file or bound volume. The material I have been cataloguing in the collection so far has been mainly financial records and governance records of Muintir na Tíre. The financial records of Muintir na Tíre contain various ledgers detailing membership, income and expenditure, annual reports and petty cash books. The annual reports of Muintir na Tíre date back as far as 1945. Below is an example of the annual report from 1974. These records provide a great understanding of the financial position of Muintir na Tíre throughout its history.              The ledgers dealing with membership provide us with the details of ...

Programme from opening night, 'Katie Roche', 1936, Abbey Theatre Digital Archive The story of the eponymous young woman of the play,  Katie Roche , is often unbeknown to Irish theatre audiences. Lesser known still is the story of the play’s author, Teresa Deevy. One could be forgiven for confusing the stories of both women, Roche and Deevy – their stories interchangeable where either’s considerable talent and ability were left unfulfilled by demonstrable forces beyond their control. Authority has a habit of getting in the way. Such was the case for both Deevy and her play  Katie Roche . First performed at the Abbey Theatre in March 1936, the play’s opening night review in the  Evening Herald  included the following remarks: “The point of the play, if point there is, is most evasive. It seems to be little more than a clever psychological study of a girl who gives her name to the piece.” This critic who describes Katie as a “complex creature as near to insanit...

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online  is now available. This online resource includes: c.80 old-spelling texts 550 contextual documents 88 essays several hundred high-quality images 100 music scores details of more than 1,300 stage performances cross-linked bibliography of over 7,000 items   The print edition was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online  contains a wealth of additional content, including the recently discovered diary of Jonson's 'Foot Voyage' to Scotland, extra letters written to Jonson, early attempts at a biography, further material relating to the masques and poems and numerous contemporary references to Jonson's works and reputation. This resource can be accessed via the library catalogue or directly via the link here. Collection Development

Fulltext access to every issue of Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom from Volume 1, Issue 1, 1887 onwards is now available. Journal of the Marine Biological Association UK ( JMBA ) is an international journal, publishing original research and reviews on all aspects of marine biology, to support the aims of the MBA . The areas covered by JMBA  include: Marine ecology, behaviour and fisheries Biodiversity and population studies of marine ecosystems, especially potential impacts of global warming, ocean acidification and climate change on ecosystem resilience Physiology, biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology of marine organisms, including microbiology, particularly related to the integrative ecophysiology of marine organisms Taxonomic syntheses, including molecular phylogenies Morphology, life history and developmental biology of marine organisms, especially model systems Chemical and physical oceanography, as directly...