In summer 2016 we carried out a Stocktake of print journal holdings in all Closed Access locations with a view to identifying volumes that could be discarded. Snipe Avenue provides valuable physical storage space and it is essential that we ensure it is being used optimally. To find out what print journals were available electronically, both secure and less secure, we did a painstaking overlap analysis with e-holdings for all our journal titles. Volumes that did not belong to the Print Journal Archive title list and identified as being securely available electronically were discarded from OSS, Floor 1 and Floor 2. By doing this space was freed up in our Off site store so we could move what was electronically but not securely available over to our Off site store from Floor 1 and Floor 2. Finally we were able merge our journals from floor 2 and floor 1 together on Floor 1. We were able to transform the space made on Floor 2 into student study space. The next part of the project will be to stocktake the rest of Floor 1 and the Law Collection with a view to moving more stock to Offsite, more discards and eventually merge all library journals together on Floor1! Deciding what to include and exclude from the project, staffing issues, space issues, physical labour needed and keeping the momentum going at very busy times of the year were some of the challenges faced. Being able to clear the library of duplicate and unnecessary material, working with excellent staff, the amount of assistance received from other teams within the library and the lovely space we have created on Floor 2 were the most rewarding aspects of the project. My talk will go through all my experiences and what I learned from the project!
Presenter Biography:
Sonia Freaney
Sonia works as the Collection Management Librarian in NUI, Galway and as a Cataloguer. Previous to this she worked as a full time Cataloguer as well as a couple of short stints as Subject Librarian!
This poster will outline the processes involved in implementing Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA), a licensing model that differs from the Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA) model in that the library can make the final purchase decision based on usage. EBA provides access to a pre-agreed collection and added titles during the access period (typically 6-12 months). The library then reviews usage data to determine which titles to retain in perpetuity.
This 6-month pilot will influence collection development, acquisition, resource description, outreach, information services, e-resource collections, inter-library loans, information literacy and academic engagement. This model is relatively recent to Ireland, which could create further opportunities.
Presenter Biographies:
Yvette Campbell
Yvette Campbell holds a BA (Hons) in Medieval Irish & Celtic Studies and English from Maynooth University and a MLIS in Library and Information Studies from UCD. She has been working with specialist library collections in a number of institutions over the last seven years in activities involving rare books management and archival preservation. She was appointed Assistant Librarian, General Collections & Finance at Maynooth University in 2016 with responsibility for Collection Management and Resource Description. She has previously worked in the National Library of Ireland and as Assistant Librarian for The Redemptorists before moving to the Houses of the Oireachtas Library and Research Service as Special Collections Cataloguer. She is a representative of the LAI’s Cataloguing and Metadata Group Committee and was the recipient of the 2017 A&SL best poster award. Yvette’s main professional interests lie in the areas of unique and distinctive collections, book history and resource description.
Eliška Komárková
Marie G. Cullen
Marie is an Assistant Librarian at Maynooth University Library since 2008. She has also worked in the Mercer Library at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). A member of the Academic & Special Libraries Section (A&SL) Committee since 2009, Marie is the current chairperson and was Hon. Secretary from June 2011 to July 2014. She was awarded Associateship of the LAI in March 2013. She has presented at a number of conferences and has co-authored articles which have been published in An Leabharlann. The Irish Library and Sconul Focus. These are available at http://eprints.nuim.ie/. Professional interests include: continuing professional development, the role of new technologies and social media in libraries and information literacy training and development. @CullenMarieG
In response to calls from information professionals in Ireland and beyond, the Western Regional Section of the Library Association of Ireland (WRSLAI) ran the Rudaí23 online CPD course for a second time in 2017/18 (rudai.blogspot.com).For this iteration of Rudaí23, WRSLAI redesigned the standard linear 23Things format, established in the US in 2006, into four themed areas:
This afforded WRSLAI, supported by the Library Association of Ireland, an opportunity to award an Open Digital Badge to participants upon completion of an individual section. A fifth badge, CPD Champion, is awarded for full course completion. Open Digital Badges are an innovation for online learning that provide a validated proof and recognition of learning and skills achieved. They are in keeping with the ethos of 23Things courses; open, free and exploring emerging technology. The introduction of Open Digital Badges is an innovation in Library CPD and was endorsed by the Library Association of Ireland as a means for course accreditation. This presentation will report on the experience of offering Open Digital Badges in Rudaí23 for developing the digital skillset of our library workforce. Did the badges transform how we as the teachers offered feedback? Did badges change how the learner charted their progress through the course? Open Digital Badges have potential to be used widely in online CPD and this paper will present the practical information necessary to begin implementing them in libraries.
Michelle Breen
Michelle Breen is an assistant librarian at the University of Limerick. Michelle managed the Visual Communicator badge in Rudaí23 and is interested in the use of technology in libraries, including CPD. In her current role at the University of Limerick Michelle manages the digital communications for the Glucksman Library and is involved in a range of inter-departmental projects in the areas of assessment, quality and user experience.
Kris Meen
Kris Meen has been in his current role in NUI Galway since 2015. He has also worked at the Suna Kıraç Library, Koç University in Istanbul, and the Library and Knowledge Centre at Industry Canada, Ottawa, since qualifying for his MLIS in 2010 at the University of Western Ontario.
Stephanie Ronan
Stephanie Ronan is an information professional, providing the library services to the Marine Institute in Galway. As a solo librarian, she manages all aspects of the library including the institutional repository and is quickly becoming a marine information expert. She is Chairperson for the WRSLAI, collaborator on Rudaí23, communications officer for IAMSLIC and a founding member of the Repository Network Ireland.
Due to legacy issues the layout of library floors means locating material on the shelves is not intuitive, and this in turn leads to a large number of directional queries at information desks. Opening beyond service desk hours means that for the library to be truly self-service, users need to be able to locate material easily and independently. StackMap was identified as a possible solution to this problem, as this product is embedded into the library catalogue and essentially links the shelf-mark on the catalogue record to the location on the shelves. This poster will describe the steps taken in the implementation of this product. It will emphasise the importance of the planning phase, as each aisle on each floor had to be numbered and labelled to determine the ranges into which the floor area was divided. Decisions that were made on how best to collect the data to capture all sequences, and how it should be edited to ensure future proofing and best practice will be shown. This project has forced us to think of the arrangement of stock from the user’s perspective. While it is yet too soon to gauge its impact, it none the less enhances self-service in the library, transforming the retrieval of material for users by connecting the shelf-mark on the catalogue to the shelves. Making it easier to locate and retrieve material. This undoubtedly creates a better experience for our users.
Presenter Biographies:
Vanessa Buckley
Vanessa Buckley is currently responsible for the management of Floor Services in UCD Library; ensuring material is readily available for users. She has previously worked in UCD’s Health Sciences & Veterinary Medicine libraries and in Special Collections.
Debra McCann
Debra McCann has been a team leader in the provision of front of house services in an academic library for a number of years. One of her primary objectives is to ensure students became confident users of library services and resources. She is also interested in the student experience and in how they use our Library services. These interests are brought together in the project described here.
Research and academic libraries continue to evolve through innovative and creative approaches to user engagement, technology and service delivery. Unique and distinctive collections in particular can provide us with new and exciting opportunities to engage with different audiences and enhance the overall user experience. Our poster aims to explore how our Special Collections & Archives have harnessed the potential of unique and distinctive collections through outreach, digitization, transformative space management and curriculum support, in line with our strategic plan. This approach has led to a significant increase in visitor numbers of up to 83% to our Special Collections & Archives.
Presenter Biography:
Emma Doran
Emma Doran is a Special Collections & Archives Library Assistant at Maynooth University Library and a 2016 graduate of the MLIS at University College Dublin. She published her first poster and placed first in the 2017 LAI/CILIP Conference. Emma is also a committee member of the Information Professionals Network, the Students and Library Information Professionals group and the LAI Career Development Group.
Barbara McCormack
Barbara McCormack is the Special Collections Librarian at Maynooth University Library with responsibility for the historic Russell Library, a 19thcentury reading room with over 34,000 pre-1850 printed titles, and a state-of-the-art reading room in the John Paul II Library.
Audrey Kinch
Audrey Kinch has worked in Special Collections & Archives at Maynooth University Library for the past six years and has completed an online course in Understanding and Managing Rare Books with the Centre for Archives and Information Studies at the University of Dundee.
In 2016 the library underwent a staff restructure whereby the former model of the subject specific teams was transformed in favour of a generic skills offering. This poster will outline how the newly formed Academic Skills Team are responding to this change by delivering a high quality front line drop-in service to library users complementing an online delivery of information and digital skills. Furthermore it will explore the developmental next steps in the expansion of a collaborative learning space to enhance the student academic journey.
Presenter Biography:
Siobhan Carroll
Siobhán Carroll works with the Academic Skills Team doing Smart Searching training and Consultation with students at the Academic Skills Hub, James Hardiman Library. She also works with the Marketing & Engagement Team, creating Posters and Social Media posts for Seminars &Events and promoting the library in Pop-Up Events on Campus at the James Hardiman Library, NUI, Galway.
Maud Conry
Maud Conry works with the Academic Skills Team doing Smart Searching training and Consultation with students at the Academic Skills Hub, James Hardiman Library. She also work with the Library and Customer Service Desk (LIT) dealing with student queries and IT issues at the James Hardiman Library, NUI, Galway.
Mary O’Leary
Mary O’Leary works with both the Academic Skills Team doing Smart Searching training and Consultation with students at the Academic Skills Hub, James Hardiman Library. She also works with the Special Collections Team, involved with retrieval and consultation of Archive material and rare books in the James Hardiman Library at NUI, Galway.
Gabi Honan
Kristopher Meen
Kris has been in his current role in Galway since 2015. He has also worked at the Suna Kıraç Library, Koç University in Istanbul, and the Library and Knowledge Centre at Industry Canada, Ottawa, since qualifying for his MLIS in 2010 at the University of Western Ontario.
Michael Smalle
As part of a new library building in 2016, RCSI Library planned an Expo Stage to provide significantly enhanced space for interaction in library spaces. On arrival in the new library this space, while available, presented a significant challenge in terms of making it work in terms of us owning it, of users seeing how they can use it and understanding how service can relate to the space. New blank spaces provide a unique moment for a library team, and particularly those involved in customer service and outreach to consider how to make potential users of the space aware of the new space, how it can relate to their needs and most crucially how you support their needs when onsite. This lightening talk will present how our first year with our new Expo Stage has developed, the challenges we had and the activities and approaches we have learned from. We will particularly focus on the potential we have seen from a new space to help you reflect on services offerings and how space as a service works for outreach across your organisation.
Presenter Biography:
Johanna Archbold
Johanna Archbold is the Customer Services & Communications Coordinator at RCSI Library, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She manages the Customer Service team and frontline operations and coordinates internal and external communications for the Library. As a book historian she has published and presented research on Atlantic Print Culture nationally and internationally. Library research interests include Service Design, UX in Libraries and Outreach.
Carol Creavin
Carol Creavin is the Information Point and Outreach Coordinator at RCSI Library.
A great deal of the information literacy education provided by academic libraries has traditionally been instructional and didactic. This is in spite of the fact that the information literacy skills which academic librarians try to instil in students require practice and active application to be effective. To some extent, this is understandable. Facilitating active learning in classes with Irish university students presents particular challenges for academic librarians. We tend to have far less contact time with students than other teaching staff and the preponderance of ‘one shot’ classes, covering great swathes of material in a very limited space of time, often means that we have difficulty in cultivating the trust, cooperation and understanding necessary to make such active learning techniques deep and meaningful. Is there no middle ground? Are there ways for librarians who teach information literacy to ensure that their students remain active and engaged in their classes while at the same time ensuring that learning objectives are met? My paper will argue that librarians don’t necessarily need to adopt a ‘flipped classroom’ approach or embed themselves into modules to ensure that learners become actively engaged in their teaching. Rather, I will argue that there are certain practical and easily implementable active learning techniques that can be integrated into lessons in order to offer students a greater sense of participation in and ownership over their own learning. This paper will track my attempts to integrate some active learning hooks, techniques and technologies into my teaching of Maynooth University students. Based on my own reflections on these lessons, I will discuss which interventions worked well and which didn’t and explore the reasons for this. The paper will also discuss attempts to facilitate interactive learning through online resources being developed by the Teaching and Research Development team at Maynooth University Library.
Presenter Biography:
Niall O’Brien
Niall O’Brien is currently a Teaching and Learning Librarian at Maynooth University Library, having previously worked at UCD Library. He is interested in student-centred learning and emerging technologies for teaching and learning. He has previously presented at New Professionals Day, the CONUL Teaching and Learning Seminar and the LIR Annual Seminar.
This paper will explore how a team of librarians have developed a Community of Practice that is enabling them to teach each other the necessary skills to undertake systematic literature reviews.When it comes to writing these reviews, researchers and academic staff often look to their librarian for advice and expertise. The librarian has a unique skillset which is valued by the researcher and this recognition is often acknowledged by the inclusion of the librarian as co-author in papers published in scholarly journals. How do librarians acquire these skills? What training is required and how can we go about acquiring it? This paper will describe how Subject Librarians in one institution are developing a nascent Community of Practice to answer these questions. It will outline the benefits both for the library team involved and the wider academic community. It’s not just a one-way street; by collaborating with academic colleagues, librarians have gained invaluable knowledge and approaches to systematic reviews that have been imparted to library colleagues. This paper will detail how a combination of dedicated workshops designed by librarians, academic colleagues and industry partners and the sharing of online resources have helped us improve our understanding of the systematic review process. It will describe how ultimately, the most valuable way of learning from ourselves has been the informal, one-to-one, support we provide to one another.
Presenter Biography:
Greg Sheaf
Greg Sheaf has worked as a Subject Librarian in Trinity since 2005. In that time he has advised on and participated in numerous literature reviews undertaken by staff and students in Trinity, and is one of the Library’s experts on conducting systematic reviews and using reference management software. He’s a co-author on several papers published in the health sciences area, including Cochrane Reviews and Protocols.Greg is also the Library of Trinity College Dublin’s Web Services Librarian with responsibility for the Library’s website and social media streams. During 2017 he was one of the leads on the Berkeley50 series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Berkeley Library, including the blog to accompany it. Greg is Trinity’s representative on the CONUL Communications & Outreach Group.
Isolde Harpur
This poster presentation illustrates how an academic library reached the decision to build its own offsite archive and research center, and the inherent issues associated with meeting archival standards. While the site was being planned, the library team addressed archival concerns, including a quarantine area and storage for framed art and artifacts. One of the key components was software for use at the site that was compatible with the library’s online catalog. Once preliminary issues were addressed, my cataloging unit was tasked with re-cataloging more than 33,000 special collection records, along with rehousing, preservation and removal to offsite storage site.
Presenter Biography:
Karen Sigler
Karen is the Cataloging and Metadata Librarian for The Wittliff Collections, which houses the unique collections related to Southwestern Literature and Music, and Southwestern & Mexican Photography. She has held this position since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 with a Masters in Information & Library Science. Prior to this, Karen was a medical outreach librarian for approximately four years with the Area Health Education Center located in Wilmington, North Carolina, which was affiliated with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her primary responsibility was to provide medical library research to health care providers in a five county area.
Trinity College Library is home to the papers of Michael Davitt, 1846-1906, the convicted Fenian, Irish nationalist and agrarian campaigner who is most famous for being one of the founders of the Irish National Land League. The photographs within this collection permit a unique insight to frontier and Irish communities on the fringes of the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The photographic collection provides a visual record of the latter half of Davitt’s career when he toured across the prairies and mountains of Northwest Canada, the old penal colonies and gold fields of Australia and the battlefields of South Africa during the Second Boer War. They document Davitt’s investigations, as a social campaigner and journalist, into the migration of Scottish crofters to Northwest Canada following the Highland Clearances, the rush to settle Western Australia fuelled by the gold fields at Coolgardie and the aftermath of the Kishinev pogrom in the Russian Empire. While the Davitt papers are one of the most heavily used historic collections in Trinity the photographs have been less well known due to limited cataloguing. The Davitt Photographs Digitisation Project will engage the global research community with the Davitt archive in two ways; we will increase the accessibility of this important archive by the completion of an improved metadata creation for each individual photograph. We will then increase the visibility of the photographs by releasing them on Trinity College Dublin’s Digital Collections.
After graduating from UCD with an MA in Archives and Records Management in 2014, I have worked on cataloguing projects in King’s College London, the National Library of Ireland and NUI Maynooth before my current position as cataloguer of the Michael Davitt photographic collection in the Manuscripts and Research Library of Trinity College Dublin
Presenter Biography:
Dáire Rooney
After graduating from UCD with an MA in Archives and Records Management in 2014, I have worked on cataloguing projects in King’s College London, the National Library of Ireland and NUI Maynooth before my current position as cataloguer of the Michael Davitt photographic collection in the Manuscripts and Research Library of Trinity College Dublin.
Over the last eighteen months our digital collection holdings have increased exponentially as a result of a number of large digital preservation projects.In 2018, this workload is set to advance apace and will continue to present many new scenarios and challenges in terms of digital curation and preservation. This poster focuses on how curating and preserving cultural heritage and research data collections differ within our institution, alongside the challenges and opportunities faced on a daily basis.
My role is Digital Services Programmer in Research Services at UCD Library. The main responsibilities of this position lie with UCD Digital Library but also include supporting the UCD Research Repository and the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA). Since 2006 I have managed software and infrastructure projects at UCD Library and prior to this worked for a number of large private sector companies in Ireland and abroad. In 2016 I received a Masters in Library and Information Studies from UCD and hold an MSc in Computer Science from DIT.
Presenter Biography:
Peter Clarke
My role is Digital Services Programmer in Research Services at UCD Library. The main responsibilities of this position lie with UCD Digital Library but also include supporting the UCD Research Repository and the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA). Since 2006 I have managed software and infrastructure projects at UCD Library and prior to this worked for a number of large private sector companies in Ireland and abroad. In 2016 I received a Masters in Library and Information Studies from UCD and hold an MSc in Computer Science from DIT.
Like many other Special Collections we have a fascinating array of unpublished material in our collections. They do not suit traditional methods of library cataloguing. Many published books are donated to us as intact collections. Although they can be catalogued individually some of their worth is lost to researchers be viewing them as individual items. Individually cataloguing all manuscript items is a dream for the distant future and our catalogue does not easily allow for book collections to be viewed as a whole. How do we make these most interesting parts of our collections as accessible as possible, bearing in mind the staff and money limitations we have. I looked at this issue from a local, national and international perspective. With the assistance of the team we re-formatted our manuscript listings, upgraded our web pages, improved our main image site, overhauled our use of social media. One large project undertaken was the re-development of RASCAL (Research & Special Collections Available Locally). This is an electronic gateway to research resources relating to Ireland. It provides collection level descriptions providing researchers with a useful overview of collections indicating their strengths. With the assistance of a professional design and development company the site has been transformed. Simple searches are intuitive and suggest related content, they can be refined in many ways, location maps are included as are images of each collection. Irish collections from American institutions have been included truly increasing the international appeal. While we are the administrators of RASCAL we invite organisations with unique and distinct collections to add their own content and images. The only restriction being it needs an Irish connection. We believe this site can make Special Collections and Archival Collections much more accessible to a wider audience.
Presenter Biography:
Louisa Costelloe
Louisa Costelloe graduated with an MSc in Information and Library Studies from the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen in 2008. From there she worked first as a Library Assistant in Aberdeen Central Library and then as a Local Studies Librarian. In 2013 Louisa moved to Belfast and accepted a position in the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals as a Development Officer for CILIP Ireland. Since 2015 she has been working as an Assistant Librarian in Special Collections at Queen’s University Belfast.