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Maiden, Mother, Punk-Ass Book Jockey: The Faces of Librarians in Pop Culture

2026-11-05T16:42:13.941+00:00

Congratulations to Maggie McAlister Smyth from the King's Hospital Day and Boarding School, whose blog post has been awarded 1st place in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.

“They’re like a biker gang. Only instead of shotguns and crystal meth, they use political savvy and shushing.” (Parks and Recreation, S2 Ep8: “Ron and Tammy”)

The scene: New York Public Library. Nineteen eighty-something. Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis are creeping through the stacks with one plan: “Get her!” Now, those who know me know I love anything to do with ghosts and the paranormal. During Covid, I got an online certificate degree in cryptozoology. I read horror and listen to spooky podcasts like it’s going out of style. But when I watched this for the first time as a young teenager, and that ghost librarian’s head peeled back as she exploded into a spray of ectoplasmic goop all over, I was terrified. And that librarian? Combined with the two librarians Murray and co. speak with just before this scene – one fainted from fright, another cagey and disapproving? Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the field.

Years before this, my first TV librarian was Paige Turner of the Elwood City Public Library. She was a rabbit on Arthur with big-framed glasses, a cardigan and a friendly but no-nonsense demeanour. She always had a pencil in her hair.

Paige Turner, Arthur, from Arthur Wiki.

Now a librarian in my thirties, I too wear big-framed glasses and cardigans, attempt to keep up a friendly but no-nonsense demeanour, and often am found with a writing utensil stuck through my ponytail. (I’ve also been known to come home from work with a binder clip used instead of a hair-tie). Up until very recently, my glasses of choice were red cat-eye style. My students approved vehemently of these as being appropriate for my position.

A comment I have received more than once is – glasses aside – students and new staff are surprised to meet me. They assume that a librarian will be dowdy, advanced in years, and a bit grumpy. At the very least, overly stern. Librarians are traditionally portrayed so thoroughly in media (particularly pre-Y2K media) as being spinsters and enforcers that some feel trepidation in even darkening the doors of their local library branch, a tragedy indeed. A few bad apple librarians in film and television may seem to be no big deal, but “misconceptions about librarianship can significantly influence how society perceives, values, and supports the profession” (Owoeye et al., 2025).

Further, “perceptions of librarians” act as a deterrent for some potential library users (Black, 2016). McAfee’s (2018) research on library anxiety further reflects this – a deep fear of being judged for having less knowledge or understanding than the librarian you are speaking to is a great deterrent from help-seeking. And if the librarians you grew up on are cranky, grumpy, and don’t take kindly to being asked questions, well …

This portrayal is outdated though, if it ever was true. Librarians, and our pop culture counterparts have changed drastically since Mary was relegated to the life of a spinster librarian by George Bailey’s wish to never be born (Capra, 1946). As Thiruppathi (2024) puts it, “the digital age has propelled librarianship into a new era characterized by evolving roles, challenges, and opportunities" (p. 7).

In 2019, LitHub published a list of “50 Fictional Librarians, Ranked” (Temple, 2019). Among the names on this list are librarians who are as far from frail and timid as one could imagine – the adventurous if somewhat accident-prone Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) in The Mummy; the wise and snarky Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) of Sunnydale High; Pawnee’s hypersexual “punk-ass book jockey” Tammy II (Megan Mullally) in Parks and Recreation.

Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan in The Mummy via Google.

Based on this quick audit of recent character depictions, I hope that younger people are under the impression that librarians shouldn’t be feared because we will glare down our noses at you, but rather because we will tell you what you need to know, whether you want the truth or not. I hope that the predominant media consumed about librarians is the documentary The Librarians (2025), an incredibly powerful film about the ways that librarians in the United States (particularly in my own home state of Texas) are facing violent threats, harassment, and loss of employment in the wake of the Krause List.

In the 80s and 90s, moms across America would guilt their children into eating their meatloaf by saying “kids in [insert name of country exploited by Western colonialism here] don’t have food”. Now, I find myself saying to students “kids in my hometown don’t have that book”. But that is another conversation for another day.

I decided to do a little gumshoe work myself on the topic and hounded a handful of teachers at my school for their opinions. Funny enough, my first respondent, a science teacher, said that as a kid he thought of librarians as the ghost from Ghostbusters – though he admits “from my experience I didn’t get much from the media about [librarians]”. One RE teacher wanted to include he believes that “the reclusive, nondescript glasses wearing librarian with her (always her) hair tied up in a neat bun does not help” getting young people to interact with the library but rather drives potential readers away for fear of their being perceived by peers as uncool by association. A younger member of staff added that her understanding of librarians growing up was reinforced by “this grumpy old woman at the Blanch library. If you had the cheek to walk in, you were an inconvenience”. My personal favorite response was that the media typically portrays librarians as “spinsters with no craic about them at all, which is not really the experience I have had with the librarians in my place of work” (personal communications, 2026).

I would love to say that I have never encountered this stereotypical librarian, but we all have bad days. There are days when a student has cried on my shoulder after her friend decided they didn’t want to be friends anymore, but there are also days when I have snapped at a student too harshly. I hope that my good days far outweigh my bad.

References
Black, S. (2016). Psychosocial reasons why patrons avoid seeking help from librarians: A literature review. The Reference Librarian, 57(1), 35-56. doi:10.1080/02763877.2015.1096227

Capra, F. (1946) It’s a Wonderful Life. RKO Radio Pictures.

Daniels, G. & Schur, M. (Executive Producers). (2009-2015). Parks and recreation [TV series]. Deedle-

Dee Productions; Universal Media Studios.

McAfee, E. L. (2018). Shame: The emotional basis of library anxiety. College & Research Libraries, 79(2), 237. doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.2.237

Owoeye, S. O. et al., (2025, June). Not just a book lady: Shifting perceptions of librarians’ role in the 21st Century. Journal of Library Services and Technologies, 7(2), 232-243. doi.org/10.47524/jlst.v6i2

Temple, E. (2019, Oct. 16). 50 fictional librarians, ranked. LitHub. https://lithub.com/50-fictional-librarians-ranked/?single=true

Thiruppathi, K. (2024). Librarian’s role in the digital age: Reimagining the profession in the era of information abundance. Information Journal of Library and Information Studies, 13(1), 1-9.

More Than a Shush: Librarians, Comics and the Power of Popular Culture

2026-11-02T10:44:00.000+00:00

Congratulations to Jane Burns from the Technological University of the Shannon, whose blog post has been awarded 2nd place in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.

Before I begin, a confession: I have always loved comics and I still do.

As both a librarian and a comics fan, I have noticed something interesting. Comics do not simply represent librarians differently; they often reimagine librarianship as a form of agency, leadership, and social impact. In these stories, librarians are not passive custodians of books but knowledge guardians, researchers, strategists, and sometimes even superheroes.

Comics are more than entertainment. Like other forms of popular culture, they both reflect and shape social attitudes. This makes them a fascinating lens through which to examine librarianship. Rather than reinforcing the stereotype of the lonely, rule-bound librarian, many comics portray librarians as intelligent, resourceful professionals whose real superpower is connecting people with information and ideas. In this post, I explore two favourite examples and consider what they reveal about librarians and libraries in popular culture.

How It Started

My fascination with libraries began in childhood. The local public library felt magical, full of possibilities waiting to be discovered.

One visit remains particularly memorable. I arrived clutching a newspaper comic strip, convinced my older brother was inventing the story because the pictures and words did not seem to match. Instead of dismissing my confusion, a librarian showed me how comics worked, explaining how pictures and words combine to create meaning.

Looking back, that moment revealed something fundamental about librarianship. Librarians do more than provide access to information; they help people understand it.

Perhaps that is why I never questioned Batgirl being a librarian. To me, librarians were already superheroes. Batgirl simply wore a cape.

Figure 1. Barbara Gordon's first appearance as Batgirl in Detective Comics #359 (DC Comics, 1967).

Barbara Gordon is arguably the most famous librarian in comics. As head of Gotham Public Library, she challenged stereotypes of librarians as passive figures. After being paralysed by the Joker, she evolved from Batgirl into Oracle, transforming adversity into a new form of heroism.

As Oracle, she became the information hub of the superhero community. Her power lay not in physical strength but in gathering, analysing, and sharing information. Heroes relied on her expertise and networks to make informed decisions.

Figure 2. Barbara Gordon as Oracle. Image based on the DC Comics character created by Ostrander et al., 1989.

What makes this portrayal so interesting is how closely it aligns with contemporary librarianship. Oracle embodies many of the skills information professionals use every day: digital curation, knowledge management, information literacy, and research support. Through Barbara Gordon, librarianship becomes a source of intellectual and social power rather than a background profession.

Lucien: Guardian of Knowledge and Imagination

A very different vision of librarianship appears in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Lucien serves as librarian of the Dreaming, overseeing a library that contains every book ever imagined, including those never written.

At first glance, Lucien seems to embody the traditional image of the quiet, bookish librarian. Yet he is one of the most trusted figures in the Dreaming, drawing authority not from force but from his stewardship of knowledge, memory, and imagination.

I have always found Lucien compelling. One of the most rewarding aspects of librarianship is helping people make unexpected connections and discover new ideas. Lucien's library captures that same sense of possibility, where knowledge and imagination combine to create something new.

Although thoughtful and reserved, Lucien is far from passive. When the library is threatened, he shows courage and an unwavering commitment to protecting knowledge. In this respect, he reflects contemporary librarians who increasingly defend intellectual freedom, cultural memory, and access to information.

Figure 3. Lucien, librarian of the Dreaming, from The Sandman (Gaiman, 1989).

Beyond Books: Reimagining the Library

Comics do not only transform librarians; they also transform libraries themselves. Rather than depicting libraries as silent warehouses for books, many comics present them as dynamic spaces of discovery, creativity, and power. In The Sandman, Neil Gaiman reimagines the library as a repository of human imagination, holding every book that has ever been dreamed, including those never written (Gaiman, 1989). In James Turner's Rex Libris, a public library becomes an interdimensional gateway where the librarian is charged with protecting both knowledge and reality itself (Turner, 2002), European creators have explored similar themes. Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières's Valérian et Laureline (Christin, et al. 1967-2010) and Jacques Tardi's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec feature archivists, researchers, and information professionals whose pursuit of knowledge leads them to hidden truths, forgotten histories, and complex mysteries (Tardi, 1976). Together, these works present libraries not as passive repositories but as active spaces where information shapes worlds, identities, and possibilities.

These portrayals suggest that libraries are not simply places where information is stored. They are places where knowledge is created, shared, interpreted, and transformed. They also raise an interesting question: how does popular culture shape what people believe librarians are?

The relationship between representation and perception matters. The stories people encounter in books, films, television, and comics influence their understanding of professions and institutions. For many readers, popular culture becomes a first point of contact with ideas about what librarians do and why libraries matter.

Conclusion

Comics are one of the few areas of popular culture where librarians are frequently portrayed in a positive and empowering light. While some familiar stereotypes persist, contemporary comics increasingly present librarians as researchers, strategists, knowledge guardians, and agents of change.

From Gotham City to the Dreaming, these stories remind us that librarians do far more than organise collections. They connect people with ideas, preserve cultural memory, and help individuals navigate an increasingly complex information landscape.

Perhaps that is why librarians make such compelling heroes. In a world overflowing with information, the ability to find, understand, evaluate, and share knowledge may be one of the greatest superpowers of all.

Comics remind us that librarianship is not simply about managing books. It is about creating connections between people, information, and possibility. That may not require a cape, but it is heroic, nonetheless.

AI Use Declaration

For this blog post submission, I used the AI tool Co-Pilot to brainstorm ideas and for reference structure within the document and as part of the reference section. I also used AI to check for repetition in my writing as an editing assistant.

References & Suggested Reading

Carey, M., & Gross, P. (2009-2015). The Unwritten [Comic book series]. Vertigo/DC Comics.

Christin, P., & Mézières, J.-C. (1967-2010). Valérian et Laureline [Comic series]. Dargaud.

Duncan, R., Smith, M. J., & Levitz, P. (2015). The power of comics: History, form and culture (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

Eisner, W. (2008). Comics and sequential art (Rev. ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Fox, G., & Infantino, C. (1967). Detective Comics #359. DC Comics.

Gaiman, N. (1989-1996). The Sandman [Comic series]. DC Comics/Vertigo.

Groensteen, T. (2007). The system of comics (B. Beaty & N. Nguyen, Trans.). University Press of Mississippi.

Pfeifferer, O., & Grimm, S. (Eds.). (2020). Comics and critical librarianship: Reframing the narrative in academic libraries. Library Juice Press

McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. HarperPerennial.

McCloud, S. (2006). Making comics: Storytelling secrets of comics, manga, and graphic novels. Harper

Ostrander, J., Yale, K., & McDonnell, L. (1989). Suicide Squad. DC Comics.

Tardi, J. (1976-present). The extraordinary adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec [Comic series]. Casterman

Turner, J. (2002). Rex Libris. Slave Labor Graphics.

Spinsters and Whores: The Fate of Female Librarians in the Public Imagination

2026-10-29T09:00:00.000+00:00

Congratulations to Emma Cooling from University College Dublin, whose blog post was awarded 3rd place in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.

In an age where we are faced daily with existential threats – climate change, war, unchecked technological advancement – we have somehow crucially neglected one grave threat to our delicate society: librarians. Specifically, lady librarians. What on earth do you do with an intelligent, independent woman who serves as a steward of knowledge? What box can you possibly place her in that makes you feel safe and warm in your bed, no longer worried about the concept of a woman with as much autonomy, knowledge and complex personhood as any man?

Mainstream media has, in my experience, provided two possible solutions: make them infertile, or make them sexy.

On the infertile side of things, you have the spinster librarian; they are “the most stereotypical female librarian image” (Snoek-Brown, 2011), often portrayed as “old maids”. These women are sexually repressed, bitter, and stern with little fashion sense – we are all familiar with this image. So familiar that when I started pursuing my MLIS, the most common jokes I was met with by family members were: “have you started your ugly cardigan collection yet?”, “you better start practising your shushing/death stare combo”, and “but you don’t even like cats!” (for my cat lovers, I do now like cats, for non-librarian-related reasons of course).

This woman is not just a media stereotype, but serves as a cautionary tale to women everywhere. We see this nowhere better than in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946). For those unfamiliar with the film, it centres around the character of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), a man whose dreams were neglected for the sake of helping those in his family and community. Facing regret and suicidal thoughts, George is then shown by a guardian angel what his community and family would look like had he never been born: his hometown is scourged by poverty, seedy institutions and crime, his brother is dead, and, to his shock and horror, his wife is a single librarian.

Figure 1: Snoek-Brown, J. (2011, September 21). Mary as the Spinster Librarian in the second half of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946). REEL Librarians. https://reel-librarians.com/2011/09/21/its-a-wonderful-stereo

This shocking revelation would surely spur any man to appreciate the life he has (which George promptly does), and this reveals a deep-seeded fear about the library profession. Having been historically dominated by women, with 90% of librarians being female in the 1930s (Keer & Carlos, 2015), the story remains much the same today, with female librarians making up around 80% of the library workforce (Greenshields, 2023). The librarian profession is not only literally dominated by women, but also consistently gendered as female in public imagination (Singh et al., 2020).

Why is a female-dominated, female-associated profession so terrifying to a society which relies on women’s submission and domestic work? The issue is two-pronged: female professionals have more money and independence, and female librarians in particular have specialised knowledge and are guardians of knowledge. Why would they need to marry, have children, or rely on anyone else? This is without mentioning the fact that, if men are superior, then a job associated with women must be made to look inferior.

So: spinster-dom. Portray these qualified professionals as lonely old maids with no partners or families, make their authority seem more like a bitter bid for control in a life of singledom that surely no woman would choose.

But what about the opposing alternative, the sexy librarian?

The sexy librarian is enticing, “flirtatious” and “sexually charged” (Snoek-Brown, 2011). She either wears sexually suggestive outfits juxtaposed by glasses and a high bun, or is transformed from spinster to sexy when leaving the library and “let[ting] her hair down” (Snoek-Brown, 2011). Like the spinster caricature, we can see this stereotype across various media. One search on Pinterest reveals the popularity of the genre of character:

Figure 2: Pinterest search results page for "sexy librarian". Screenshot by author, 26 August 2026.

Similar popularity can be found on less savoury porn sites, but I’ll leave those search results to your imagination.

The sexy librarian, though standing in opposition to everything the spinster librarian seems to represent, falls under the same boot and suffers the same fate. Though being sexually desirable and virile can, in a man, coexist with power, status, and respect, the same is not afforded to women. Being perceived as sexy often, through no fault of a woman’s own, reduces her to a body; very often, a body without a mind. Look, we’ve devalued the library profession in yet another way!

Any rational being would have the nuance to recognise that there is nothing inherently wrong with being indefinitely single or with being sexually active. But, unfortunately, media reflects the prejudices of the status quo back to us, and the portrayal of women librarians in media being split so often into these two camps reveals a fear and mistrust of women’s autonomy via the library profession. This fear and mistrust leads to a devaluing of the profession and the women involved in it by leaning into conservative fears: unmarried, childless, independent women and women who are unashamedly sexual.

In a time when this still-female-dominated profession is under fire from fascist governments and anti-intellectual politics, it has never been more important to examine the media biases that teach us: this isn’t important work if women do it. Because, really, the work has never been more important.

This isn’t just about librarianship as a profession, either; uplifting female professionals and undoing these harmful stereotypes in an age of manospheres and tradwives is an act of resistance on behalf of women everywhere.

Reference List

Capra, F. (Director). (1946). It's a Wonderful Life [Film].

Greenshields, M. (2023, March 14). Thinking about librarianship & women. EUI Blogs. https://blogs.eui.eu/library/thinking-about-librarianship-women

Keer, G., & Carlos, A. (2015, October 30). The stereotype stereotype. American Libraries Magazine. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/the-stereotype-stereotype/

Singh, V. K., Chayko, M., Inamdar, R., & Floegel, D. (2020). Female librarians and male computer programmers? Gender bias in occupational images on digital media platforms. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 71(11), 1281–1294. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24335

Snoek-Brown, J. (2011, September 14). Character types. REEL Librarians. https://reel-librarians.com/rolecall/charactertypes/

Emma Cooling is a soon-to-be graduate of University College Dublin’s Masters of Library and Information Science.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-cooling-21786a240/

Open by default: UCC's new Open Access and Research Outputs Policy

2026-10-28T12:10:55.250+00:00

In this blog post, Libfocus Team Member Hardy Schwamm, who works at University College Cork's Library as Head of Research Services, explains how UCC’s new Open Access and Research Outputs Policy came about, what it asks of researchers, and what the Library found when it set out to measure what the University really pays to publish.

On 5 June 2026, Academic Council approved UCC's new Open Access and Research Outputs Policy. It applies to research outputs submitted for publication from 1 September 2026.

Its aim is simple: research produced at UCC should be free to read, for everyone, from the day it is published. Getting there raised bigger questions about cost, ownership and who shapes scholarly publishing.

The hidden cost of publishing

For the past five years, UCC Library has been piecing together something most universities cannot easily see: what we pay in Article Processing Charges (APCs) outside Ireland's national IReL read and publish agreements. Sometimes this cost is called “APCs in the Wild.” The picture is striking:

• At UCC, about €2 million was spent on APCs for around 850 articles between 2021 and 2025, outside our IReL read and publish agreements.

• Nearly 60% of that spend in 2025 went to four publishers with which Ireland already has IReL read and publish agreements (see Figure 1 below).

• The spend is concentrated in medicine and health and in science, engineering and food science, and much of it comes from public research grants.

This money is spread across many individual transactions, so it rarely shows up as a single line anyone can question. It is public money paying commercial publishers to make publicly funded research public. It is often paid for articles that could have been made openly available through our own institutional repository CORA at no cost.

Figure 1: Distribution of UCC article processing charges paid outside the IReL agreements, 2025. Source: UCC Library analysis of institutional financial data.

More than cost: who owns our knowledge?

Cost is only part of the story. Across the sector, Open Access is increasingly shaped by questions of digital autonomy and knowledge equity. Who owns the infrastructure that research depends on? Who holds the rights to published work? And does the research community set the terms of scholarly publishing, or do a small number of large commercial publishers?

Closer to home, our thinking was shaped by SCOIR, the NORF-funded Irish project whose Model Institutional Open Access Policy informed our own, alongside policies at the University of Galway and the University of Leeds. SCOIR has also developed a draft Copyright and Related Rights (Research Outputsand Open Access) Bill. It proposes that publicly funded research is deposited in open repositories, and that the right to share it is protected in law, even where a publishing contract says otherwise. SCOIR's roadshow across Irish institutions last year put the central question plainly: who owns our knowledge?

Our policy aims to answer to that question. Several parts of it are designed to keep knowledge in the hands of the research community:

• Authors keep their rights. Through rights retention, UCC authors no longer have to sign away the right to share their own accepted manuscripts. The Library has written to publishers to give them formal notice of UCC's position. No publisher has challenged our position yet.

• Our own infrastructure. The policy puts CORA, UCC's institutional repository, at the centre of compliance. Open Access therefore does not depend on any single publisher's platform or business model.

• No fees for readers or authors. We support Diamond Open Access, where neither readers nor authors pay, including through the UCC Journals platform. Community-led models, from Diamond journals to Publish-Review-Curate platforms, are among the publishing options the policy is designed to make room for.

• Fairness for researchers. UCC is committed to ensuring that no researcher is financially disadvantaged by the policy. CORA as a free repository (Green Open Access) route is always available.

• Quality over venue. The policy aligns with the CoARA principles for responsible research assessment. Where research is published matters less than the quality of the research itself.

What the policy asks of our UCC authors

• Make your research outputs openly available at publication, through Green, Diamond or Gold Open Access.

• Deposit your Author Accepted Manuscript or Version of Record in Pure at publication. The Library does the rest and makes it available via CORA.

• Add the Rights Retention Statement to your submission where you can (text available at Step 4 in our guide). The Library's notice to publishers does the legal work, so the statement is mainly a courtesy to the editor.

• Use an open licence. Creative Commons CC BY is preferred and meets most funder requirements. Other Creative Commons licences are available where appropriate.

• Ask for an Exception if you need one. Monographs, creative works, other non-traditional research outputs, and work with small, not-for-profit or minority-language publishers can all be considered. Exceptions are a normal, supported and compliant route, and the Open Research Coordination Group (ORCG) aims to decide within 10 working days.

Policy shaped by broad consultation

The Policy changed significantly as a result of our consultation process. Between February and May 2026, we received about 75 responses through an open survey, targeted sessions with Colleges and the PI Forum. The open survey alone drew responses from more than 20 Schools and Departments. Colleagues in the Arts, Humanities and Irish studies were especially engaged, making up around 60% of survey responses.

We listened and amended the policy which:

• Covers non-traditional research outputs such as creative works, performances and exhibitions.

• Has a broader list of Exceptions, including long-form works and minority-language publishing.

• Has a publicly listed Open Research Coordination Group with disciplinary experts from every college.

• Includes a firm commitment that no researcher will be financially disadvantaged.

University College Cork campus

What's next

We will launch the policy formally during our launch event on 17 November 2026. The programme includes a celebration of our UCC Journals, all of which publish Diamond Open Access.

In the meantime, guidance, FAQs and the exception request form are on the Open Access Policy Supports guide. If you want to find out more about the Policy and its implementation, you can contact the Library at openaccess@ucc.ie with any questions.

Finally, a big thank you to our colleagues in the UCC Research Office (OVPRI). Developing the Policy together with the Library has been an effective and enjoyable collaboration, and it was greatly helped by the members of the UCC Open Research Coordination Group.

Death of a Library

2026-10-27T09:06:30.670+00:00

Well done to Alana Mahon O'Neill from DCU Library, whose blog post received a special mention in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

For millennia, libraries have existed as temples and intellectual retreats, preserving memories and wisdom for generations of learners. Yet, consistently, as this list of destroyed libraries shows, they have been destroyed.

This can stem from natural disasters such as fire and flood, or it can be the side effect of human activities, from wartime collateral damage to religious zealotry, or simply from neglect.

Figure 1: The fire of Alexandria, woodcuts by Hermann Göll, 1876. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Library of Alexandria is the most recognisable example; once the centre of knowledge in the ancient world, it was effectively written out of history by the 4th century as described in 'The Burning of the Library of Alexandria'. From time immemorial to our present day, cultures and intellectual freedom have been under attack, but destruction doesn’t always happen overnight. This history of book burning shows that they have been occurring since antiquity. Book burnings are strongly associated with early 20th-century Nazi Germany, which in turn sparked consistent copycat demonstrations. Books don’t even need to be burned; in 2024, a Florida College Library collection was tossed in the dump under the pretence of ‘weeding'.

A death starts small. Culturicide is the destruction of heritage, but the deliberate destruction of entire libraries is libricide. The death of a library is not just material loss, but a cultural and intellectual erasure. There is a proven history, and it is senseless to ignore the pattern.

Now that we have acknowledged this very real threat, I also wanted to ask: how have we depicted this phenomenon in fiction?

Fire is the main adversary of books; it destroyed The Great Library of Unseen University in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, The Baudelaire Library in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Great Jedi Library in Star Wars media. Meanwhile, the deliberate act of book burning is explored in speculative fiction such as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984, and various historical WWII literature such as Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.

However, while researching this trope of destroyed libraries, I have noted that the vast majority of fictional libraries actually seem to survive the story’s narrative. I imagine that this is because we as humans seek ultimate knowledge and are enchanted by the concept of a library that fulfils such desire. It is simply too terrible to imagine a world without libraries; in fact, a study by Duxfield et al. found that libraries in science fiction are optimistically depicted embedded into the fabric of society.

This may be why I found practically no resource or research into the trope of the destroyed library. It certainly exists in fiction, so why don’t we talk about it? The Duxfield et al. study references Griffen’s “The reinvented library” trope, library collections gathered post-catastrophe, as the most common type of library in science fiction. This identification feels like a post-death library, a reconstruction and preservation of knowledge when knowledge is scarce, but it does not identify the violence of the death itself.

Furthermore, I find that the destruction of a library in fiction feels like a quintessential exploration of the man versus God trope. In Missing Eco, Garret explores how literature like In the Name of the Rose approaches the library’s wisdom as a sort of holy temple, and therefore an affront on God. Meanwhile, Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel explores an infinite library of knowledge, driving its users to madness. Their labyrinthine allusions refer to the winding paths users take in the pursuit of knowledge, ultimately achieving catastrophe. So in many ways, the concept of the library is also like a modern tower of Babel, articulated by Garrett as "doomed to come crashing down".

I find that the death of a library provokes a profound sense of loss. It signals difficult times ahead, and in our writing, it can even foreshadow the death of everything.

I feel like I could finish my point here. However, after everything I have declared, it now feels too provocative to suggest that a library being destroyed in fiction can be a good thing.

How can violence be used to symbolise a retributive act of justice?

I would like to talk about the 2016 film The Handmaiden. Loosely based on the 2002 novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, director Park Chan-wook, in his film adaptation, shifts the setting from Victorian-era Britain to Japanese-occupied Korea.

The story follows pickpocket Sook-hee, who assumes a role as a handmaid to the heiress Hideko in a plot to steal her inheritance. Meek and unassuming Hideko lives a secluded life on a countryside estate in the custody of her eccentric uncle, Kouzuki.

Kouzuki possesses a rare collection of books in his personal library. He funded this obsession by assisting the Japanese takeover and was awarded a gold mine. Books for him are worth more than gold. As described in 'The Madhouse of the Handmaiden', this obsession means that his library becomes his holy temple, its contents his religion, and a snake guards the door, protecting its divine wisdom.

I will not spoil the entire film, but in order to express the significance of the following scene, I need to provide some context.

Despite Sook-hee’s plot to steal Hideko’s wealth, they unexpectedly fall in love. Sook-hee also learns that Hideko has been abused by her uncle, Kouzuki. The rare book collection in his library? All violent pornography. He abused his deceased wife by forcing her to read the material to men at book auctions, and now Hideko suffers the same fate.

Enraged, Sook-hee takes matters into her own hands.

The two women ravage the collection. Scrolls are ripped. Tapestries are torn. Cabinets upended. The music is tremendous. You feel uplifted in the carnage of red ink splattering water-laden pages.

Figure 2: The destroyed books are tossed in the water. Screenshot from The Handmaiden (2:12:23), directed by Park Chan-wook, 2016. Copyright Allstar/Amazon Studios 2016.

The destruction of this library is two women regaining their agency from domineering, abusive men. Sook-hee destroys what was used to hurt and control Hideko in what is simultaneously a fit of rage but also an act of love. She becomes her saviour. The temple is desecrated, its holy scriptures annihilated, and the orchestra resounds in triumph. We cheer.

Finally, Sook-hee takes a metal switch, once a tool to abuse Hideko, to the crown of the library’s protector.

Figure 3: Sook-hee smashes the snake at the library entrance. Screenshot from The Handmaiden (2:12:46) directed by Park Chan-wook, 2016. Copyright Allstar/Amazon Studios 2016.

“The snake marks the bounds of knowledge.”

This is the death of a library, but you will delight in the violence.

The Last Patron Before Closing

2026-10-22T10:04:15.828+01:00

Congratulations to Dr Bláithín Hurley from Central Library Waterford, whose blog post received a special mention in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

Image 1: Russian Folk Tales

It is almost closing time, a librarian is helping a reader find a book and everything is entirely ordinary. Yet, within moments, a man will be beaten to death with that same book. There will be blood on polished floors, shattered silence between the stacks and one of cinema's most improbable weapons: a volume of Russian folklore. But that is not the story that interests me.

What fascinates me is everything else.

The librarian remains at her enquiry desk. Her directions are precise. The reader follows them exactly. The correct shelf yields the correct book. When he has finished with it, the man carefully returns it to its rightful place before leaving.

Even as chaos erupts, the library itself refuses to surrender its order.

For perhaps three minutes of screen time, cinema's deadliest assassin ceases to be an assassin at all.

He becomes simply another library user.

Order Before Chaos

John Wick has a price on his head, professional killers closing in from every direction and only minutes before an enormous bounty becomes active. He needs to retrieve something that will ultimately save his life. Where does he go? To the library, of course.

He races through rain-soaked streets beneath flashing headlights, weaving between anonymous figures sheltering beneath umbrellas before stepping into the New York Public Library.

The pace slows. The lighting softens. The noise disappears. Suddenly we are back in a reassuringly familiar world of endless shelves, an enquiry desk, a knowledgeable librarian and the quiet expectation that everyone will behave appropriately. In a world full of uncertainty, the library remains one of the few places where order still matters.

The Librarian
Popular culture has not always been kind to librarians. Too often they appear as stern guardians of silence, comic caricatures or dusty custodians of forgotten books. Parabellum does something rather different. In less than a minute it presents a librarian who is calm, knowledgeable and quietly authoritative. She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't disappear into the stacks. She knows her collection, understands the enquiry immediately and directs her reader exactly where he needs to go. Those of us who have worked behind an enquiry desk recognise it instantly.

John joins the queue without complaint. He waits his turn. When called forward, he politely asks for the volume he needs. The librarian gives clear directions and sends him on his way. It is an entirely ordinary library transaction. Yet, that is precisely what makes it extraordinary.

This may be cinema's most dangerous hitman, a man capable of dispatching opponents with almost anything placed in his hands, yet inside the library another authority takes precedence. Not the authority of the High Table, but that of the librarian. John waits. John asks. John listens. John follows instructions. And, when he has finished with the book, he quietly puts it back where it belongs.

That final act tells us something important about John Wick. Hidden inside the book are the objects he values most: a photograph of his late wife Helen, a crucifix that will purchase sanctuary with the Ruska Roma and the gold coins that serve as currency in his shadowy world. Memory, faith and survival are hidden inside a library book. Having retrieved them, he carefully returns the volume to its rightful place, almost as though acknowledging that the library deserves the same respect as any sacred space. Unfortunately, his world follows him into the stacks.

Library Sacrilege
Ernest, another assassin, approaches while pretending to be just another reader, casually reciting Dante from the book in his hands. Yet he betrays himself before throwing a single punch by placing the book face-up on the wrong shelf!

For most cinema audiences this probably passes unnoticed. For librarians, however, it is the moment the real offence occurs. Ernest's first crime is not attempted murder. It is bad shelving.

With that tiny gesture he reveals himself as an outsider who neither understands nor respects the quiet systems that keep a library functioning. It is a surprisingly clever piece of visual storytelling. One man instinctively respects the rules of the library. The other does not.

The fight that follows is everything audiences expect from a John Wick film: breathtaking choreography, astonishing physicality and a wonderfully inventive use of books as weapons. Yet I found myself distracted by entirely different concerns.

I wasn't worrying about John. I wasn't particularly worried about Ernest. I was worrying about the books. Would they be damaged? Would whole shelves be knocked out of sequence? How long would it take staff to restore everything afterwards?

When John finally kills Ernest using the hefty volume of Russian folklore, there is an almost delicious irony. The very object Ernest had failed to respect becomes the instrument of his downfall. Books, it seems, can exact their own revenge.

Why This Scene Matters
Perhaps my favourite aspect of the entire sequence, though, is what happens around the violence. Nothing.

The library does not become an action film set. Somewhere downstairs the librarian is almost certainly continuing her closing routine. Tomorrow's books still need reshelving. The work continues. That quiet professionalism is, for me, the most authentic part of the entire scene.

Popular culture shapes how many people imagine libraries before they ever walk through their doors. What I admire about Parabellum is that, almost accidentally, it offers an affectionate portrait of librarianship. The library is not dusty, irrelevant or intimidating. It is organised, dependable and professionally run. Information is valued. Expertise matters. The librarian is not the joke; she is the person who makes the whole sequence possible.

Tomorrow morning the doors will open once again. The shelves will still be in alphabetical order. Someone will be waiting at the enquiry desk. Another reader will ask where to find a book.

And, with any luck, they'll manage to put it back in the right place.

Dr Bláithín Hurley is a Senior Library Assistant in the Local Studies Department at Central Library, Waterford, and an Assistant Lecturer with The Open University (Ireland).

Her professional interests include local history, genealogy, information literacy, and the ways in which libraries, archives and cultural heritage are represented in popular culture.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-bláithín-hurley-52a93a18a

Bluesky: @blaithinhurley.bsky.social

From Ancient Egypt to Magical Archives: Representations of Libraries Across Genres and Time in Video Games

2026-10-19T12:20:22.693+01:00

Congratulations to Lisa O'Leary from UCCLibrary, whose blog post received a special mention in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

Libraries have a long history of representation within popular culture, but within video games, as interactive spaces, they offer a unique perspective. When included in video games, libraries are locations of exploration, problem-solving, storytelling, or even danger. But more than that, they create a memorable space that demonstrates the enduring cultural significance of libraries and information access.

Libraries appear in numerous video games across many genres, establishing the versatility of libraries as meaningful game spaces. From action role playing games (Assassin’s Creed), where libraries contain quests, to interactive puzzle games (The Séance of Blake Manor). From survival-horror titles (Resident Evil) that transform libraries into tense and unsettling environments, to science-fiction games (Horizon Zero Dawn), and even cosy games (Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!). These various depictions across genres allow virtual library spaces to remain compelling settings defined by more than real-world bricks and mortar. As Pomerantz and Marchionini (2007, p.506) assert, “Place ...is more than physical space” and this ‘place’ is “equally important in both physical and digital libraries,” (2007, p.528).

Within video games, libraries can exist across different periods of time, emphasising the long-standing cultural value of libraries. In Assassin’s Creed: Origins (Ubisoft, 2017), players explore ancient Egypt and can step inside the Library of Alexandria, one of history’s most significant libraries. By bringing this space to life, the game reinforces a library’s core purpose of collecting, preserving, and sharing knowledge across time, even as, in recent years, libraries have evolved significantly. This contemporary adaptation to meet all users’ needs with traditional and newer ways of learning, is highlighted by Sayekti et al. (2021, p.9), Clark (2015, p.152), and Houston (2015, p.84). Yet, the depiction within this game shows that ‘library as place’ is still highly relevant.

Image 1 credit: A screenshot of the Library of Alexandria in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins.

Libraries also serve as important narrative locations in video games. In The Séance of Blake Manor (Raw Fury, 2025), set in 1890s Ireland, the library plays a pivotal role. Players are required to actively engage with documents and information sources to progress and solve the game's central mystery. Thus, as a recently released game it cements libraries as places that support research and discovery regardless of time. Which aligns with Garnar and Tonyan’s (2021, p.6) observation that, despite changes in information access, libraries continue to draw users into the space.

A spin on library representation can be found in the remake of Resident Evil 2 (Capcom, 2019), set in 1990s USA. From the outside, the game's library appears to embody the traditional characteristics of a library: shelves of books, elegant surroundings, and a structured study environment. However, these expectations are quickly subverted. The library becomes a dangerous space where bookshelves conceal enemies, and compact shelving units form part of a tense puzzle. The library no longer functions as a safe place of learning but instead becomes an environment of anxiety and survival. This portrayal is altered in the sequel game Resident Evil Requiem (Capcom, 2026), which revisits the same location nearly thirty years later. The library has fallen into ruin like the city around it, with damaged shelving, scattered and decaying books, and a collapsed roof. Despite this, the emotional resonance of the location remains as it still carries traces of its past. This reflects observations that library spaces and environments have a profound emotional impact on users (Watson, 2013, slide 26).

Image 2 credit: Side-by-side screenshots of the RPD library in Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 (2019), and Resident Evil Requiem.

Another aspect of libraries in video games is the non-traditional library, i.e. databases or archives. In Horizon Zero Dawn (Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2017), set a thousand years in the future, the absence of a library-like institution and the loss of the knowledge bank becomes a prominent theme. The destruction of APOLLO, humanity’s vast knowledge archive, has devastating consequences for future generations who have lost the history, science, and cultural memory of the past. This narrative highlights the importance of access to information, and the consequences of controlling or restricting that access. Something that is relevant in the present day.

Image 3 credit: A screenshot of Apollo’s logo in Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn.

Polar opposite in genre is Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! (ArtRising, 2016), a cosy game focused entirely on organising a magical library. The relaxing gameplay centres on letting players engage directly with a core element of library work – sorting, tidying, and maintaining collections. As noted earlier, libraries can influence users on an emotional level, and this calming gameplay helps create positive associations. Thus, enabling the library to be perceived as a space shaped by personal experiences, emotions, and connections, rather than simply housing books. This aligns with Kim (2016, p.509) and Waxman et al. (2007, p.430) who both found that libraries are also places for socialising, relaxation and reflection.

Although only a small selection of games and genres featuring libraries is discussed here, these examples illustrate the unique ability of libraries in video games to support both interactive gameplay and storytelling. These libraries often hold key objects and hidden collectibles, reward exploration, and support progression through puzzles. Simultaneously, they encourage players to engage with the game world, providing insights into lore, the game’s history and its characters. As Fern’s (n.d.) article notes, the successful combination of interaction, learning, and flexibility enables libraries as a location to persist within the video game medium regardless of genre.

Ultimately, the representation of libraries in video games reflects their enduring significance within popular culture. Whether located in ancient Egypt, nineteenth-century Ireland, a zombie-infested police station, a post-apocalyptic future, or a magical archive, libraries continue to serve as important spaces for information access, exploration, and experience. Their adaptability across genres highlights the cultural importance of knowledge and the ongoing relevance of librarianship and information work. Yet at their core, both real and virtual libraries remain places where people seek knowledge, meaning, and connection.

Acknowledgements:

I acknowledge the use of Microsoft 365 Copilot to refine my original text and to correct spelling and grammar.

References:
Assassin's Creed Origins. 2017. PS5 [Game]. Ubisoft: Montreal. URL: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed/origins
Clark, J. C. (2015). Library as Place: What Students Value in a Performing Arts Library. Music Reference Services Quarterly, 18(3–4), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/10588167.2015.1093882
Fern, S. (n.d.). The library level: Archives in videogames. National Library of Scotland. Retrieved 16 June 2026, from https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/life-in-the-library/archives-in-videogames/
Garnar, M., & Tonyan, J. (2021). Library as place: Understanding contradicting user expectations. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5), 102391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102391
Horizon Zero Dawn. 2017. PS4 [Game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment: Amsterdam. URL: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/horizon-zero-dawn/
Houston, A. M. (2015). Revisiting Library as Place: Balancing Space Planning Priorities by Focusing on Core Purpose. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 55(2), 84–86.
Kim, J.-A. (2016). Dimensions of User Perception of Academic Library as Place. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 42(5), 509–514. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.06.013
Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!. 2026. PC [Game]. ArtRising: Japan. URL: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4197610/Librarian_Tidy_Up_the_Arcane_Library/
Pomerantz, J., & Marchionini, G. (2007). The digital library as place. Journal of Documentation, 63(4), 505–533. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410710758995
Resident Evil 2. 2019. PS5 [Game]. Capcom: Japan. URL: https://www.residentevil.com/2/uk/
Resident Evil Requiem. 2026. PS5 [Game]. Capcom: Japan. URL: https://www.residentevil.com/requiem/en-us/
Sayekti, R., Karim, A., Achiriah, Aditya, M., Purwaningtyas, F., Syam, A. M., & Nur’aini. (2021). When the ‘Library as place’ Matters: A Case Study of an Academic Library. Library Philosophy and Practice, 1–18.
The Séance of Blake Manor. 2025. PC [Game]. Raw Fury: Stockholm. URL: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1395520/The_Sance_of_Blake_Manor/

The Librarian and the Machine

2026-10-15T11:55:03.612+01:00

Congratulations to Grace O'Connor from Dublin City University Library, whose blog post received a special mention in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

Still from Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang. Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox via the Everett Collection.

The year is 2026. You are a librarian and AI is coming for your job.

The year is 2004. You are a librarian and Google is coming for your job.
The year is 1957. You are a librarian and a computer is coming for your job.
Time is a flat circle.

In the romantic comedy Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang, Katharine Hepburn plays Bunny Watson, a reference librarian in the Federal Broadcasting Network. Spencer Tracy plays the inventor of EMERAC (Electromagnetic MEmory and Research Arithmetical Calculator), a computer that could leave Bunny and her colleagues out of a job.

It is a theme familiar to anyone working in libraries. Every few years, a new technology arrives promising to make what we do obsolete. What makes Desk Set interesting is that it manages to be both a warning about technology and, ultimately, an optimistic film about it. More importantly, it is a surprisingly affectionate portrait of librarianship and information work.

“If I didn't work here I'd pay to get in”

The Reference Department in Desk Set is a wonderful place.

It is busy, chaotic and unmistakably feminine. The women shop on their lunch breaks, borrow each other's lipsticks, gossip and tease each other. There is something particularly striking about the contrast between the Reference Department and the organisation around it. Like many real-world libraries, the department is staffed predominantly by women, while the people with overall institutional power are men. At one point Bunny says, “If I didn't work here I'd pay to get in” (Desk Set, 1957).

Bunny initially looks like the classic caricature of the librarian. She is a middle-aged woman, swaddled in cardigans, pens in her hair, and she lives alone. Yet the character is not simply a joke about librarians. Bunny was loosely inspired by Agnes E. Law, a former CBS librarian who established the network's research library (AFI, 2026).

The researchers in the Reference Department aren't passive assistants waiting to be told what to do. They interpret questions, find sources and work out what people are actually asking. As Bunny puts it, “No machine can do our job. Too many cross references” (Desk Set, 1957). The wording may sound quaint now, but the underlying point remains relevant: a reference question is rarely just about retrieving a fact. It requires understanding the question, recognising what the person actually needs, knowing where to look and judging whether the answer makes sense.

Bunny's expertise is accumulated through experience. She knows the organisation, the collection, her colleagues and the people asking the questions. That type of on-the-job learning and real life experience is difficult to automate.

Still from Desk Set (1957, directed by Walter Lang. Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox via IMDB.

The next machine

The computer wasn't the last technology to threaten librarianship.

By 2004, the threat looked rather different. Google was rapidly transforming how people searched for information. A D-Lib Magazine editorial from Bonita Wilson that year noted that anyone could now “type a few words into a Google search bar” and receive thousands of information sources ranked by Google's algorithms. It acknowledged that professional searchers, including reference librarians, might be tempted to worry about this development (Wilson, 2004).

As we know, Google did not make librarians obsolete. The work changed, libraries adapted to the new technology and learned to use it effectively, so it enhanced the work rather than replacing it.

And this is where the comparison between Desk Set and real-world librarianship becomes interesting. The film's stereotype of the librarian as a woman who knows where to find information may now seem dated. But its portrayal of the librarian as an expert, adaptable information professional has aged surprisingly well.

People and machines

Now we have AI.

AI can spit out references, facts, and even whole essays faster than any librarian could. It can answer questions in seconds and produce convincing-looking responses without requiring the user to understand how the information was found.

That makes the question asked in Desk Set feel remarkably contemporary: what happens to the librarian when the machine can do the searching?

Still from Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang. Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox via IMDB.

The answer may lie in what librarians have always done when technology changes.

The profession has survived the card catalogue, the photocopier, the personal computer, the internet and Google. Some technologies have eliminated tasks. Some have changed the skills librarians need. But none has eliminated the underlying need for people who can evaluate information, understand context, exercise professional judgement and respond to what their communities actually need.

Desk Set does not challenge every stereotype about librarians. But it does challenge one of the most persistent stories told about the profession: that when a machine can perform one of our tasks, the librarian becomes obsolete.

EMERAC doesn't destroy the Reference Department. The librarians remain, and (spoiler alert) the machine becomes part of their workplace rather than the end of it.

Perhaps the real lesson of Desk Set is not that librarians will always beat the machines. It is that librarians have always been very good at finding a way to use them.

Time is a flat circle, after all.

Reference List

American Film Institute (2026) AFI Catalog. Available at: https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52153-DESK-SET (Accessed: 28/08/2026).

Desk Set (1957) Directed by Walter Lang. [Feature film]. 20th Century Fox.

Wilson, B. (2004) 'Using the Internet for Searching', D-Lib Magazine, 10(3), Available at: https://www.dlib.org/dlib/march04/03editorial.html (Accessed: 30/08/2024).

Libfocus Link-out for September 2026

2026-09-30T14:41:29.395+01:00

Welcome to the September edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

[image: Kadumago, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons]

The Next Chapter of Open Access Is Stewardship.
Kamran Naim argues in the Katina Magazine that the next chapter of the Open Access movement is about accepting collective responsibility for the infrastructures that make openness sustainable over the long term.

The Politics of Academic Libraries: Why Librarians Need a Seat at the Decision-Making Table.
Librarian Onyebuchi Ekpolomo recommends on LinkedIn that libraries do not shy away from “politics” and get a seat at the table where it matters.

Libraries and museums should have books, not artificial intelligence.
This opinion piece questions the growing use of AI in museums and libraries, arguing that technology should support, not overshadow, the books, collections and historical evidence at the heart of cultural institutions.

How one library built an Intranet that Staff actually use.
Too many emails, scattered information and disconnected teams are familiar challenges for many libraries. This article looks at how Lake Villa District Library built a staff hub that became a trusted source of information while strengthening workplace culture and collaboration.

Back to school in the age of AI.
Elissa Malespina discusses tools to help guide the conversation about the use of AI among students as the new academic term begins.

Ten simple rules for scholarly blogging.
Catharina Ochsner, Heinz Pampel and Martin Fenner offer practical guidance for those who wish to adopt blogging as a form of scholarly communication.

We’re Using Harvard’s Libraries Wrong.
In this opinion piece for The Harvard Crimson, Emily X. Yu advises students to draw on the expertise of librarians, rather than on AI, when doing their research.

Need a Gun Lock? Ask Your Local Librarian.
Chip Brownlee looks at an initiative in Baltimore that promotes safer firearm storage in this article for The Trace. Johns Hopkins has partnered with Baltimore’s public library system for the project, with the aim to prevent homicide, unintentional injuries, suicide and theft.

Oxford and Springer Nature Update AI Journal Guidelines.
On the back of a global survey of more than 2,600 researchers on AI disclosure practices and policies, OUP updated its guidelines on AI use for authors and editors. It includes what AI use should be disclosed when preparing manuscripts for OUP journals.

A Groupthink We Don’t Talk Much About.
Irving Janis, the Yale psychologist who developed the theory of groupthink from studying foreign policy disasters, found that the groups most vulnerable to it weren’t the incompetent ones. Neil Blair Christensen wonders if the scholarly publishing community are one of those groups.

Why We Still Need Librarians and DJs in the Age of the Algorithm

2026-09-03T08:40:27.249+01:00

In 2015, I wrote a post for Libfocus called Librarians are a lot like DJs. My argument was straightforward enough. Librarians and DJs are both curators. We sort through vast amounts of material, identify what we think has value, and connect people with resources they may never have discovered otherwise. Whether the medium happens to be books, journal articles, archives, podcasts or records, the underlying principle remains much the same. We help people navigate abundance.

More than a decade later, I find myself returning to that idea, not just as a librarian writing about DJs, but as someone who unexpectedly became a college radio DJ on UCC983FM shortly after I wrote that post.

Next week, on 10 September, I will start presenting a new show, The Thursday Mixtape, on UCC 98.3FM every Thursday evening from 6pm to 8pm. The programme will also be available afterwards through Mixcloud for anyone who misses the live broadcast and wants to listen back.

As I've been planning the show, choosing music, and thinking about what I want the show to be, I have found myself reflecting on that 2015 article and wondering whether its central argument might actually be more relevant today than it was then.

When I wrote that original piece, streaming was already well established. Spotify had been around for a number of years and services such as Deezer and Google Play Music were gaining traction. What has changed since then is the extent to which recommendation algorithms have become the primary means through which many people discover music.

There is no question that these systems provide value. Most of us have probably experienced the pleasure of finding a new artist through a playlist or radio station generated by a streaming platform. The technology is impressive, and the convenience is undeniable. We have access to more music than any previous generation could ever have imagined.

Yet I sometimes wonder whether abundance has created a different problem.

When almost everything is available, how do we decide what deserves our attention?

The traditional answer was often a trusted intermediary. For previous generations that might have been a local record shop owner, a music journalist, a friend with impeccable taste, or a radio DJ. They performed a filtering function. They listened to lots of music so that we did not have to. They developed informed opinions, championed obscure artists, and occasionally took risks on music that had no obvious commercial appeal.

The important point is that these recommendations came from people rather than processes.

Algorithms are remarkably effective at identifying patterns in our existing behaviour. They are good at telling us what listeners with similar habits have also enjoyed. What they typically cannot explain is why a particular piece of music matters to someone. They cannot tell stories. They cannot communicate enthusiasm. They cannot share the emotional connection that often sits behind a recommendation.

A human curator can and does.

This is one of the ideas behind The Thursday Mixtape. It would be misleading to describe it as a carefully structured programme. In truth, listeners may find it somewhat chaotic. There is no grand curatorial framework. There are no strict rules. There often will not be an obvious connection between successive tracks.

You might hear a post-punk classic followed by contemporary folk or cheesy pop single. An electronic track might give way to Americana or classical. Shoegaze could sit beside soul or Chinese throat singing. Indie rock may be followed by new wave, classic rock, jazz, disco or something that fits comfortably into none of those categories.

From a programming perspective, this may seem slightly reckless.

The only principle guiding the selection is that I like the songs or music I'm going to play and think it is worth sharing.

That may sound simplistic, but I would argue that this has always been one of the strengths of good radio. Many of the great DJs were not successful because they adhered rigidly to genre boundaries. They were successful because listeners trusted their judgement. People tuned in not necessarily because they knew what was coming next, but because they didn't.

That element of surprise mattered greatly to me in my formative music days and I’m hoping to bring some of that to the show.

This is increasingly rare in an environment where recommendation systems are designed to minimise friction and maximise user engagement. The logic of these systems often nudges us towards music that resembles what we have already heard. As a result, listening can become a highly personalised but sometimes surprisingly narrow, and I would say a lesser, experience.

Radio, at its best, offers something different.

It introduces randomness. It introduces risk. It creates opportunities for serendipitous discovery. It exposes listeners to music they might otherwise skip past or never encounter at all.

As librarians, we understand the value of this process. Libraries are not simply warehouses of information. They are spaces of discovery. A good library catalogue can help users locate material efficiently, but the most memorable discoveries often occur through recommendation, browsing or conversation. Sometimes the book or article that changes your perspective or research is not the one you were searching for. It is the one somebody suggested, displayed, or happened to place in your path.

Music works in much the same way.

Back in 2015, I argued that we needed librarians because we were drowning in information and choice. I also suggested that we needed DJs because we were drowning in music. Eleven years later, I think both observations remain true and even more so now.

The technologies have become more sophisticated. Our access to content has expanded beyond anything we could have imagined. Yet the need for informed, passionate, human recommendation has not disappeared.

If anything, it has become more important. It is now essential.

The Thursday Mixtape is a small attempt to contribute to that tradition. For two hours every Thursday evening, I will be sharing songs that I think deserve to be heard. There may be no obvious logic to the sequence. There may be no overarching theme. There may be moments when the playlist appears to have wandered completely off course in to a strange bizarre listening world.

But that is the point.

Discovery has always been a little messy.

And sometimes the best recommendations come not from an algorithm that knows exactly what we want, but from another human being who simply says: "Listen to this."

Libfocus Link-out for August 2026

2026-08-30T21:30:09.684+01:00

Welcome to the August edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

As Gov. Healey weighs library bill, readers say: let librarians decide.
In this article for Boston.com, Annie Jonas looks at bill S.2696, which is under consideration by the Governor of Massachusetts this month. The bill would give librarians more power to choose and display books and make it more difficult for books to be pulled from the shelves. Crucially, it would also protect librarians from being penalised due to their collection decisions.

Their Library feature in Clash Magazine.
Ever wondered about the literary influences behind the music? Well look no further than the 'their library' feature in Clash Magazine. Add some strange, funny and inspiring titles to your TBR list with recommendations from NYC group Slow Fiction, Nell Mescal, Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy and more.

Refusal as Instruction: Equipping Patrons to Resist AI, Data Brokers, Big Tech, & More.
A journal article by Hannah Cyrus on technology refusal classes she runs at her library, including
‘Avoiding AI’. Cyrus advocates that libraries as values-driven organizations have a role to play in
facilitating patrons’ rejection of technology, just as much as in their adoption of it.

Pat Donlon obituary: First woman director of a national institution, librarian and academic.
Following the passing of Pat Donlon, the Irish Times looks back on her life as the first woman Director of a national institution, librarian, and her part as one of a remarkable generation of Irish women who were among the first in their families to attend university in the 1960s.

Rethinking Rankings: A Moral Ambition?
Lizzie Gadd examines in her article in the Bibliomagician global university rankings through the lens of meaningful social change. She applies the historian’s Rutger Bregman’s six warning signs that a common practice may be wrong to shortcomings of university rankings.

Reimagining openness in academic libraries: Reflections from ALN conference 2026.
Open Research Librarian Abi Harrison-Henshall and Open Research Specialist Dr Sarah Kneen from the University of Manchester report on the Academic Libraries North 2026 Conference, which asked participants to think beyond Open Access as simply making research free to read. This summary piece raises some important questions currently being discussed in research libraries.

A ‘bananas’ order for 5,000 obscure titles from a bookshop in Galway fuels suspicion.
A wave of mystery bulk book purchases is puzzling European booksellers, with many suspecting the titles are being bought for AI training rather than readers. The trend raises concerns about copyright, publishing ethics, and AI's impact on the book industry.

‘More real than anything you’ll see scrolling’: the radical resurgence of UK fanzines, 50 years after punk.
Fifty years after punk zines like Sniffin’ Glue, DIY music fanzines are enjoying a revival across the UK as fans seek a more personal, tangible alternative to algorithm-driven online culture. From Glasgow to Belfast, creators are using self-published magazines to build communities, document local music scenes and celebrate independent voices.

6 reasons libraries should look beyond the MLS.
Bryn Geffert argues that MLS requirements hinder academic libraries and instead calls for recognising alternative credentials and interdisciplinary expertise in recruitment.

The case for a professional foundation in librarianship.
Responding to Bryn Geffert, Bobbi Newman and Sam Helmick counter that the Master of Library Science and professionally trained librarians remain more essential than ever.

Artist Una Watters and the Cost of the Marriage Bar on Irish Libraries

2026-08-28T16:29:39.421+01:00

Article by Libfocus guest author Holly Meade-Kennedy. Holly works within the Irish academic library sector and is passionate about social justice and EDI.

During a recent trip to the National Gallery of Ireland, I paused as I walked by a striking painting of a woman walking in the rain, holding an umbrella in front of Trinity College. As I began to read the short blurb that accompanied it, I learned it had been painted by Una Watters, an Irish librarian and artist. ‘Una was forced to retire from her post as a librarian due to the Irish marriage bar in 1945,’ it explained.

The Irish marriage bar was introduced in the 1920s, requiring female civil service workers to retire from employment once they married (Foley, 2022), anchored by a bedrock of deep enmeshment between religious and civil life. It grew into a pervasive cultural norm across banks, primary teaching, local health boards and the private sector until the civil service requirement was ultimately revoked in 1973.

Before I had even made it home that evening, I began furiously Googling Una Watters. As a teacher currently working in an academic library, I felt acutely aware that it could have been my career that needed to be sacrificed, had I been born just a few decades earlier. I had thought I had stumbled upon a famous painter I had somehow never heard of, expecting to find hundreds of articles, possibly some podcasts and certainly listings of other exhibitions where I could see more of her work. In reality, the results were frustratingly sparse. While a few online articles documented Una’s life, they fell far short of the extensive record an artist of her talent deserves.

Image from Pexels.com

Yet even with an academic library catalogue at my fingertips, the search results were starkly blank: a frustrating reminder that collective memory often fails some of the most talented and brilliant women. But who better to be tasked with finding information buried deeply than those of us who work in libraries? In the Avengers universe, this is my form of superpower.

Born Una McDonnell in 1918, she grew up in Finglas and entered Dublin’s public library service in the late 1930s. Dual identity seems to be a theme of Una’s life, as by day she was a library clerk working in the Capel Street and Phibsborough branches, and by night she was a student at the National College of Art and Design. Due to ill health, she never had the chance to complete her studies, but clearly what she had learned and the innate talent she possessed was more than enough to allow her to create some incredible works of art.

In 1945, Una was forced to resign from her job as a librarian when she met her husband Eugene Watters. Looking back, we can clearly identify the devastating historical drain of female intellect and institutional memory the marriage bar caused within Irish libraries. Our profession missed out on intelligent, creative, interesting women, like Una, who had so much to give. It should give us pause to consider just how different our libraries and public services might look today without the enforcement of the marriage bar.

Think, for instance, of Henriette Avram, who invented machine-readable cataloguing (MARC) in the 1960s. This became the international language of information, allowing libraries anywhere in the world to instantly share cataloguing data, paving the way for the automation of libraries and setting the stage for the modern internet search systems we use today. Without Henriette Avram, the global library network as we know it today would not exist. If Henriette had been a married woman in Ireland, the world may not have MARC records today. How many Irish Henriette Avrams did we legally cast aside? What standard, what system or what creative breakthrough did Irish libraries lose forever simply because a brilliant woman decided to get married?

Though the State took her library job, it couldn’t strip away her archivist’s instinct, and Una found a new way to catalogue history. With her free time, Una created incredible works of art with a unique modernist style, using elements of Cubism and Futurism to depict figures in interesting, angular forms. She used her art to document social change in paintings like Cappagh Road (1960). This painting documents a vanished era when community life was lived out on the street. It captures a time when neighbours congregated on corners without phones to distract them from conversing with one another and the local shop was the true centre point of the estate.

Una’s untimely death occurred in 1965 when she was just 47 years old, and Eugene subsequently gifted her paintings to family and friends. It was that same year Una had won an Arts Council competition to design the official emblem for the 1916 Rising Golden Jubilee, known as the Sword of Light. The logo was used on badges, stamps and even Dublin buses. The £100 prize cheque arrived in the post on the morning of Una’s funeral, once again symbolising that Una’s life was sadly marked by an undeserved series of ‘almosts’.

Because Una’s work was hung in the dining rooms and kitchens of her loved ones around Ireland, she was eclipsed from Irish public memory. However, in 2022, Una’s niece Sheila Smith endeavoured to become a new keeper of her memory. Using the 1966 catalogue from the memorial exhibition Eugene had held in her honour before dispersing her paintings, Sheila, partnering with writer Mary Morrissy, began tracking down the missing canvases. They ultimately located most of her original 37 paintings, culminating in the 2022 retrospective exhibition in Dublin’s United Arts Club aptly titled ‘Una Watters: Into the Light’.
Serendipitously, one place where her work remained visible to the public throughout that time was Phibsborough Library where Una had once worked. She had gifted her painting ‘The Four Masters’ to the library in 1959. There is a profound irony here: a woman whose own legacy faded into the shadows had painted a masterpiece celebrating the Franciscan friars who were the ultimate keepers of Irish memory. Una left a physical anchor of her talent in the custody of information-keepers, ensuring that the library would guard her memory until we were ready to discover it again.

Una’s story brings to mind the many women who stayed in the shadows, with their genius and creativity halted because of restrictions like the Irish Marriage Bar. Librarians have the skills and passion to discover, share and celebrate information and stories that were once forgotten or even buried. Our priority must be to champion those who have been pushed to the margins or left off the shelves entirely.

References:

Foley, D. (2022). ‘Their proper place’: women, work and the marriage bar in independent Ireland, c. 1924–1973. Social History, 47(1), 60–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2022.2009692
Mary Morrissy ‘Una Watters Publications’ 2022 https://unawattersartist.com/publications/

Janeway 1.8 & 1.9 Showcase

2026-08-14T10:00:24.605+01:00

Janeway'll be hosting a showcase of the new features introduced in Janeway 1.8 and 1.9 soon, to which you are all invited.

When: Wednesday 26 August, 15:30–16:30 (UK time)
Where: Microsoft Teams — link below.

Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/397743722693089?p=zFlqBcWf4TAdEv87cS
Meeting ID: 397 743 722 693 089
Passcode: Xo2k6zQ6

This session is particularly aimed at press managers and editors, as several of the changes affect journal and press configuration, contact handling, and styling -- but anyone is welcome.

Highlights include:

A new Accessibility page for journals and presses (not repositories), including:
- A living VPAT
- The ability to add or link your own accessibility statement at journal or press level
Alt text support
Content management system draft/published settings, and how these relate to sitemaps, and the WCAG "Multiple Ways" success criterion
Discontinuation of the OLH, Material, and Clean themes, with a move to the Clarity theme
New contact manager
Large images are not pixellated or skewed any more
- You can control journal publishing status, including a "test" status

Libfocus Link-out for July 2026

2026-07-31T13:58:08.108+01:00

Welcome to the July edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

‘Open season’ on scholars’ rights if Elsevier loses Meta fight.
Jack Grove reports in the Times Higher Education that if Meta wins its AI scraping case, academics could lose control over how their work is used - leading to the surprising sight of many researchers siding with Elsevier to defend author rights.

If the Library Is the Heart of the University, Then Treat It Like One.
In his blog post, the Librarian, Educator, and Consultant Trevor A. Dawes argues that the success of academic libraries in achieving seamless access to information is also a problem when they become invisible.

Human Books, Real Stories: Creating Space for Empathy at the Human Library in DCU.
This practice-based article by Eilís O'Neill and Gwendolyn O'Connor looks at two Human Library events held in DCU in 2024 and 2026. Teams across the university came together to deliver the events, where volunteers took part as human 'Books'. They shared their experiences of prejudice or stigma with community members or 'Readers' who borrowed them for open conversations, with the aim of breaking down stereotypes and encouraging empathy.

Cut, Paste, Print: How UBC Library is making space for zine culture across both campuses.
Anna Moorhouse from the University of British Columbia describes how the teams in UBC's libraries are using zines to promote the library, connect with students and highlight their collections. The annual UBCO Library zine promotes library services, collaboration with faculty on zine projects aids discovery of their special collections, and staff have delivered workshops on incorporating zine-making into undergraduate courses.

University Libraries are essential in the age of AI.
Interesting response from the Ontario Council of University Libraries to a recent AI task force report, affirming the critical role libraries can play in preparing students and researchers for the age of AI.

Taking the Pulse: a National Survey on Generative AI in Libraries.
Western Region Section of the Library Association of Ireland in partnership with the UCD iSchool have launched a national survey exploring the use, perception, and impact of Gen AI across the Irish library sector.

Archiving with AI.
Matt Enis discusses how Special Collections and Archives grapple with how to manage projects involving AI responsibly, as AI companies offer libraries funding for digitisation projects.

Not just books - how renting a sewing machine from the library can improve democracy.
Erike Benke for the BBC looks at how Finland's libraries are increasingly being valued not by how many books they lend, but how they help societies function.

Refusal as Instruction: Equipping Patrons to Resist AI, Data Brokers, Big Tech, & More.
Hannah Cyrus explores how library workers can align technology use and instruction in library settings with library values, through championing the refusal of technologies that conflict with values like privacy and intellectual freedom.

AI makes foundational knowledge more important than ever.
Manu Kapur argues that "employers will need those who can reason – not only with AI but, more importantly, against it".

Beyond the Library: Some thoughts on Retirement

2026-07-29T11:37:45.347+01:00

Guest post from Helen Fallon Helen retired as Deputy Librarian at Maynooth University in 2022.

Introduction
Retirement is a new stage of life which all library staff will eventually encounter. It’s a major transition, comparable to leaving home to go to university or moving to a new country and requires as much or perhaps more planning than working - no job is as flexible and unregulated. At work you have a clearly defined role. That is no longer the case in retirement and it can be quite daunting to begin anew.

Most people are living longer and if you retire at 65 there is a good change you will have at least 15 or maybe 20 years where you can still be quite active. You can view retirement as a new dawn, a time to reinvent or fine-tune yourself according to a template of your own making.

Four years ago, in 2022, I retired from a career in librarianship that spanned over forty years. This blog post distils some of my experiences, reflections and suggestions. It doesn’t refer to financial planning for retirement, something which is crucial to do, long before your retirement date arrives.

Preparing for retirement
You have given service to others for a long period of time. Now is the time to focus on yourself, to do things you have always wanted to do. Explore options. Don’t immediately rush into commitments without taking some time to consider what you want to do, in both the short term (first year) and in the long term (5 years). If you take on commitments very quickly, you risk filling your time up meeting other people’s needs. Plan your retirement in such a way as to ensure your world is broadening rather than narrowing. Having completed your contribution to work, it’s time to enlarge your contribution to your personal life, and to develop interests and activities that appeal to you.

Task 1:
Make a list of things you would like to do or do more of, but don’t have time for at the moment. Be as specific as possible. Date the list and save it. It can be helpful to look back on this when you retire. Your interests may have changed, but there is value in thinking about it and actually writing down some things you would like to do if you had more time.

I recommend Dr Maureen Gaffney’s book Your One Wild and Precious Life, particularly the Late Adulthood section. I found the book very interesting, particularly the different needs of people in relation to structure. A psychologist, she relates the need for structure in retirement back to childhood, and what is termed attachment style. A person with insecure attachment style (possibly a parent is absent or unable to provide for their needs) will need a more structured approach to retirement, than a person who has experience security in childhood. She suggests you don’t view retirement as a completely blank canvas but equally don’t plan to fill the hours from 9 to 5, from Monday to Friday. It’s likely you may spend a good lot of the first year catching up with people, celebrating your retirement and maybe doing some travel you didn’t have time for before. But then you have to ask yourself – what am I going to do for the rest of my life?

Practice your retirement
Try to prioritise non-work-related meaningful activities before you retire. Allowing these activities to take up more space in your life will ease the transition. I’m interested in relearning the Irish language. A few years before I retired Maynooth University offered Irish classes at lunchtime to staff. I did this for two years and got my school Irish to a reasonable level. Since retiring I’ve done two courses with Conradh na Gaeilge and gone to the Gaeltacht. I think it helped that I had undertaken the refresher at lunchtime with work.

Task 2
Write down the answer to these questions.

How do you find meaning at work?
How much of your identity is tied up with work? (Identity doesn’t remain fixed but changes as your life develops).
What roles do you play in your life?

Finding Purpose in retirement
Identify a passion/something you have a real interest in.

If you don’t have anything specific try a few different things. Look back on your childhood, was there anything you wanted to do/be?

I’d been writing down the years, a mixture of academic and creative writing. I made a decision to focus on creative writing after retirement. I’ve also decided to focus on poetry, and the occasional blog post and memoir article.

What are your priorities? Chances are you have been part of a three-year strategic plan at work. For that activities had to be prioritised. Priorities were in line with organisational values. For your retirement your priorities need to be in line with your personal values, and goals will have a different focus to work, with perhaps less emphasis on outcomes. The book Your Best Year Yet by Jinny Ditzler, while not specifically related to retirement is very good on goal setting and identifying your values and the key areas in your life. Susan Reid’s Re-Visioning Retirement: A Workbook provides detailed writing activities to help align retirement with vision, values and purpose.

Volunteering
Across our career we learn to manage ourselves, including dealing with difficult situations and working as part of a team to provide service to our library communities and increasingly beyond. We leave the formal world of work with an excellent skillset and a strong service ethic, both of which would be very valuable in the voluntary sector. Age Action co-ordinates training on using iPhones/tablets etc and they often look for volunteers to deliver training in libraries. Failte Isteach is well established, again through the library network, as a space for conversational English with new communities and they look for volunteers to facilitate groups. Library staff have skills in sourcing information which is extremely valuable in lots of different contexts.

Consider whether you want to make a regular commitment or a once off effort. I don’t want a regular commitment to be in a particular place, as I like to be free to travel. I’ve been involved in fundraising for books and stationery for a prison library in Malawi, where a relative served as chaplain. I’ve worked in Africa and enjoyed this project and the fact that it is time limited. I’ve also done occasional sessions with different groups on writing poetry.

Health
Prioritise your health and wellbeing. Hopefully you are in a reasonably good place health wise. Keep active. I swim and walk most days. I also find gardening very good for my wellbeing, and enjoy spending time with family, relatives and friends. I don’t have the energy I had ten years ago, but my enthusiasm hasn’t waned. I now accept I have to pace myself and not take on too much. Chances are you will have friends of a similar age to you. I try to limit health-related discussions when I meet up with friends. The reality is we are all growing older and health issues arise. It’s important to be positive and enjoy the present time. In his book Retirement: the Psychology of Reinvention, Kenneth Shultz writes “the most contented people tend to be those who value what’s good in their day-to-day experiences, rather than fixating on the signs of aging…wellbeing depends partly on staying positive and finding joy in small things.”

Making Connections
In his book Flourish Martin Seligman identifies three things necessary for wellbeing – connection, engagement and sense of purpose. The workplace is a community. When you retire you still need to have a sense of community. While I’m in the Maynooth University retirement group, and enjoy meeting former colleagues through this, and occasional attendance at events in the Library, I think it is important to develop new networks and friendships. Otherwise, you risk having tired conversations about the past.

I miss the intellectual stimulation of working in a university. It was a very exciting place to work, with lots going on. I attend courses from the Irish Writer’s Centre and online from time to time and also attend poetry readings, do historic walking tours of Dublin and other events. I’m meeting new people who share my interests and from that I get some of the stimulation I used get from work. When I was working there were always people to have a coffee and a chat with. In retirement I have to schedule meetings for coffee and lunch so there is more planning involved.

Task 3
What transitions have you experienced in your life?
How have you built connection into your life?

Conclusion
The good grounding in information technology and social media I got throughout my career has been of immense value to me. I can keep up to date with events locally and nationally and participate in face-to-face events and online. There’s a fabulous range of podcasts and it’s possible to learn a lot free of charge. Going forward I really want to keep those skills up to date.

Planning for retirement is vitally important. It’s good to spend some time exploring and indulging yourself the first year, possibly travelling and meeting up with people to celebrate your new freedom, then settling down to a flexible routine and to retired life in the second year and beyond. Try something new rather than sticking with the things you feel comfortable with. It’s important to be growing and learning at all stages of life.

In autumn 2026 four years will have passed since I left the library world. It’s been an interesting time and something I still appreciate is enjoying the weekend and knowing I don’t have to get up and go to work on Monday morning.

Some websites I find useful.
The Irish Writer’s Centre.
https://irishwriterscentre.ie/

The Munster Literature Centre
https://munsterlit.ie/

Poetry Ireland
https://www.poetryireland.ie/

The Museum of Literature Ireland has a wide range of exhibitions and events and a nice café.
www.moli.ie

The National Library of Ireland mailing list is really useful for the broad range of events (both in person in Kildare Street and online) and they are all free of charge.
https://www.nli.ie/

Public libraries run writing and reading clubs and they are free. I’ve signed up for the mailing lists for my local library and neighbouring libraries in Kildare.

Royal Irish Academy (interesting guest lectures)
https://www.ria.ie/library/

Building a Library Without Walls: Rethinking Library Systems Through an Argentine Community Library in Ireland

2026-07-13T12:46:10.391+01:00

This guest post is by Nadina Yedid, Assistant Librarian with Children's Health Ireland.

There’s a saying that goes, “They didn’t know it was impossible, so they did it”. This is the story of how I met an extraordinary group of people, who didn’t know it was impossible to build a library without a reading room, a storage space, or an LMS. So, we did it.

How it started

It was mid-2025 when I received a WhatsApp message from a colleague from my home country (Argentina). It was a link to an article in a local newspaper that read “A group of Rosarinos (i.e. from the city of Rosario in Argentina) created the first library of Argentine literature in Ireland” . The article explained that the founders of the project had come together out of a shared love of literature, but also as a way to recreate spaces they had in Argentina, to gather as a community, and to provide one of the things most migrants leave behind when we move: our books, in our native language. The article introduced some of the people behind the project, the idea that moved it, and had a few photos of the people building the project. But that was all. Saying I was intrigued is an understatement. Where was this library? What were the opening hours? Could I go visit? Was there an OPAC? And above all, were all these people from the photos Argentine librarians living in Ireland like me? I did some research and was able to find an Instagram account that I started to follow. I wanted to reach out, ask if they needed any help, but I worried that I might not have much to contribute. Surely there were other librarians in the group - and most likely better than myself.

A few months passed with no news, and suddenly, a post: Book Club - Saturday October 18th - Charleville Mall Library.

I attended the Book Club with the secret mission of finding out more about this library. To my surprise - or maybe not? - there were over 20 people taking part in the activity. The session included a round of presentations, throughout which I managed to keep my cover intact, without disclosing my secret librarian identity. By the end of the round I had realised none of the organisers or attendees had claimed to be a librarian. Were they also keeping their identity a secret? Or maybe there were no librarians in this library? I began to suspect, maybe this was a different kind of library than the ones I knew before. By the end of the session, the meeting gave way to informal chatter within the attendees. I had so far gathered only very vague information about the library, so I took a more direct method of research and started asking straight: “But where is the library? Where do you keep the books? What books do you have?” That is how I found out the library “Biblioteca María Elena Walsh” does not have a physical location. The books are donations from the community and authors, and they are stored in the houses of the people behind the project. They had an Excel file with around 200 book titles, and they wanted to build a catalogue, but none of them were librarians and they didn’t know how to do it. That was the moment when I let my guard down and revealed my true identity. When I told one of the organisers I was a librarian she was delighted to discover there was a library professional among us. I was immediately invited to join the project.

Building “The System”: the challenges

When I joined the first meeting of the group they were concerned about having a system that would allow them to share the books that were available through the library and lend them to other members of the Argentine/Spanish-speakers community in Ireland. The idea behind it was simple: there were people who hold books, and there were people who wanted to read books, they just needed a way to connect them. Since the library didn’t have a physical space for patrons to browse the shelves, they needed a way to let the community know which books were available. And since the library didn’t have a reading room, they needed their patrons to be able to borrow the books and read them at home. So essentially, an OPAC and a circulation module.

By the time I got to them, some of the members had made enquiries with local librarians known to them. They were told, of course, that they needed an LMS, and were recommended to find out more about Koha. The group was divided between those who wanted to implement a more traditional library management system from the outset, this meant getting Koha installed on a server, catalogue the books properly, and manage all loans in the circulation module. Others felt that might take a moment, and it was better to just circulate the Excel file with the book titles, and have another Excel file to register loans and returns. I myself had mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a librarian, I felt it was my obligation to tell them “how things should be done the right way”, but on the other hand, I was afraid that if we waited to have everything perfect to launch it, we would end up not doing it at all.

Installing Koha presented a few problems: first and foremost, I didn’t have the technical expertise to implement it. Although I had worked with the system before, it had always been as a cataloguer, with a system already installed and parameters set by Interleaf. Hiring someone to do the job would have involved costs that the library, at that time, could not afford. Then, there was the problem of cataloguing the books in MARC format. Since the books were scattered across different homes, it would have been impossible for me to access all 200 volumes to catalogue them with the item in hand. So, this needed to be a collective work, where each “book holder” could enter the data of the books they stored. However, the idea of teaching a group of people with no prior library training how to catalogue a book in MARC format was out of the question. So, I began to wonder, perhaps Koha wasn’t the right solution? Maybe a library that is different to all the libraries I knew before required a different system to the ones I had used in the past.

All the books in the library were donations, so there was no real need for an acquisitions module. All materials were monographs, so no serials module required. All the borrowers would be end users, so no need for an ILL module either. The collection itself was composed mostly by widely renowned books that would almost certainly be available for copy cataloguing in many other catalogues or… platforms? It suddenly felt obvious.

Building “The System”: the solution

We live in an era in which almost all social activities are mediated by digital platforms. There are platforms to travel, platforms to meet people, platforms to share your photos, your videos, your research, and more. There is a platform for almost anything you might want. There had to be a platform to share your collection of books. I did some research and discovered there is actually more than one, but among them was one that seemed to have pretty much what we needed: LibraryThing.

LibraryThing is a lightweight, web-based cataloguing platform that allows users to create and manage bibliographic records online. It can be thought of as something similar to Goodreads, but with a stronger focus on bibliographic metadata and structured cataloguing rather than on sharing opinions and reviews. Once you’ve created your account you can start adding books to ‘Your Library’ by copy cataloguing, importing records, or creating original records. The platform also links to a feature called “TinyCat” that turns your LibraryThing catalogue into a library OPAC and provides a small circulation system for loans. It allows for institutional accounts, which, depending on their size and type can pay as little as €3 per month.

I presented the idea to the rest of the group and we decided this system would do for the moment, at least until we have figured out whether we needed Koha or not. I recorded a short training video on how to add a book to our library. LibraryThing allows users to copy catalogue from many different institutions, such as the Library of Congress or the British Library. The sources from which you want to allow copy cataloguing can be edited, and we were able to add the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno (the National Library of Argentina). This library produces a lot of MARC records readily available through Z39.50 protocol, and it’s one of the most robust and reliable sources of records for Argentine literature.

Figure 1. Adding records through copy cataloguing

A few books from the library could not be found for copy cataloguing. Especially, donations from self-published authors, that didn’t have a bibliographic record available in other libraries. In those cases, we added the records manually, using a structured, field‑based metadata form rather than MARC records. The interface presents a simplified, metadata‑driven form for manual data entry that is very intuitive and only requires minor explanations for those who have not received library training. Again, the fields for manual entry can be customised to meet the needs of the collection.

Figure 2. Part of the template to manually input a record in LibraryThing

Once the collection has been built, you can either direct your patrons to your LibraryThing account, where they can see a full list of your holdings, including circulation information, for a more browseable experience. Or you can point them to your TinyCat site, for a more search-oriented experience.

Figure 3. View of the full collection list, with lending information

Figure 4. View of the search interface of TinyCat

The “TinyCat” feature also enables a small circulation module which allowed us to create our own Patrons database. As expressed in the Privacy and TOS LibraryThing is assumed to be in the position of data processor, and the institutions in the position of data controller, managing the data of their data subjects. So, it is the institution’s responsibility to ensure GDPR compliance for their data subjects, including collecting consent, managing consent-revocation, enabling access, etc. In our case, we did this by requesting all of our patrons who wanted to be registered in the library to complete a Google Form. The form included consent and adherence to the Maria Elena Walsh Library policies and regulations.

Once the patrons database starts to be built up, books can be checked out, returned, placed on hold, or other custom status. Preferences can be set for lending times, automatic emails to be sent to borrowers at the time of borrowing a book, reminders of coming due dates, and overdue items. The feature includes an option for patrons self-check in/out of books, and a patron interface with username and password access, although these options have not been used by our library yet. The system also facilitates reports to monitor activity by books and patrons. The only downside we have noticed is that the system does not seem to allow for reservation of books that are currently on loan. It appears the books can have only one status, either they are checked out, or reserved, but can’t be both checked out to one patron and reserved to another. Yet, for us, this is a small detail in comparison with the great benefits it offers.

Figure 5. General view of the TinyCat admin page

How it’s going

LibraryThing provided the catalogue and the circulation module, but we still needed a procedure. We created a website, bibliowalsh.org, where users could be pointed to find all the relevant information they needed to borrow books from the library - and to see the other many projects and activities the library is involved in. The website included links to a “how to borrow books” page, the library regulations, the catalogue, and the registration form.

The procedure is simple: anybody over 18 years old can register with the library for free. To do so they must complete the form available on the website and tick that they agree to the library policies and regulations. Library regulations can be found on the website, but are also hyperlinked on the registration form, for full transparency. After registering, the person receives a confirmation email, and can start borrowing books. Loans are for free; each patron can borrow one book at the same time - for now at least. They can keep it for 30 days and renew their loan for another 15 days. There are no fines for late returns, as the library works as a collaborative project and we expect to have the respect from all of our users. After registering, the person can visit our catalogue, choose from the database the book they would like to read, and email us to coordinate a collection time and location. Books can be collected from the library member who is housing the book, or can be brought to one of the library’s activities in town.

The launching of the lending system was marked with an Open Mic Night at the end of April. Since then - less than two months ago - we’ve had over 30 people signed up to register with the library. We have lent 8 books, to 7 different borrowers, and we expect to reach more and more people as word-of-mouth spreads. We have also received more donations, and we are about to reach the 290 books. Seeing these results, I can’t help but wonder: would we be in the same place if we had implemented Koha?

Final reflection

A library without walls poses a challenge to our traditional ideas of what a library is. It is possible that if I had come across this project while it was still just “an idea” I would have dismissed it myself, thinking “it is impossible”. But I think that, in this particular case, the fact that they started without a librarian on the team may actually have been what made the project possible. Simply because there was no one there to tell them this couldn’t be done. By the time I joined the team the project was already ongoing, they needed solutions, not criticism. This put me in a place where I had to rethink my own knowledge about how library services are built. What level of bibliographic quality is good enough? When does accessibility matter more than perfection? Which library tasks can be democratised? What is the role of librarians in community-led projects? My learning from this project is that traditional library systems are not always the best solution for grassroots libraries. Community needs and resources should shape library systems, rather than the other way around. And above all, as in most aspects of life, we need to be flexible - perhaps not an easy task for a librarian.

Looking back, I think the most important lesson is that libraries are built by communities before they are built by systems. Catalogues, circulation modules, and policies are important, but they are only meaningful when they support a genuine community need. In our case, technology did not create the library; it simply helped a community that already existed to share its books more effectively. The real foundation was a group of people determined to create a space for books, language, and community, even without the resources that libraries are traditionally expected to have.

As one of the latest Instagram posts from the Biblioteca María Elena Walsh says: “We are still growing, between books, gatherings, and the will to share. This is only the beginning… Subscribe.”

Figure 6. Instagram post from Biblioteca María Elena Walsh

The IADT Journal of Research + Creativity: Launched on the Diamond Ireland Press

2026-07-07T12:41:26.339+01:00

This guest post is by Jane Buggle, Librarian, Institute of Art, Design + Technology (IADT).

IADT Library is delighted to announce that the IADT Journal of Research + Creativity (IJRC) has officially launched on Diamond Ireland Press, Ireland's new national Diamond Open Access publishing platform. As a library-published, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the full breadth of IADT's disciplinary life, the IJRC represents a meaningful step forward for open, inclusive, and barrier-free scholarly communication in Ireland.

The IADT Journal of Research + Creativity is a biannual, peer-reviewed, open access journal published by IADT Library and dedicated to showcasing scholarly and creative work from across the IADT community and beyond. The journal spans the full range of IADT’s academic focus including Art, Design, Film, Technology, Applied Psychology, the Humanities, Business, EDI, Entrepreneurship, and much more.

The IJRC publishes a wide variety of contribution types, including:
• Academic articles and original research
• Literature reviews and case studies
• Creative works including poetry, photography, and original art
• Opinion pieces, reflections, and reports
• Film, television, and book reviews
• Interviews and interdisciplinary essays

Interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary submissions are warmly welcomed, reflecting IADT's ethos as an institution where creative practice and research continually intersect.

One of the most distinctive and exciting features of the IJRC is its genuinely inclusive contributor model. Unlike many academic journals oriented exclusively towards established researchers, the IJRC is open to contributors at all career stages; undergraduate and postgraduate students, academics and researchers, practitioners and industry professionals.

Crucially, peer review is calibrated to the appropriate academic standard for each contributor category, meaning that undergraduate work is assessed on its own terms, postgraduate work on theirs, and academic research to the full standard expected of scholarly publishing. This creates a genuinely democratic scholarly space where an undergraduate exploring a creative research question can publish alongside an experienced academic, with intellectual integrity maintained throughout.

The IJRC also warmly welcomes external submissions from researchers, practitioners, and students at other higher education institutions in Ireland and internationally. All research articles undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process, and the journal adheres to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is informed by the Library Publishing Coalition's Ethical Framework for Library Publishing.

The IJRC operates under a Diamond Open Access model, which means that there are no paywalls or article processing charges (APCs); it is free to read and free to publish. This commitment to Diamond OA reflects the principle that publicly funded knowledge should be publicly accessible - to students, practitioners, policymakers, and communities, not only to those with institutional journal subscriptions. In an era of rising APCs and escalating subscription costs, Diamond OA offers a genuinely equitable alternative for scholarly communication.

Diamond Ireland Press
Diamond Ireland Press, Ireland’s national Diamond Open Access publishing platform for journals and monographs, launched in May 2026. It is a key outcome of the Diamond Ireland project, funded by the National Open Research Forum (NORF), which coordinates Ireland’s national strategy for open research.

The foundations for this development were laid by Publish OA Ireland, a landscape and feasibility study conducted between late 2022 and 2025. Co-led by the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub, and funded by NORF, the project set out to map and better understand Ireland’s scholarly publishing landscape. Its outputs included a Diamond OA Platform Pilot and Feasibility Report, a Landscape Report on Scholarly Publishing in Ireland, and a Directory of Irish Diamond Open Access Journals.

This work was undertaken in response to the Irish Government’s National Action Plan for Open Research 2022–2030, which aims to achieve 100% open access to publicly funded scholarly publications by 2030. The findings of Publish OA Ireland identified the need for coordinated, national infrastructure to support Diamond Open Access publishing.

Building on this groundwork, the Diamond Ireland project was established as a second phase, September 2025 to December 2026, focused on implementation. Its central output is Diamond Ireland Press, which provides shared, publicly owned infrastructure for Irish journals and publishers using Open Journal Systems (OJS), a widely adopted open-source platform. The platform supports increased visibility and technical capacity while allowing journals to retain full editorial independence and identity. The Economic and Social Review was among the first journals to migrate, and the IJRC now joins this growing national initiative.

Alongside the Press, the project is also developing the Diamond Ireland Hub, a suite of national and international resources designed to support best-practice Diamond Open Access publishing. The Hub is intended as a sustainable network that complements the platform.

Further elements of the initiative include a tiered partnership model, enabling organisations to engage with Diamond Ireland Press at different levels depending on their capacity and needs, and plans for a platform-agnostic discovery layer to improve access to Irish Diamond Open Access content. Diamond Ireland is also connected to international infrastructure, including the European Diamond Capacity Hub, supporting the quality, sustainability, and visibility of Diamond Open Access publishing across Europe.

Submissions to the IJRC are accepted on a rolling basis. If you are a student, academic, practitioner, or researcher with work to share, consider submitting to the IJRC.

Visit the journal: ijrc.ie
Contact the editorial team: journal[at]iadt.ie
Diamond Ireland Press: diamondirelandpress.ie

Developing RDM expertise: A Librarian’s Review of the Introduction to Data Stewardship Micro-Credential

2026-06-24T10:51:50.497+01:00

This guest post is by Margaret Irons, Librarian, School of Celtic Studies,

Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5589-5601 | https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-kelly-irons/

Figure 1: Data Management Plan. The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia

Good data governance is a core component of high quality research. Researchers are now being asked to produce robust DMPs (data management plans), to comply with funder requirements, apply FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles, select appropriate repositories and ensure that research outputs remain accessible, secure and reusable.

As librarian at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, RDM (research data management) has become an important part of the library’s contribution to research excellence, open scholarship, institutional policy, funder requirements, data and metadata management and compliance.

If you are increasingly being asked to assist with and advocate for RDM or Open Research best practice, and you are looking for formal accredited training whilst also working full-time, then look no further than the Sonraí DH5001 Introduction to Data Stewardship micro-credential which meets these challenges head-on, with a thoughtfully designed programme that is both academically rigorous, seriously practical and conveniently accessible for busy professionals.

Figure 2: Sonraí Irish Data Stewardship Network logo

Micro-credentials are accredited courses available to improve skills you already have or to develop new skills in relevant emerging areas. Delivered by Sonraí, the Irish Data Stewardship Network, and hosted by University College Cork, this thoroughly practical level 9 micro-credential provides an accessible yet comprehensive introduction to RDM and data stewardship. Delivered in a flexible hybrid format over 13 weeks it is aimed not only at current and aspiring data stewards but also at researchers, research support staff, librarians, knowledge managers, research administrators and technical staff supporting research infrastructure.

Figure 3: University College Cork logo

Over thirteen weeks, myself and the 25 or so other students on DH5001, engaged with topics including research data and data stewardship, data management planning, metadata and organisation, data curation and preservation, FAIR principles, policy and compliance, rights and licensing, ethics and governance, and GDPR. Guest lectures provided valuable real-world perspectives on subjects such as Open Research, reproducibility, research security, copyright and licensing, and research ethics.

The course delivery method is particularly effective for working professionals. Lectures and guest presentations are recorded and released alongside transcripts, slide decks and comprehensive reading lists, making the course highly accessible and flexible. I particularly enjoyed the optional online Q&A sessions hosted by the Sonraí team, which offered an informal and supportive environment for all students, whilst also knowing that the Sonraí team were available regularly via email to answer any questions. I also enjoyed the timed release of each module on a weekly basis which helped to keep me working at a steady pace and on schedule.

The course is assessed through a combination of practical assignments and online learning activities. Continuous assessment consists of the completion of an initial version of a data management plan, followed by a final revised research data management plan. Between the first and the final assignment I could really see how my expertise in the area had developed and I now feel even more qualified to offer advice to researchers in my home institution.

In addition, participants complete six online e-tivities in the form of self-assessment exercises and discussion board contributions, which encourage reflection, engagement with course content, and peer learning. These online self-assessment exercises, offered insights into other students’ interesting and varied projects and also offered a supportive forum for learning and expansion of knowledge through active engagement.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course, not only as a professional development opportunity but also because RDM and open research have become a professional passion of mine and to be able to practically expand my knowledge around the subject was both rewarding and exciting. Combining critical thinking with a directly relevant and comprehensive course was both stimulating and challenging in equal measure. It was definitely a bonus to be able to develop my expertise without the added commitment of undertaking another Postgraduate Degree or Masters.

The Sonraí team should be commended for developing and delivering such a high-quality programme. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Dr Aoife Coffey, whose dulcet lecturing tones became something of an unexpected highlight of the course. Aoife’s lecturing style is enthusiastic, engaging, and calming all at once. The programme was enriched by the contributions of many excellent Sonraí lecturers and a diverse range of guest speakers, all of whom brought valuable expertise and perspectives.

In a time where institutions, funders, and publishers increasingly expect robust data practices, this course has further equipped me with skills that are immediately transferable and professionally valuable. I believe this micro-credential represents an important advancement in the professional development landscape for data stewards nationally and it offers the opportunity to remain relevant in rapidly evolving research data management environment.

The next intake to the course will be January 2027 and registration will open in the autumn. Follow Sonraí on LinkedIn for further information.

Acknowledgements:

I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT to refine my original text and to correct spelling and grammar.
Thank you to The Registrar, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for providing funding to participate in this course.

References:

UCC Micro-credentials courses https://www.ucc.ie/en/dh5001/
Sonraí – The Irish Data Stewardship Network https://datastewards.ie/
The Turing Way Data Management Plans https://book.the-turing-way.org/reproducible-research/rdm/rdm-dmp/
Data Management Plan. The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia. Zenodo. The Turing Way Community & Scriberia (2024) https://zenodo.org/records/13882307
Coffey, A., Joy, C., Hayes, A., McCabe, G., O'Dwyer, L., McCarney, E., Clarke, R., Madden, F., Stokes, D., Quinn, C., Dalton, M. and Noonan, E. (eds.) (2025) Navigating Open Research - A guide for early career researchers. CONUL Research Group. https://doi.org/10.33178/10468/17586
National Action Plan for Open Research https://norf.ie/national-action-plan/

Literacy for the future: Review of the LIR Annual Seminar 2026

2026-06-18T12:49:19.163+01:00

This guest post is by Cathal Madigan, Library Assistant at TU Dublin.

On Wednesday May 13th, 2026, I had the privilege to attend the LIR Annual Seminar 2026. Hosted in the ASIERA Offices in Dublin and recorded over MS Teams, the Seminar had a theme of “Supporting Emerging Literacies,” and asked the question of how libraries design and deliver new literacy programmes. The presentations had a shared idea of literacy, with each presenter showcasing how libraries could hope to use these programmes to bolster services and assist clients.

LIR Group logo, from LIR Group website

The Seminar opened with a keynote from Dr Andrew Cox, Senior Lecturer at the School of Information, Journalism and Communication, University of Sheffield. Focusing on the emerging use cases of AI and how librarians could integrate it, Dr Cox provided an examination of the potential costs and benefits of AI integration in libraries, exploring the importance of knowing how best to safely integrate it into library structures and be aware of how students are using it in their daily activities.

Ann Byrne, Digital Librarian for Hibernia College, spoke about “digital literacy for all” and reflected on the process of creating a course in digital literacy for Hibernia College, a process that began in 2023 in the aftermath of COVID-19 as staff realised that students had no real instructions for how to use digital literacy. This made it a good choice for an open course system as it is a universal need. The pilot programme launched in 2023 and was deemed a success as part of UNESCO's Global Media and Information Literacy Week and Be Media Smart campaign from Media Literacy Ireland. The success prompted a second phase in 2025, which added new lessons and incorporated feedback like a dedicated module on AI.

ASIERA Offices, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, where the event was hosted, from archdaily.com

Ronan Madden, Learning & Teaching Team Lead at UCC Library, discussed the new Digital and Information Literacy Framework that UCC had begun developing. A new team, the Framework provides tailored classes on request with a focus on increasing awareness of the different forms of literacy across the university, such as information, digital, media and AI literacy. Ronan outlined how the Framework had been developed and used by students and faculty at UCC, how students assisted with peer review, and how it is intended as a living document that is always innovating and expanding.

Siobhán Dunne,Teaching, Research Support and User Experience, TCD, spoke about the concept of Sustainability Literacy (i.e. the knowledge of the relationship/conflicts between humanity and the environment), discussing the Sustainability Action Plan that Trinity had launched in February 2026 after a survey for students requested sustainability awareness. One of the major components of the plan was that Sustainability Literacy would provide a new opportunity to position the library as a trusted information resource for students and staff. As an example of this, Siobhán shared how part of the Action Plan involved creating a space where students could learn about AI and its impact on the climate, and share their concerns.

A still from Siobhan Dunne’s presentation showing TCD’s Sustainability Action Plan for 2026

Patrick Keegan, Learning Specialist Librarian at RCSI, discussed a pilot workshop for postgraduate learners which included AI Literacy, or learning when would be an appropriate time to use AI. The concept of "cognitive offloading" was discussed (i.e. how the brain can only process so much information so steps must be taken to know ways to offload). Patrick emphasised how important it was to train graduates to be ready to avoid detrimental offloading when in the workplace, and that being able to retain cognitive prowess when working with patients is a key skill. The workshop he worked on provided three examples of issues healthcare students may face as AI usage becomes more commonplace; how to critically evaluate suggestions from AI, how it can disrupt learning journeys, and how to explain the choices one makes in their day-to-day operations. Patrick ended with the key takeaways from the workshop and suggested a “human in the loop” style of AI oversight where suggestions made by AI are always run by a skilled professional first before being implemented.

Dr Simone Fühles-Ubach, Library and Information Science at TH Köln, and Professor Elisabeth Kaliva, Computer Scientist and Educational Researcher at TH Köln, opened the final stage of the Seminar with a shared presentation on a research project they had been undertaking since 2020, based on the “Data Literacy” research project at TH Köln. They presented the progress and research findings of their project, focusing on the contribution and collaboration of academic libraries and the impact this had on students. The Data Literacy Initiative (DALI) at TH Köln has become a centralised shared working space for students and staff, creating an infrastructure to advise students on data literacy and usage of it while researching.

Ben Lee from Shared Intelligence, speaking about future literacy at the LIR Seminar 2026

The final speaker of the day was Ben Lee, director of think-tank consultant group Shared Intelligence. His event was named “Come Rain or Shine: futures literacy for libraries, and the role of libraries in building futures literacy among their users and communities.” Ben discussed how a report was made in 2023 to discuss the challenges facing public libraries in the United Kingdom and how to increase awareness and usage in local communities. The report suggested finding new ways to reverse declining attendance rates in libraries, and to beware the retirement cliff. Ben spoke of Futures Literacy, i.e. the concept of using the ideas of the future to inform the actions of the present. This led into a group exercise where Ben asked those in attendance to combine two uncertain future concepts on a graph to create different versions of the future, showing the different paths an uncertain future can generate, before the Seminar concluded.

The LIR Seminar proved to be a stimulating day. I was pleased to get to attend and found the experience very enlightening. The overall questions raised in the introduction of the Seminar of how libraries design and deliver new literacy programmes was appropriately answered and elaborated on. Each of the different representatives discussed how their own libraries oversaw new programmes to increase awareness of digital literacy among their clientele, providing a wide variety of alternate perspectives that showed how each of the guest speakers came to their conclusions. This allowed for improvements in their offered services and allowed for each facility to be more adept at handling queries asked by the modern library customer.

Demystifying Joyce - A reflection of the Ulysses Book Club at Dublin City University Library

2026-06-16T08:49:45.412+01:00

This guest post is by Alana Mahon O'Neill who is a library assistant based in the Research and Teaching directorate in DCU Library.

Please note: This article gives examples of the language in Ulysses that led to the novel being banned in several countries.

Ulysses is considered one of the most important texts of Irish Literature and it is celebrated as a pinnacle of English modernist literature. Celebrants mark the occasion annually on Bloomsday by walking Dublin's streets, reenacting scenes from the book, and turning fiction into living history.

James Joyce's mark on Dublin City. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons.

Joyce echoes in our culture, referenced in literary works from Flann O’Brien to Sally Rooney and resonates within the musical ambitions of Kate Bush, Lou Reed, and Fontaines D.C., to name a few. Widespread literary consensus holds that Joyce has influenced much of modern literature and art, and that Ulysses alone challenges narrative structure, experiments with language, and introduces stream of consciousness.

Ulysses inspired musicians Kate Bush, Lou Reed and Fontaines D.C. who reference lines from the text in their song lyrics. Image credits: Photographs by Columbia Records via Wikimedia Commons, Garry Gross and Simone Joyner/Getty Images.

So, why haven’t more people read it? Last year, the Dublin City University (DCU) Arts and Culture department announced a Ulysses book club. The objective: meet once a month (with a break for the summer) and discuss two chapters over some tea and biscuits? Yeah, sure.

The gathering was successful thanks to Jen and Claire. Inspired by their own book club, they facilitated this reading of Ulysses as James Joyce “enthusiasts”, rather than as academics, and invited an assembly of Drumcondra residents and DCU staff. We conversed at meetings and between sessions shared links to articles, podcasts and interesting tidbits. We all had very different approaches to engaging with the material: some read the text, others preferred the audiobook. Personally, I opted for full immersion by consuming the two at once, like a VR headset. This was particularly engaging for chapters like Circe, where Joyce uses onomatopoeia for inanimate objects, which the audio production conjured up into an eerie chorus of voices.

Examples of onomatopoeia from 'Circe', chapter 15 of Ulysses

If you haven’t read Ulysses, the pictured quotes might be surprising. It was for me. Popular sentiment is that it has been rigorously analysed by prestigious academics and therefore becomes “inaccessible” for the vast majority. This negates the most fascinating aspect of the book: it’s silly.

Ulysses is full of word plays, tongue-in-cheek allegories and crude language. It’s shameless, rude and transgressive in its religious, political and social allusions. When people gush incredulously about the book being banned in Ireland, believe them.

A sample of the 'highbrow' language used in Ulysses.

Also, don’t believe them. It was never banned. Irish authorities believed so few would read the novel that there was no need to submit it to the censorship board.¹

In hindsight, it was a miracle that the book was ever published. Joyce went through incredible lengths to make Ulysses true to life. While living in Paris, he wrote back letters to family members in Dublin to confirm the minutest of details, from the time it takes for a piece of paper to float down the river Liffey,² to whether one could jump the fence at No. 7 Eccles Street,³ and the presence of a shooting star in the night sky on June 16, 1904.⁴

“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” - James Joyce.⁵

Jen and Claire shared some of their “rabbit-hole” deep dives into references within and between the lines of the text. Businesses mentioned on O’Connell Street led to an elaborate unfolding of the origin of Elvery’s Elephant logo.⁶ In Drumcondra, the Goose Tavern pub may have taken its name from the flocks of Brent Geese that flock to the area in the winter months. There are many more examples, but I do not have the word count to start unpacking. It felt like every line of the book had some deeper meaning, some way to spin it to illustrate secret and nuance, a reality to the unreality. After all, more than 600 people were referenced in the text, from Irish historical figures such as Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O'Connell, to real people such as pub owner Davy Byrne and National Library of Ireland director Richard Irvine Best.⁷

I would also like to acknowledge that we didn’t always enjoy the process. Some of us expressed frustration at its meandering narrative, its sizeable chapters, and the likability of its protagonists. ‘Do you like Bloom, yet?’ was a frequent topic at each meeting. I think such dialogue is important because in a typical book club setting, with contemporary texts, we get to express our frustrations and delights at surface-level impressions. If a book published last year has something unlikable about it, then why not a classic, too? Joyce is thoughtful in his detail, but also rather pedantic and self-indulgent, and this is also what made Ulysses so intriguing and mysterious to his critics.

Jen and Claire’s conversations at the book club were heavily inspired by the text “Ulysses and Us”,⁸ which argues that Ulysses is written about the people of Dublin and for the people of Dublin, but only for those who are willing to seek it out.

“It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.” - James Joyce.⁹

Joyce initially had quite an incredulous reception in Ireland, and only started seeing recognition posthumously. With that, his most lingering legacy appears to be the preconception that his works are not made to be read by just about anyone.¹⁰

So, what are we missing out on?

It sounds like the challenge has been set; most don’t engage because they don’t think of themselves as the target audience. Self-exploration involves challenging preconceptions. Let me assure you that Ulysses is for you.

If there is one thing I could take away from this experience, it is that, one, we need more book clubs focusing on demystifying classic novels, and two, everyone should try to read Ulysses cover to cover at least once. Well, this is what I would personally declare; other passionate readers have assured me that I will read it again.

The final gathering of the Ulysses Book Club in Belvedere Library DCU, March 2026. Image credit: Kyran O'Brien/DCU, 2026.

I also want to declare my thanks to Jen and Claire, whose passion and dedication made the experience so enjoyable for everyone involved.

¹McCourt, J. (2023). From hostility to homage. The reception of Joyce’s Ulysses in Ireland. Journal of Irish Studies, 37, 4–14. https://www-jstor-org.dcu.idm.oclc.org/stable/27301718
²Joyce, J., & Murray, J. (1922). Letter from James Joyce, in Paris, to his aunt, Josephine Murray. https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000743146/HierarchyTree#tabnav
³Joyce, J., & Murray, J. (1922). Letter from James Joyce, in Paris, to his aunt, Josephine Murray. https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000743153
⁴Olson, D. W., & Olson, M. S. (2004). The June Lyrids and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Sky & Telescope, 108(1), 76–77.
⁵From a conversation with Frank Budgen, circa 1918-1919, Zurich. Budgen, F. (1960). James Joyce and the Making of 'Ulysses'. Indiana University Press. pp. 67-68.
⁶Rodgers, J. (2025, Jul 11). The colourful story of the Elephant House on Dublin's O'Connell Street. RTÉ. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/0711/1495830-elephant-house-dublin-sackville-street-oconnell-street-elverys-supermacs/
⁷Who Were the Real Men in the Library from "and Charybdis"? (2024, Mar 28). Blooms and Barnacles. https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/who-were-the-real-men-in-the-library-from-scylla-and-charybdis
⁸Kiberd, D. (2011). Ulysses and us: the art of everyday living. Faber.
⁹James Joyce, on his collection of short stories ‘Dubliners’ in letter to his publisher, Grant Richards, on 23 June 1906, in Joyce, J., & Gilbert, S. (Ed.) (1957). Letters of James Joyce. Faber and Faber. pp. 63-64.
¹⁰McCourt, J. (2023).

Discover the Latest Issue of the Health Sciences Libraries Journal (HSLJ)

2026-06-15T13:40:18.748+01:00

This is a guest post by the HSLJ editorial team about the latest issue of the Health Sciences Libraries Journal, Vol. 2 No. 1, (2026)

The Health Sciences Libraries Journal, Vol. 2 No. 1 (2026)

The theme throughout the current issue of HSLJ is Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion (DEBI).

Dr Deborah Reed reflects on her career in librarianship across the UK and Ireland, exploring accessibility in Further Education and the importance of creating truly inclusive environments. Walsh et al. continue this conversation with an insightful examination of accessibility and belonging for neurodiverse librarians and library workers. While Jane Burns explores Graphic Medicine and its power to portray trauma across and between communities.

Readers will also discover the impact of the Human Library project through O’Neill and O’Connor’s account of a successful event at Dublin City University, where human “Books” and “Readers” come together to challenge stereotypes and foster understanding.

The issue also features a diverse range of contributions, including a dissertation summary by Annmarie Whyte on Australia’s role in the development of library and information science, a scaffolded model used to train librarians in systematic and scoping review services from Murphy and Adydan of Vanderbilt University, and Penny Wiggle’s engaging career journey across public, health, and school libraries.

Rounding out the issue are Mairéad Mooney’s historical exploration of James Wilkinson’s leadership of Cork City Libraries, Mc Keown and Lombard’s practice‑based insights on AI, and a report from the Health Sciences Libraries Group (HSLG) Conference in March, ensuring valuable insights are shared with the wider library community.

Whether you are interested in inclusion, professional practice or the stories of librarians past and present, this issue has something for every library and information professional.

Read the full issue here: https://journals.ucc.ie/index.php/hslj/issue/view/388.

Call for Winter 2026 submissions: The HSLJ editorial team invites new and returning authors to submit their work for our next Issue. We welcome submissions from students, researchers, and practitioners across all areas relevant to the journal. For submission guidelines and further information – https://journals.ucc.ie/index.php/hslj/about/submissions

Research Articles - Submission Deadline: 10 July

General Submissions - Submission Deadline: 1 October

Why publish in An Leabharlann?

2026-06-03T13:22:15.531+01:00

Guest Post by Hugh Murphy, interim editor of An Leabharlann.

This month marks the (counts on fingers) twenty ninth anniversary of me becoming a qualified librarian. In some ways it doesn’t feel like that, but by most professional metrics I am a probably well into dinosaur territory. What that brings of course is experience and (hopefully) a degree of professional, if not necessarily personal maturity. And our profession needs that – I hope.

However, our profession also needs freshness of perspective. This is critical as library and information studies in Ireland are shaped not only by theory and practice, but also by the ideas, research, and voices of those within it. One of the most powerful ways we can contribute to our wonderfully varied field is through academic writing and publication in professional journals.

Publishing may seem daunting at first, but it is underpinned by a diversity of perspectives. And for our more recent graduates, a fresh perspective and outlook is a strength. You are uniquely positioned to question established practices, explore emerging technologies, and reflect on the changing role of libraries in Irish society. Whether your interests lie in digital literacy, community engagement, unique and distinctive collections, or open access and scholarship, your insights can add really meaningful value to discourse within the profession.

More than that, engaging in academic writing also strengthens your own professional development. It should sharpen your critical thinking, deepen your understanding of key issues, and hopefully enhance your confidence as a practitioner. Writing for journals such as An Leabharlann (or other LIS publications) can really enable you to compare and contrast your local experiences to a national or even global conversation. And importantly this can help ensure that Irish librarianship (in all its aspects) is visible and influential on a wider stage.

Publication in An Leabharlann is not reserved for seasoned professionals - we actively welcome contributions from early-career library staff and we have a wonderfully supportive review process. And the great thing about working in libraries is that much of what you could write about is practice based – writing about a project you have done can be an accessible starting point.

In our last two issues of An Leabharlann we have seen voices from students and early career staff through to the full cretaceous era dinosaur. But we need to ensure that this breadth continues, and is also represented in terms of diversity of library experience. Academic libraries, public libraries, special libraries – all are part of the national experience and we need all voices. An article may be too intimidating, so perhaps review a book or give a conference report. And for those of you who have delivered blog posts on platforms such as this, perhaps an article, with its greater length and rigour might be a really beneficial next step.

By choosing to write and publish, you are not only building your own career—you are helping to shape the future of our profession. Your voice matters. Your experiences matter. Ireland’s library sector benefits when its newest members contribute thoughtfully and confidently to its shared body of knowledge.

Take the first step: write, submit, and become part of the conversation. Send us an abstract at editor@libraryassociation.ie

Libfocus Link-out for May 2026

2026-05-28T10:34:28.036+01:00

Welcome to the May edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

Stitching History Together: The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Quilt Research Collections and the International Quilt Museum.
Ella Shoenberger looks at the Quilt Research Collections at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries and its relationship to the International Quilt Museum.

Observing Collections a Micron at a Time: A Tools of the Trade Post.
As part of Library of Congress’s Tools of the Trade series, Megan Zins introduces us to how microscopy is used in preservation and conservation.

Cork public library set for Counting House complex after €35m purchase.
A new public library for Cork city is set to open in the restored Counting House complex on South Main Street, with plans for expanded study, cultural, music, and community spaces in a landmark €35m redevelopment project.

Decolonizing the Community-Centered Library: Making Way for Radical, Decolonized Librarianship.
Edgardo Civallero explores how libraries can move beyond “neutral” institutional models to become collaborative, community-led spaces that centre marginalised voices, local knowledge, and social justice.

From Open Access to Preprints: Are We Repeating the Same Mistakes in Scholarly Publishing?
In this Guest Post on the Scholarly Kitchen blog, Jonny Coates argues that the next few years will prove pivotal in determining whether preprints become a stable part of the scholarly ecosystem or drift into the same patterns of fragmentation and inequity that have complicated the open access transition.

Big publishers are ripping off our public libraries.
Barry Andrews reports in the Irish Examiner that the public library model is in danger due to extortionate pricing and licensing terms for the lending of e-books by major commercial publishers.

Lost copy of seventh-century poem in Old English discovered at Rome library.
In this article for The Guardian, Rory Carroll describes the discovery of the earliest surviving poem in the English language by two scholars from Trinity College Dublin.

University Libraries names first Indigenous Knowledges faculty librarian.
Katie Randall has become the first Indigenous Knowledges Librarian in The University Libraries at CU Boulder. She speaks about how her role aims to build a more inclusive and accurate understanding of the histories and futures studied in the University.

“We’re Good at Search”… Just Not the Kind That the AI era Demands - a Provocation.
Aaron Tay reflects on how a lot of us (librarians) struggle with the impact of AI on search.

The AI detection delusion.
James O'Sullivan hits the nail on the head! “...the solution to one form of technological recklessness cannot be another. Detection tools give their users the feeling of objective certainty while delivering probabilistic guesses, and in doing so, they can cause real harm to real people — students who lose marks or face disciplinary action, professionals whose reputations are damaged, and writers whose command of English is held against them by an algorithm that mistakes simplicity for artificiality.”

What does Librarianship mean to A&SL Conference attendees? A summary of thoughts

2026-05-27T09:19:57.959+01:00

Guest post Stephanie Chen, Learning and Teaching Librarian, Academic Services, UCC Library

For the A&SL 2026 conference, I facilitated a session titled: “What does Librarianship mean to you? Putting your values into practice.” This was neither a presentation nor a case study and could easily have been a dud so I do want to extend a massive thank you to the conference organisers for being open to including this in the programme and to all the attendees for participating.

My aim for this session was to give attendees an opportunity to reflect on themes from previous sessions and, importantly, to give them a space to reflect on their own values and personal understanding of librarianship through participation in online polls, Padlet, and individual reflections.

This blog post brings together the responses shared from attendees during the session. I have also included the questions and activities used, along with some context, for those who were unable to attend. If you would like to work through the questions and activities yourself, please know there are no right or wrong answers.

Professional Values

I began the session by introducing values. Values can exist at multiple levels: societal, values of the community and users libraries serve, our own personal values, and professional values. For the purposes of the exercises, I asked attendees to try and focus specifically on their professional values. Examples of professional values include Gorman’s enduring values (stewardship, service, intellectual freedom, rationalism, literacy and learning, equity of access to recorded knowledge and information, privacy, democracy) and Lankes’ new librarianship (service, learning, openness, intellectual freedom and safety, intellectual honesty).

To help attendees get into a reflective mindset and identify a professional value, I asked them to complete the following exercise:

Think of a time when you felt proud of your work or a sense of achievement in work. What was the situation, what did you do? What was the underlying value.

Attendees were asked to share this underlying value in an online poll.

Here is a word cloud of what was submitted:

Broadly speaking, responses could be categorised into the following themes:

Service
Connection and collaboration
EDI (Equity, Diversity, and inclusion)
Access and openness
Learning and development

The next exercise explored how strongly attendees related to professional codes of ethics from various library associations. While some associations do have explicit statements of professional values, most do not and instead have professional codes relating to ethics or conduct. An analysis of 60 code of ethics sourced from the IFLA website revealed the following broad values:

user service & quality
objectivity & impartiality
privacy & confidentiality
intellectual freedom & anti-censorship
professional integrity & ethics
access to information
social responsibility
cultural & heritage preservation
equity & non-discrimination
professional development

Values from Library Associations

The majority of attendees did relate to these values, although for a number of attendees, there does appear to be a disconnect.

To try and explore this further, I asked attendees to engage in a sorting exercise in Padlet. From the list of values from library associations, attendees could sort these into four columns: non-negotiable values, important but flexible, aspirational values, and not important to me at all.

Access to information and user service appeared most often as a non-negotiable value while professional development was typically viewed as being important but flexible.

Some values, like social responsibility and cultural and heritage preservation, appeared in multiple columns. This demonstrates values do not always align between individuals and other values will take priority.

While code of ethics can help articulate shared expectations, they can also fail to address any tensions in values, especially when our own values do not align with what these codes might say. When such conflicts arise, there is rarely an easy solution. However, I would suggest understanding our own values and reflecting on where we place importance and priority can act as a useful guide.

Values into practice

To give attendees something practical to take away from the session, I asked attendees to consciously foreground one value they wanted to put into practice. With this one value in mind, I asked them to consider the following:

One tiny action I can take next week
One medium-scale change I can influence this year (project, service, policy)
One big/aspirational change I’d love to see

Attendees were invited to share their actions on a Padlet if they were comfortable doing so. Some of the smaller actions that emerged included checking in with fellow colleagues, prioritising staff wellbeing, and approaching work with more intentional positivity. Medium-term actions focused on increasing open access, improving practices, advocacy for librarianship, and professional development. Finally, some aspirational changes from attendees centred around achieving 100% open access, starting new initiatives, and the development of new library spaces or even a new library building (a hope many of us can probably relate to!)

Defining librarianship

To conclude the session, I asked attendees to reflect on a final question: What does it mean to be a librarian today?

I asked attendees to complete the sentence: Librarianship is…

While many responses were positive, framing librarianship as essential and even “badass”, it’s important to also acknowledge the complexity involved in the profession, as highlighted by some attendees: “Being a Jack of all trades,” “hard work,” and “tiring.” Overall, responses showed librarianship as being a collaborative, people-focused profession centred on sharing knowledge and helping others.

To finish, I’d like to highlight some definitions that personally resonated with me, but I would encourage everyone to view all the responses:

“Advocating and enabling for social justice and lifelong learning for everyone through collections, spaces, and research”

“Fostering a love of learning new things, while also learning new things yourself”

“A great career – be a contributor not an extractor”

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the A&SL committee for giving me the opportunity to facilitate this session and thank you to my fellow UCC Library colleagues Ronan Madden, Learning & Teaching Team Lead, and Martin O’Connor, Communications Coordinator, for supporting me in developing the session.

Finding Strength in Difference: Reflections from the HSLG Annual Conference 2026

2026-05-14T09:18:19.238+01:00

In March 2026, library and information professionals from across Ireland came together for the Health Sciences Libraries Group (HSLG)Annual Conference, held in person and centred on the theme Finding Strength in Difference. As a professional librarian working on behalf of the Irish food and drink industry, the day offered timely insights into how libraries can navigate rapid technological change while staying grounded in human judgement, ethics and collaboration.

Across the programme, speakers explored artificial intelligence (AI), professional identity, collaboration models and visibility. A consistent message emerged: our collective strength lies not in tools alone, but in how we design for connection, build shared understanding and support one another across diverse roles and settings.

Human judgement in an AI ocean

The conference opened with a keynote from Brendan Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, who spoke about navigating “an AI ocean” while retaining human responsibility and judgement. He highlighted that while AI can augment decision-making, it introduces four tensions: epistemic (black-box systems), ethical (bias), relational (loss of human connection) and legal (accountability).

Drawing on how society has historically reacted to new technologies, Kelly argued that panic is understandable but unhelpful. Instead, he advocated for responsible, transparent and human-led use of AI. Accountability, he stressed, always remains with the user, not the tool. Declaring AI use openly and questioning outputs critically are essential steps towards trust. This framing resonated strongly with librarians, whose professional values already centre on evaluation, context and stewardship of information.

Supporting one-person libraries through connection

The challenges faced by solo and small-team libraries were explored by Tony Linnane, Regional Library Manager at the HSE. One person libraries, he noted, develop wide-ranging and highly transferable skills, but often at the cost of professional isolation and increased risk of burnout.

Rather than relying solely on individual resilience, Linnane emphasised the importance of intentional peer networks and shared practice. He suggested that carefully managed use of generative AI could help ease administrative workloads and service continuity, while human oversight remains central. Crucially, connection to expert networks can reduce isolation and strengthen confidence, particularly for those working alone.

Collaboration as a force multiplier

Collaboration was another strong theme, particularly in a session on HSE Library Partner Organisation collaborations delivered by Niamh Walker Headon, Library Resources Manager at the HSE. She demonstrated how formal consortia models can expand access to high quality resources, improve equity and avoid duplication of effort across organisations.

The success of these partnerships relies on shared infrastructure, clear agreements and trust built over time. Where licensing limits access, the curation of credible free sources – such as national statistical agencies and expert blogs – can help bridge gaps. This model offers useful lessons for government and semi state bodies seeking to scale knowledge services more sustainably.

Visibility builds value

Several sessions reinforced the idea that impact depends not just on what libraries provide, but on whether people know those services exist. Bennery Rickard, Regional Librarian at the HSE, shared insights from HSE Library Day, a national awareness campaign designed to celebrate library staff and services.

Human-centred storytelling, early promotion and shared narratives helped increase engagement, pride and visibility across dispersed teams. Key takeaways included planning impact metrics in advance, promoting library spaces as well as collections, and featuring staff voices to make the service relatable. These lessons apply widely, particularly for specialist or embedded library teams seeking to demonstrate value.

Equitable access and awareness

The importance of national infrastructure was further explored in a session on the case for a National eHealth Library for Ireland, presented by Aoife Lawton and Louise Farragher. They argued that removing barriers to trusted information supports lifelong learning and professional development at scale.

However, access alone is not enough. Many users are unaware of existing resources, highlighting the ongoing need for promotion, training and information literacy. Libraries cannot assume people know what is available or how to use it responsibly; awareness must be continually rebuilt.

Preparing future talent

Mairéad Mc Keown and David Lombard from Bord Bia – The Irish Food Board, reflected on preparing future food industry talent through their graduate Co-Pilot Skills Programme. Their programme was underpinned by adult learning and knowledge management principles. It encouraged a culture of experimentation, critical and creative thinking and community connections

Social learning, ethical skills and respect for differences were identified as essential foundations for a psychologically safe learning environment.

Mairéad Mc Keown and David Lombard, Bord Bia, presenting on preparing future talent in the AI era. Picture credit Lauren Sneyd 2026.

AI literacy as a shared community skill

Aphra Kerr, Professor of Digital Media and Communication at University College Dublin, reframed AI literacy not as a technical skill, but as a community capability grounded in dialogue, critical thinking and shared learning.

She highlighted initiatives such as the EU funded ADAPT programme and AlgoWatch, which aim to make algorithms more visible and understandable to the public. Learning by doing – through workshops, labs and discussion – helps demystify AI and builds confidence without panic. These programmes emphasise empowerment over fear and align closely with librarians’ educational roles.

Key conclusions

Across the day, three clear conclusions emerged:

Design for connection first if you want capability to scale and last.
Make AI literacy and responsible use a daily habit, not a one‑off training exercise.
Visibility and partnerships multiply value, especially in dispersed or specialist settings.

For librarians across different sectors, these insights reaffirm the profession’s role as a connector, guide and critical partner. In a rapidly changing world, our greatest strength remains our collective commitment to people, trust, shared understanding and progress.

Microsoft Co-pilot was used in the brainstorming for this blog post.