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The Lower Decks 2.0: A Symposium on Janeway and Open Access Publishing: 21–22 May 2026 at DCU Library

2026-04-27T16:27:00.001+01:00

This entry connects to an earlier post from 26th September 2025.

Janeway is an open-source scholarly publishing platform that has become the software of choice for editors, librarians, and publishers at universities worldwide. Our inaugural 2023 symposium celebrated the Janeway team's tenth anniversary; this second event broadens that scope to explore how users and community inform Janeway's development.

Co-organised by the Open Library of Humanities, Michigan Publishing Services, and Dublin City University Library, The Lower Decks 2.0 brings together the Janeway community in the historic city of Dublin to explore how real, idiosyncratic scholarly communities helped establish the platform and continue to shape its direction. Presentations address users and user experience, alongside updates, innovations, and use cases from institutions worldwide.

The symposium programme is now published and available here.

Tracing and locating the scholarly journal

2026-04-18T16:54:00.008+01:00

I produced a brief history of the journal as an artefact and looked into its essential function(s). This work does not address the economic, political, or socio-cultural dynamics of the contemporary scholarly journal ecosystem.

Many thanks to Alan Gorman, Eileen Brennan, Jones Irwin, Martin Paul Eve and Lai Ma for reading over this sometime before I hit the button.

Tongue in Cheek {image source: Wikimedia Commons}.

The introduction of journal publishing transformed the collective approach to scholarly knowledge creation and dissemination among scholars and other participants in the research lifecycle, including libraries. More importantly, the widespread adoption, expansion, and refinement of journals have pushed aside a hitherto comparatively laissez-faire approach to scholarly exchange while fulfilling specific knowledge functions for the academic community.

Paper-based journal publishing was enabled by the invention of a new (mass) communication technology in the late fifteenth century – the printing press (Singleton, 1981, p. 212; McClellan, 1985, pp. 10–11; Eisenstein, 1980). As a novel form of scholarly communication, journals emerged during the scientific revolution of the Renaissance period in the mid-seventeenth century (Kearney, 1964; Kronick, 1976). At this time, learned societies (see ftn1), such as the Royal Society of London (1660) and the Académie des Sciences in Paris (1666), were established to discuss and advance the interests of scholars, as well as to arrange better and conceptually formalise the proceedings of members’ meetings and their scholarly communications (Hunter, 1994; Académie des Sciences, no date; Hall, 2002). Through a combination of organised individual and collective effort, both societies founded the first not-for-profit journals in 1665: Le Journal des Scavans and Philosophical Transactions. The move towards sharing scholarly knowledge using the journal format significantly contributed to a thriving age of academics from the perspective of the history of modern science and the trajectory of documented scholarship (Morris et al., 2013, pp. 7–8; Chapin, 1987, p. 815). Meadows (1974, pp. 66–86) notes that the methodology of the modern journal also aligns well with changing organisational communication practices and the general expansion of learned societies, as the formation of the former facilitated the coherent and permanent recording of continuous scholarly knowledge outputs in predictable, serial-type formats.

The elevation of journal publishing as an essential practice of scholarly communication required time to establish and embed itself within the expanding scholarly society network. Garvey (1967, cited in Jange and Kademani, 1999, p. 63) points out that by the middle of the 18th century, ten or so journals were in existence, with numbers growing swiftly from about one hundred in 1800 to over one thousand in 1850 and exceeding ten thousand published journals at the beginning of the twentieth century. With the growth of published journals, society organisations and their publications enabled the faster and networked diffusion of scholarly research and argument over time. Increased speed led to more effective sharing and prioritisation of scholarly knowledge among scattered groups of readers, which, in turn, fostered critical examination, quality control, and validation in legitimate scholarly fora. In addition, formally published documents could suddenly be more easily shared and enable authority control (the attribution of author merit and professional reputation) (Mukherjee, 2010; Owen, 2007, pp. 30–31). Consequently, the legacy of learned societies as organisers and channels of formal scholarly communication has both influenced and shaped the journal's developmental path as a valuable and indispensable communication medium, which continues to this day.

Coupled with the idea of the journal's organisational development are the social, cultural, and conceptual practices of peer review, citing and referencing previous scholarly work, and the establishment of manuscript structures and genres. Peer review is the widely accepted standard-bearer for quality control and assurance in scholarly works. Journal editors and scholarly referees (aka the peer reviewers) assess the academic standard and integrity of manuscripts submitted for publication. Editors and reviewers function as status judges who are charged with evaluating the quality of new knowledge and scholarly role performance in a social system (Zuckerman and Merton, 1971, p. 66). The social structure in question manifests in the lifecycle interactions of the scholarly publishing (communication) system. Peer review was formally introduced in the 18th century, and it took another two hundred years of social suffusion to become universally accepted and fully integrated into the disciplines (Spier, 2002, p. 357; Burnham, 1990). Generally, submissions to journals in the sciences have the lowest rejection rates, whereas getting published in the social sciences is harder; publishing is still more difficult in the humanities (see ftn2).

The routine of standardised citing and referencing (the procedure of acknowledging previously published work that informs one’s own scholarly thinking and argument) became widely accepted and adopted among scholars by the middle of the nineteenth century (Kim, 2001, pp. 35–37). Once ingrained, it enabled the close interlinking of current work with previous research, forming a codified, transparent network of the literature (Bazerman, 1988, p. 139). Moreover, the appearance of standardised and identifiable article structures (e.g. introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion and conclusions in the case of original research) and genres (i.e., original research, brief report, review article, case study, methodologies/methods), recalibrated the communication dynamics among scholars at the micro level and, in this sense, affected the approaches of other participants to the research lifecycle. At the same time, standardised and identifiable article structures only appear in some disciplines (recognisable structures do not exist in lateral acacdemic or creative writing). Referees must now adequately account for the nature of the article to be effective reviewers, whilst libraries must organise their indexing services to enable targeted distribution and information retrieval for their user base.

Journal publishers and dissemination services – including scholars themselves and academic and research libraries – are critical in facilitating the scholarly conversation. They provide access to and enable the utilisation of published knowledge to grow and enhance fields of scholarly research. Accordingly, the journal's five canonical and broadly agreed-upon functions determine the existential nature of scholarly communities (Horowitz, 1991; Meadows, 1974; Ziman, 1968). These include (1) the establishment of a coherent academic record, (2) the sharing and dissemination of research outputs, (3) peer review, (4) the assignment of rewards and professional recognition, and (5) the creation of scholarly communities. To contribute to and effectively shape these functions, library-based publishers must be knowledgeable operators across all five functional domains.

The first and most important function involves creating a collective knowledge base to provide standardised, continuous access to the aggregate scholarly record. The scholarly record operates much like the support structure of a house, providing a stable foundation for day-to-day scholarly activities (Dougherty, 2018, p. 19). In other words, beyond researching, writing up, and publishing new knowledge, only its permanent archival and preservation by libraries and other services complete the scholarly communication lifecycle.

The second function involves the systematic distribution of the scholarly record, triggered by publication and access through trusted venues such as recognised publishers and libraries. Unlike informal communication, which is often conducted by a limited number of people and is difficult to capture or isolate, the visible dissemination of formally published knowledge captures the importance and endurance of evidence-based facts and ideas, which are not replaceable with culturally defined beliefs, including those held by oneself (Rowland, 1997). Within this context, making scholarly works accessible and stable through formal publication and access collectively serves the needs of authors, readers, and libraries.

A third function of the journal is to maintain stability in formal knowledge, as noted earlier in the role of peer refereeing. Peer-review discourse is a rhetorical device that evaluates the quality of scholarly works (Paltridge, 2017; Thomson and Kamler, 2013). The review report includes an outline and summary of the review, critical feedback, and a recommendation or conclusion. Among other functions, it performs the essential roles of didactic assistance and discipline-specific enculturation for the professional benefit of the scholarly author (Yakhontova, 2019, p. 67 & p. 87). Successful validation moves authorial scholarship into the routine of copyediting, layout editing and final proofing prior to formal publication.

Formal publication, cataloguing and indexing by publishers, libraries and archives register scholarly achievement and trigger the assignment of rewards. This fourth function of the journal customarily materialises in the form of professional recognition, tenure, and research grants if the performance of recorded scholarship creates an impact by conforming to recognised evaluation variables and standards. These include, beyond qualitative aspects, established quantitative bibliometric indicators such as journal metrics (i.e., the ‘Journal Impact Factor’ as a proxy for assessing the quality of research outputs) and personal metrics, such as the number of citations to a piece of published scholarship (Ware, 2015, pp. 864–865; Breen, 2022a; Breen, 2022b). In short, authors and their host institutions reap rewards for their performance based on evaluative patterns embedded within the scholarly communication ecosystem.

The fifth and final function of the journal concerns its capacity to build scholarly communities within disciplinary settings. The existence of scholarly journals implies a degree of sociability among their subscribers and, in this way, constitutes an act of solidarity (Ziman, 1968, p. 61). All of this suggests that the shared socio-cultural context of the journal, in terms of scholarly interests, knowledge, terminology, and interactions, is a baseline requirement for effective formal scholarly communication.
~~- - - - - - - -~~
ftn1: A learned society is an independent, not-for-profit scholarly organisation that serves as a forum to discuss issues of interest to its members and constituents and sets professional and scholarly standards for its fields (definition quoted from the FAQ Section of the American Council of Learned Societies) (ACLS, 2025).
ftn2: For an overview of field-based acceptance rates in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, see Björk (2019).

Cited works:
Académie des Sciences (no date) History of the French Académie des sciences, Institut de France Académie des Sciences. Available at: https://www.academie-sciences.fr/en/Histoire-de-l-Academie-des-sciences/history-of-the-french-academie-des-sciences.html (Accessed: 18 June 2021).

ACLS (2025) What is a learned society?, American Council of Learned Societies. Available at: https://www.acls.org/faqs/acls-faq/ (Accessed: 18 May 2021).

Bazerman, C. (1988) Shaping written knowledge: the genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison, Wis.: Univ. of Wisconsin (Rhetoric of the human sciences).

Björk, B.-C. (2019) ‘Acceptance rates of scholarly peer-reviewed journals: A literature survey’, El Profesional de la Información, 28(4), pp. 1–9. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2019.jul.07.

Breen, E. (2022a) Measuring & Reporting Research Impact: Journal Metrics, DCU Library. Available at: https://dcu.libguides.com/c.php?g=685666&p=4899836 (Accessed: 19 August 2022).

Breen, E. (2022b) Measuring & Reporting Research Impact: Personal Metrics, DCU Library. Available at: https://dcu.libguides.com/c.php?g=685666&p=4899838 (Accessed: 19 August 2022).

Burnham, J.C. (1990) ‘The Evolution of Editorial Peer Review’, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 263(10), p. 1323. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1990.03440100023003.

Chapin, S.L. (1987) ‘Review of Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century, James E. McClellan III’, The Journal of Modern History, 59(4), pp. 815–817. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879961 (Accessed: 19 June 2021).

Dougherty, M.V. (2018) ‘Defining the Scholarly Record’, Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity. Cham: Springer International Publishing (Research Ethics Forum), pp. 19–57. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99435-2_2.

Eisenstein, E.L. (1980) ‘The unacknowledged revolution’, The printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early modern Europe. Cambridge [Eng.], New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–42. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991005390183407206 (Accessed: 22 April 2021).

Hall, M.B. (2002) Henry Oldenburg: shaping the Royal Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Horowitz, I.L. (1991) Communicating ideas: the politics of scholarly publishing. 2nd expanded ed. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A: Transaction Publishers. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991000392109707206 (Accessed: 17 December 2018).

Hunter, M. (1994) The Royal Society and its fellows: 1660 - 1700 ; the morphology of an early scientific institution. 2. ed. Stanford in the Vale: British Soc. for the History of Science (BSHS monographs, 4).

Jange, S. and Kademani, B.S. (1999) ‘Metamorphosis of the Scientific Journal: Past, Present and Future’, Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 4(1), pp. 61–69. Available at: https://ejournal.um.edu.my/index.php/MJLIS/article/view/6752 (Accessed: 16 May 2021).

Kearney, H.F. (1964) Origins of the scientific revolution. London: Longmans. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991000007069707206 (Accessed: 18 June 2021).

Kim, H.J. (2001) ‘The Transition from Paper to Electronic Journals’, The Serials Librarian, 41(1), pp. 31–64. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1300/J123v41n01_04.

Kronick, D.A. (1976) A history of scientific and technical periodicals. 2d ed. Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press.

McClellan, J.E. (1985) Science reorganized: scientific societies in the eighteenth century. New York: Columbia University Press.

Meadows, A.J. (1974) Communication in science. London: Butterworth. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991005287209707206.

Morris, S. et al. (2013) ‘Journal metrics’, The Handbook of Journal Publishing. Illustrated edition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 133–155. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991005350699507206.

Mukherjee, B. (ed.) (2010) Scholarly Communication in Library and Information Services: The Impacts of Open Access Journals and E-Journals on a Changing Scenario. Witney: Chandos Publishing (Chandos information professional series).

Owen, J.M. (2007) ‘The development of scientific communication’, The Scientific Article in the Age of Digitization. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands (Information Science and Knowledge Management), pp. 23–43. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5340-1_2.

Paltridge, B. (2017) The discourse of peer review: reviewing submissions to academic journals. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rowland, F. (1997) ‘Print Journals: Fit for the Future?’, Ariadne [Preprint], (7). Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/fytton/ (Accessed: 19 July 2021).

Singleton, A. (1981) ‘Learned societies and journal publishing’, Journal of Information Science, 3(5), pp. 211–226. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/016555158100300502.

Spier, R. (2002) ‘The history of the peer-review process’, Trends in Biotechnology, 20(8), pp. 357–358. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-7799(02)01985-6.

Thomson, P. and Kamler, B. (2013) ‘Engaging with reviewers and editors’, Writing for peer reviewed journals: strategies for getting published. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 127–144. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991005476565607206.

Ware, M. (2015) ‘Journals, Scholarly’, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences.
Elsevier, pp. 862–868. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.41037-8.

Yakhontova, T. (2019) ‘“The authors have wasted their time...”: Genre features and language of anonymous peer reviews’, Topics in Linguistics, 20(2), pp. 67–89. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2478/topling-2019-0010.

Ziman, J.M. (1968) Public knowledge: an essay concerning the social dimension of science. London: Cambridge U.P. Available at: https://dcu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/353DCU_INST/jrp0g3/alma991000049469707206.

Zuckerman, H. and Merton, R.K. (1971) ‘Patterns of Evaluation in Science: Institutionalisation, Structure and Functions of the Referee System’, Minerva, 9(1), pp. 66–100. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41827004 (Accessed: 11 August 2021).

Libfocus Link-out for March 2026

2026-03-30T16:24:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the March 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.

Images from this month's link-out article

Why every scientist needs a librarian.
Amber Dance makes the case in the Career Feature of Nature that librarians can be key research partners who help to scour the literature, manage data and make science open.

Hey ChatGPT, write me a fictional paper: these LLMs are willing to commit academic fraud.
Elizabeth Gibney finds in Nature that all major large language models (LLMs) can be used to either commit academic fraud or facilitate junk science.

Lost 19th century film by Méliès discovered at the Library.
Neely Tucker's article for the Library of Congress blogs describes how a long-lost film by the iconic French filmmaker George Méliès was uncovered in 2025. Library technicians in the Library of Congress digitised the 45-second film which has not been seen by anyone in more than a century.

Galileo’s handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text.
In this Science article, Joshua Sokol describes a significant discovery made by historian Ivan Malara in January 2026. While reading a 16th Century printing of The Algamest by Ptolemy in Italy’s National Central Library he recognised the handwritten annotations in the book as Galileo's. Malara’s discovery promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science: the moment when Earth was thrust from the centre of our universe.

AI Fatigue and Vocational Awe in Academic Libraries.
Greyson Pasiak examines the expanded workloads and academic burnout in the age of Generative AI, viewed through a vocational awe perspective.

New Report From IFLA: “Weak Signals: Emergent and Potential Trends Shaping the Future of Libraries”.
The latest IFLA report focusing on emergent and potential trends shaping the future of libraries,

The art of the steal: U of A exhibit showcases famous forgeries that duped scholars and the public.
A University of Alberta exhibition looks at fake identities, counterfeit content and deceptive dupes that have been with us for centuries.

Harvard Library Tests AI Tools to Help Researchers Navigate Collections.
Shalini N. Ramchune writes for The Crimson, on Harvard’s integration of AI tools into its systems and searches.

The Impact of Transformative Agreements on Reading and Publishing Behavior.
Leila Belle Sterman, Hannah McKelvey and Rachelle McLaind analysed collection development decisions by assessing the outcomes of a six-year period of contracts between a big-five publisher and an academic library that culminated in a transformative agreement.

To Build Trust in the Open Knowledge Era, Think Accountability, Not Disclosure.
Maryam Sayab argues that as scholarly communication has evolved into a global, digitally accelerated ecosystem, a deeper tension has emerged, particularly within the open knowledge landscape. What if transparency alone is no longer sufficient to sustain trust? And what if, in certain contexts, full operational openness may even weaken the systems it is meant to protect?

Call for papers: LIR Annual Seminar 2026, 13 May, Asiera offices, Dublin 1

2026-03-02T09:32:00.000+00:00

The LIR Annual Seminar 2026 theme is Supporting Emerging Literacies: How do libraries design and deliver new literacy programmes?

LIR invites submissions for lightning talks which address:

AI Literacy, including: critical AI literacy; AI in the research workflow; prompting as a literacy

Environmental / Sustainability Literacy, including: critical environmental literacy, climate misinformation and campus partnerships for impact.

Emerging Literacies and Cross‑Cutting Themes, including: futures literacy labs, data literacy, designing future‑ready services, programme design, ethics across literacies, misinformation & critical evaluation, equity & inclusion.

Papers that may not match the above but relate to the overall theme are equally welcome.

300 word abstract for a 10 minute lightning talk (including Q&A) can be submitted for consideration to:

lir.heanet.committee@gmail.com

Include with subject title: LIR Annual Seminar 2026.

Please also include your name, title and affiliation.

The closing date for abstract submission is Midnight (GMT), Tuesday, March 31st. The seminar will take place in person at the Asiera offices, Dublin 1, on 13th May 2026.

Libfocus Link-out for February 2026

2026-02-27T15:30:00.001+00:00

Welcome to the February 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.

Images featured in this month's link-out articles

Why libraries still matter in a digital world.
Antonio La Cava, Italy's smallest library and how it is helping those who need it most.

Library sustainability action plan 2026 launched.
Trinity College Library launches a sustainability action plan focusing on six key areas.

Academic libraries cannot afford to carry on with transformative agreements.
Caroline Edwards highlights on the LSE Impact Blog that in a time when libraries need to find savings they ought to look at journal packages provided by the “big five” commercial publishers and divest funds into Diamond Open Access models and platforms.

University journal publishers – global, messy and underestimated.
Maryna Nazarovets, Mikael Laakso and Zehra Taşkın argue on the LSE Impact Blog that universities are a structurally significant part of the journal publishing landscape, whose role is systematically underestimated because publishing is decentralised, unevenly documented and often weakly supported by the institution itself.

The hidden costs for your brain from using ChatGPT.
David Mcgovern and Olive Brady look at the impact of LLMs like ChatGPT on human cognition in this RTE Brainstorm article. They have the capacity to expand our reach to information and make our work more efficient, but only if we learn to use them wisely.

The peer review system is breaking down. Here’s how we can fix it.
In Joshua Hoehne's article for The Conversation he explains why the peer review system is in crisis. This crisis threatens the viability of journals, particularly local or independent journals not owned by big publishers. He proposes solutions that address the issues arising from a voluntary system has been taken for granted too long.

Protecting what remains: Introducing the UVA Archival AI Protocol.
University of Virginia introduce their Archival AI Protocol document, that serves as a practical approach for evaluating AI requests involving cultural heritage collection.

‘The goal has been to demystify’: how a colonial Nairobi library was restored and given back to the people.
Diego Menjíbar Reynés speaks to Book Bunk, a project which has restored and transformed three Nairobi libraries for the use of their communities, including the grand McMillan Memorial Library, once a whites-only enclave.

What Do We Know About GenAI?
Ned Potter provides an overview of current research and evidence on generative AI, outlining documented limitations, risks, and open questions around its use in education and the workplace.

The State of Librarian Mental Health.
A report-based article by Kelly Jensen examining survey findings on librarian wellbeing, including workload pressures, burnout, workplace conditions, and the structural factors affecting staff morale.

Guest Post — Diamond Open Access Needs Institutions, Not Heroes.
Curt Rice contemplates on the state of diamond open access, urging [institutional] stakeholders to invest in diamond OA as an achievable infrastructure rather than simply perceiving it as an act of heroic individual effort.

Books and Screens.
Carlo Iacono convincingly argues that our "inability to focus isn’t a failing. It’s a design problem, and the answer isn’t getting rid of our screen time".

The Power of Connection; Conversation Cafe

2026-02-17T10:21:00.017+00:00

Guest Post by Michelle O'Donovan. Michelle is a Library Assistant with the Client Services Team at UCC Library

Last summer, UCC Library began hosting Conversation Cafes. Conversation Cafes or sometimes called Conversation Clubs are in person events that are gaining popularity as a way of building social connections in a world that can sometimes feel disconnected. Normally held in public places like coffee shops or bookstores, the aim is to provide a comfortable and relaxed space for people to engage in conversation.

I know what you're thinking, ‘But aren't libraries quiet spaces where chatting is normally shushed!’ And while UCC Library will always provide silent spaces that are ideal for study, we also have spaces designed to encourage collaboration and connection. The Creative Zone located on the ground floor is a perfect example of such a space. The open plan layout, soft furnishings and large windows all work together to create a welcoming environment.

The first Conversation Cafe took place at the start of June. June is also when UCC welcomes a whole host of international students onto campus. Although the Conversation Cafe was open to all UCC staff and students, we reached out particularly to these visiting students. We also invited students from nearby English Language Schools. The idea was to create an opportunity for them to practice speaking English in a fun and easy-going environment and potentially make new friends while away from home.

On the day we extended a very warm welcome to everyone who arrived, and in keeping with the cafe theme, everyone was offered a cup of tea or coffee. Alex, the Library's Student Engagement Intern, then gave a brief outline of how the event would go, using slides displayed on the Creatives Zones large screen. The attendees were split into groups; a topic was displayed on the screen, and everyone got a few minutes to talk on that topic. The event lasted an hour, and although we had prepared 5 topics, it soon became apparent that one or two topics were enough to break the ice. Soon, conversations around the tables began to flow naturally.

A QR code was shared with all attendees to gather feedback. Based on the responses, it's safe to say our cafe was a success! A recurring theme in the feedback was how much everyone appreciated face-to-face interaction, away from their screens. Three attendees who met each other on the day ended up sharing student accommodation together. And some students from the English Language Schools have applied to study UCC courses next year.

This first cafe attracted 11 attendees from all over the world including China, Mumbai and Spain. We even had some native English speakers who just fancied a coffee and a chat. We were delighted when this grew to over 40 attendees for our second cafe.

Our summer cafes were aimed at international students; we have since held cafes for new students, as part of our outreach activities, at the start of the new semester. The aim was to help them get familiar with the library and make new connections with fellow first years. At some point we may offer the space to PHD students to provide networking opportunities or just simply discuss the trials and tribulations of writing a thesis.

We started Conversation Cafes with the goal of welcoming international students into the library. Our main focus was to use the library space in a way that would bring meaningful wellbeing benefits through connection. Secondly, the library also benefited by increasing community engagement while at the same time promoting the different spaces and services available. If you are looking for ways to encourage people to visit your library, why not consider hosting a Conversation Cafe. It's easy to replicate, and the possibilities are truly endless. Just tailor the conversation topics to whoever you are inviting and remember to keep it light and fun!

Facilitators

Alfie Davis (Student Engagement and Employment Coordinator)
Alex Moloney (Student Engagement Intern)
Michelle O Donovan (Library Assistant)

Libfocus Link-out for January 2026

2026-01-28T11:06:00.003+00:00

Welcome to the January 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.

Images featured in this month's link-out articles

Prisoners face obstacles to library access despite 'life-saving' benefits, ACE report warns.
Lauren Brown writes for The Bookseller regarding a new report published by ACE – Raising the Profile of Prison Libraries – that has highlighted the barriers to library access facing UK prisoners, despite evidence of myriad benefits.

What happens when a university closes its library?
Richard Pine examines a controversial decision at Greece’s Ionian University to convert its traditional academic library — with some 110,000 volumes and study space — into “multipurpose” classrooms in this Irish Times article. They've also decided to abolish the head librarian role, sparking concern among students and staff about the erosion of a core scholarly resource and what it means for the intellectual heart of a university.

We All Have a Story to Tell: Why Librarians Should Write About and Share What They Do.
This practice-based article in the Health Sciences Libraries Journal by Martin O'Connor makes a compelling case for librarians across sectors to embrace writing—whether blogs, articles or reflective pieces—as a professional practice that builds confidence, fosters community engagement, and strengthens the collective voice of the profession by sharing lived experience and insight into our work.

How Nature Became a 'Prestige' Journal.
This Long Read from the Asimov Press explains how Nature became one of the most prestigious journals, and asks if this will continue in the 21st century.

5 things for University Librarians to think about when exiting a Read and Public agreement.
Anthony Sinnott, Access and Procurement Development Manager at the University of York, has developed five key considerations to help navigate the complexities of exiting an Open Access agreement in this article for the Librarianth blog.

The UK's Warm Welcome Spaces Campaign.
The Warm Welcome Campaign in the UK started as a crisis response to keep people warm through the winter. It has now grown into a movement to reconnect individuals and communities across the country all year round. Libraries, community centres, sports centres, businesses and museums are offering heated, safe and inclusive spaces that help reduce isolation in communities and boosting wellbeing.

“Pizza Parties Don’t Fix Burnout”: The State of Librarian Mental Health.
In this book riot article, Kelly Jensen discusses the results of her survey of 213 library sector workers in the US. The survey centres around how much of a toll the job takes on their mental health. Library workers answered questions about what they perceived as the most significant stressors in the field, where and how they’ve managed their mental health in relation to their job, and what kinds of solutions they think would be helpful.

Emory libraries cancel Elsevier journals due to rising journal costs.
Samara Goyal for The Emory Wheel, Emory’s student run newspaper documents the university’s library’s funding cuts and the resulting removal of access to Elsevier articles and their rising costs.

Library Marketing Tips.
Starting the year off right - Angela Hursh provides some practical tips and tricks to grow engagement with Instagram in this article for the Super Library Marketing blog.

The Death of Reading.
Are we living through the death of reading? James Marriott poses this question in a short audio piece for BBC.com.

Science Is Drowning in AI Slop.
In this article for The Atlantic, Ross Anderson traces the decline of journal-output quality due to AI generated garbage (fraudulent or lousy work and a rapid increase of paper mill submissions to already clogged up journals). Where will the epistemological pollution of the scholarly record lead us?

University journals: a semi-systematic literature review of trends, challenges and future research directions.
Maryna Nazarovets integrates theoretical, empirical and descriptive studies drawn from a range of disciplines to better understand the state of play of university journals.

Call for Abstracts: CONUL Conference 2026, 27 & 28 May, The Galmont Hotel & Spa, Galway

2026-01-06T10:35:00.002+00:00

This guest post is from the CONUL Conference Committee.

The 2026 conference theme is Transforming Futures: Libraries leading through Change and Innovation. CONUL invites submissions for presentations and posters which address the conference theme and sub-themes:

Thriving as Library Professionals in a Changing Environment
Designing User-Centered, Inclusive, and Sustainable Library experiences
Reimagining Teaching & Learning
Honouring Tradition, Advancing Innovation
Leveraging Technology in Transforming Libraries
Building Meaningful Partnerships Within and Beyond the Campus
Supporting Research through Digital Tools, Collaborative Models, and Creative Spaces

The Conference Committee welcomes proposals on the theme and sub-themes which include trends which may shape the future and practical elements of librarianship across all sectors. Papers that may not fit into the above topics but relate to the overall theme are equally welcome.

An abstract can be submitted for consideration as one of the following conference session formats:

Parallel Paper: 20-minute presentation followed by Q&A
Lightning Talk: 10-minute presentation followed by Q&A
Workshop: an interactive 60-minute session which involves the audience participation throughout the session
Poster Presentation: highlight and share your library activities or research

The closing date for abstract submission has now been extended to January 27th. Please submit abstracts through: https://conference.conul.ie/call-for-papers-2026/

Parallel Papers, Lightning Talks & Workshops: 300 word abstract submission
Poster presentations: 100 word abstract submission.

More information is available on the CONUL Conference website: https://conference.conul.ie/

Health Sciences Libraries Journal (HSLJ), Vol. 1, Issue 2, Winter 2025

2026-01-05T11:30:00.000+00:00

This guest post is by the HSLG Editorial team.

HSLJ Journal vol. 1 no. 2 2025

The HSLG are pleased to announce the publication of their latest journal issue, showcasing a rich collection of practice-based articles, professional reflections, and reports from across the health library and information community.

This issue features contributions from two U.S. librarians, including a day in the life of an embedded librarian in a Missouri medical faculty and a profile of Marcia Crocker Noyes, a pioneering librarian and co-founder of the Medical Library Association.

There is a very enlightening contribution from a colleague with a visible difference, who tells us about working in a library in a customer-facing role and how her difference informs her work and her connection with library users.

Issue 2 highlights the diverse voices, innovations, and lived experiences shaping today’s health and library information landscape. Explore the full issue here: https://journals.ucc.ie/index.php/hslj/index

The deadlines for our Summer 2026 issue are:

Research articles (peer review) – January 10th 2026
General submissions – April 1st 2026

For more information on submitting an article please see https://journals.ucc.ie/index.php/hslj/about/submissions

HSE Library Day 24th September 2025: Light a big fire

2025-12-18T09:40:00.001+00:00

This guest post is by Bennery Rickard, Area Manager in the HSE Library East.

Health Professionals in Galway University Hospital. Image from the HSE Library Day 2025 libguide.

And then it arrived, HSE Library Day. I rose early, suited and booted, and headed down the N4 to Dr. Steevens Hospital. The place felt both familiar and strange. After 20 years working there before my move to Connolly Hospital, I was back now this time as a visitor helping to fan the flames of a spark.

The Spark

That spark came from a brainstorming session at Cork University Hospital while planning our second library strategy. We dreamed big: ads on buses and the Luas, TV spots, radio coverage, maybe even President Higgins. The whole kit and caboodle. But beneath the ambition was something serious - a need to be heard. This invisible profession deserved its moment. A true legend, Sue Lacey Bryant, shared words that have stayed with me: librarians in the health service are health professionals. What better way to honour that truth than with our own day?

Building Momentum

First on board were our comrades in arms, library staff themselves. The HSE Library Staff Engagement Day 2025 gave us the perfect platform. Ideas flowed and filled a vibrant Padlet over the following months. With library staff behind us, nothing could stop us. But who were "us"? The HSE Marketing Group, of course, a small, sparky band of individuals passionate about health libraries and determined to make noise.

The process began in June 2025. We devised a two-pronged tagline "We are HSE Library – Making a Difference." We unveiled plans in a "Show and Tell" to all Library staff, then kept everyone connected through weekly emails. First to launch and keeping pace the whole way through was the social media campaign.

We created a pop-up LibGuide to promote events and showcase testimonials. We secured an article in Health Matters, the HSE's all-staff newsletter. We developed an identity toolkit, with graphics, posters, and email banners, and made it available on the Marketing Repository. We produced a "Save the Date" video featuring library staff, sourced promotional materials within budget, chased vendors for sponsorship, and helped organise the national webinar, livestreamed from Dr. Steevens Hospital on the day itself.

Image from the HSE Library 2025 Libguide. Picture credit: HSE, 2025.

Challenges

It wasn’t all plain sailing. Communication gaps emerged. Wires crossed. "Who's doing what?" became a recurring question. Promotional materials were lost in the post. We ran short on merchandise. There was no funding for catering. Solo libraries felt the strain. But despite these hiccups, HSE Library Day exceeded expectations.

The Day Itself

HSE Library was celebrated with 50 events across every county. Hospital libraries hosted pop-up stands brimming with information, raffles, and sweet treats. Mullingar Regional Hospital invited visitors to try its new seating area and mindfulness collection. Cork University Hospital teamed up with Physiotherapy colleagues for stretching and meditation sessions. St. Columcille's Hospital ran quizzes and puzzle challenges. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda packed in live music and a book signing by GP and bestselling author Claire Gleeson (Show Me Where It Hurts). Connolly Hospital held a children's art competition and exhibited the entries.

Coffee appreciation mornings warmed up Kerry and Wexford. Libraries in Galway, Mayo, and Sligo engaged staff with book displays, raffles, and competitions. The list could go on, but these snapshots capture the commitment and creativity of library staff nationwide.

The national highlight was the online event “Bridging the Gap: Empowering Evidence-Based Practice through Research and Library Resources 2025”, which brought together library leaders and health professionals to discuss how evidence and research are shaping healthcare in Ireland. Featuring contributions from Aoife Lawton, Dr. Ana Terres, Brendan Leen, Paddy Browne, Deirdre Bradley, Dr. Kieran Walsh, and Helen Clark which explored how HSE Library supports clinicians and managers in applying evidence to real-world decisions, improving outcomes and driving innovation.

HSE Library Day Hashtag image from the HSE Library Day 2025 libguide. Picture credit: HSE, 2025.

Results

The numbers told a compelling story.

Attendee feedback from in-person events: 93% said the event increased their awareness of the library, 87% rated library staff as excellent (only 1% rated them poorly). The likelihood of using the library after the event was measured on a sliding scale 63% responded positively with a 5- Very Likely and only 6% giving a 1-Not Likely.

Library staff survey: 100% expressed satisfaction with the day, 61% rated Marketing Group support as excellent, 39% as very good, 92% found promotional materials very or extremely effective and 83% would participate again next year.

Social media impact: Nearly 40,000 impressions and over 2,400 engagements during the campaign. Human-centred storytelling and real-time event coverage drove the strongest interaction.

Sponsor engagement:

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) was our key sponsor. BMJ Best Practice app usage jumped 76% and product impressions increased 16.6% compared to the same period in 2024.

Overall feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Attendees reported increased awareness of library resources and a better understanding of how evidence services support clinical decisions. Library staff experienced heightened visibility, stronger engagement, and genuine appreciation for their work.

Conclusion: What’s it all about?

HSE Library Day proved that visibility matters. For a long time, library staff have worked in the background, critical to health service delivery but rarely acknowledged. This single day shifted that narrative. It connected library staff across the country, reminded health professionals and managers of the resources at their fingertips, and demonstrated that all library staff actively contribute to evidence-based practice and patient care.

The spark from that early brainstorming session has caught. Now the question isn't whether HSE Library Day should happen again, but how we can fan these flames higher. Because when health librarians step into the light, everyone in health service benefits, especially patients.

The invisible profession has been seen. And we're not going back into the shadows.

How interning at an archive helped me connect with a missing part of my culture

2025-12-15T09:19:00.000+00:00

This guest post is by Heather Wallace, a soon to be MLIS graduate from the UCD School of Information and Communications Studies.

Heather Wallace in the ITMA. Picture credit: Heather Wallace 2025.

Introduction

Growing up in Ireland my whole life, you would think I’d have a pretty decent understanding of my own heritage…however, I’m ashamed to admit that this is only partially true. With a BA in History and Classics and an MA in Medieval History, both from University College Dublin, I could babble on for days about the Brehon Laws, Viking Dublin, or Norman castles…actually, best not get me started if we want to finish this blog. Yet despite all of that, a part of me has always felt disconnected from one of the most important and active aspects of Irish culture: traditional music, song and dance.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I had never actually attended a proper céilí or a music session, despite them being absolutely everywhere in Dublin, and I couldn’t even name a traditional tune beyond the obvious few like Molly Malone or The Rocky Road to Dublin. Fortunately, I was given a chance to explore this curiosity during my Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) at UCD, when my Summer internship involved working on a group project at the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in Merrion Square, Dublin 2. The project centred around updating the existing metadata and rehousing a collection of approximately 10,000 LP records held in the archive.

What drew me to this internship was the combination of wanting hands-on cataloguing experience and the opportunity to finally learn about the world of traditional music that I had missed growing up. I absolutely loved my internship, and after submitting my MLIS thesis in mid-August 2025, I returned to the ITMA to work in the library as an intern. This blog will explore what I learned from my time at the ITMA: how cataloguing, volunteering at library events, talking to fellow staff, and speaking with visitors from all over the world transformed my understanding of traditional music, and why the archive is an incredible resource not just for musicians and researchers, but for anyone like me who is a complete newbie. All it takes is a little curiosity.

ITMA Library. Picture credit: Heather Wallace, 2025.

Learning by Doing

Tony Fadell once said that “learning by doing is the only way I know how to learn,” and this has been an accurate reflection of my own journey toward deepening my understanding of Irish music, song, and dance. Since returning to the ITMA, I’ve been working through a significant backlog of CDs, LPs, books, theses, sheet music, and online articles that have built up over the years, with 300+ materials catalogued so far, and it is constantly growing. What they do not teach you in college is that cataloguing is an active, fully immersive process that requires an appreciation and understanding of each item to accurately describe it. In my case, as I did not have a background in traditional music, I got to spend my time listening to the LPs and CDs, brushing up on my Irish, reading articles and theses so I could better understand them and record them with greater accuracy. Over time, my exposure, knowledge, and appreciation of the various items in the collection naturally expanded from there on.

One aspect that surprised me most was how many international visitors expressed their pride and admiration for the archive’s commitment to preserving and making their collection freely available, with many voicing their wish for a similar archive in their home countries. Their comments reminded me that what feels normal and accessible to us here in Ireland is not the global standard, and that we are incredibly fortunate to have a building, staff and the facilities to carry out this mission.

Irish Tradition for Beginners

Another thing I’ve learned during my time here is that ITMA isn’t just for musicians, singers, dancers, or scholars, but it’s also an incredible place for complete beginners to explore. As a newcomer to Irish music, I was always on the lookout for materials in the archive and library aimed at people like me.

ITMA has something for every age and skill level: beginner-friendly books for learning different instruments, a book of 1000 years of Irish Poetry, CDs with nursery rhymes and stories for children “as Gaeilge”, instructional DVDs, such as How to Dance Sean-nós, field recordings of sessions across Ireland, or even niche topics like the History of Gaelic Wexford 1400 - 1600. There really is something for everyone. I myself was inspired to relearn Irish after not having touched it since my Leaving Cert, and my music playlist grows a little more each day, with artists like The Bothy Band, Planxty, Alannah Thornburgh, and Josephine Keegan, who sadly passed away in September this year, being some of my favourite musicians that I have listened to and catalogued so far.

All of these items are searchable online through the ITMA Soutron catalogue, and while some parts of the collection are available offsite, the true learning experience is best explored in person. The staff are always happy to give a tour, explain the archive’s work, chat about their favourite tunes, and let visitors explore the collection, and the best part is you can walk right in, no booking is required. If you can’t make it to the archive in person, the ITMA website is constantly updated with news, blogs, recent publications and acquisitions, playlists, and more.

For those of you who enjoy live events, I highly recommend you check out the various concerts, events and talks that ITMA hosts throughout the year. Many are free including those held during Heritage Week, Culture Night, and Open House. They’re a great way to take part in the community, meet new people, learn something new, and connect with others involved in traditional music. So maybe I’ll see you soon in the library, where I can introduce you to all of our resources or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn here! Slán!

Knowledge Summit Dublin 2025: Insights on AI, Knowledge Management & Human Experience

2025-12-12T13:01:00.006+00:00

This guest post is written by Mairéad Mc Keown, Knowledge and Market Intelligence Manager in Bord Bia.

Claire Ann Ferry, Robin Andrews and Mairéad Mc Keown (Bord Bia) pictured at Knowledge Summit Dublin 2025.
Picture credit: Mairéad McKeown, 2025

Executive Summary & Introduction

This June, Trinity College Dublin played host to the Knowledge Summit Dublin 2025—a landmark event for librarians, knowledge managers, and information professionals across Ireland. Unlike traditional conferences, this summit championed co-creation, open conversation, and the evolving partnership between artificial intelligence (AI) and human expertise. For those of us working at the frontline of knowledge and library services, the event offered a timely reminder: while technology is advancing rapidly, it’s our human-centred approaches that truly shape the future of knowledge management (KM).

Drawing on the official event summary and our own experiences at Bord Bia, this review distils the most relevant insights for KM and library professionals, with practical examples to help you bring these learnings to life.

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8 Key Learnings and Insights for Our Professions

1. Knowledge Management: Never Static, Always Evolving

The summit’s core message was clear: KM is not a static or fixed concept. There is no one size fits all definition, rather it is shaped by context, culture, and the needs of each organisation. Whether you’re developing strategies for your library, designing information systems, or facilitating organisational learning, KM is about connecting people with the right knowledge—when and where it’s needed. As Zach Wahl put it, knowledge managers are the “connectors” who help organisations make better decisions and foster deeper understanding (Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.10).

Bord Bia Example:

At Bord Bia, our KM approach flexes to support everything from onboarding new staff to delivering commercially impactful insights. We see ourselves as “connectors,” enabling better decision-making and deeper understanding across the organisation.

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2. Keeping Humans in the Loop

While AI is transforming our field, the summit reinforced that human insight remains irreplaceable. AI can process vast datasets and highlight patterns, but it lacks the ethical judgement and contextual sensitivity that librarians and knowledge managers provide. The consensus was clear: AI should be a mentor, not a shortcut. Embedding human checkpoints in AI workflows ensures that knowledge outputs are validated and meaningful. As Ninez Piezas-Jerbi said, “Start with the human moments. That’s how you shift culture” (McKeown and Ferry, 2025; Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.12).

Bord Bia Example:

Our library team always reviews outputs from vendor LLMs before deploying them to support desk research. This ensures that AI serves as a mentor—enhancing, not replacing, human expertise.

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3. KM at the Strategic Centre

Knowledge management should not be siloed in a single department, delivering the greatest impact when it’s embedded at the heart of organisational strategy. For libraries and information services, this means advocating for executive sponsorship so that KM can sit at the strategic centre of the organisation, enabling collaboration, learning, and decision-making across all levels. KM thrives when it is a “networked presence” embedded wherever value is created (Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.14).

Bord Bia Example:

KM is woven into strategic activities from talent management and stakeholder events to insight engagement and service delivery. By positioning KM as a “networked presence,” we activate our community’s collective intelligence.

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4. Making KM a Daily Practice

The summit highlighted the importance of making KM a daily habit, not just a strategy. This means establishing communities of practice, designing information architectures that make knowledge findable, and implementing governance frameworks to ensure quality and trust. Storytelling, shared experiences, and rituals—like the pre-summit hike—help embed KM into organisational culture and foster a sense of belonging (McKeown and Ferry, 2025; Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.16).

Bord Bia Example:

We use rituals like storytelling, knowledge cafés, and reflective debriefs to make KM a valued, everyday practice. These activities strengthen engagement and a sense of belonging.

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5. Content Management and AI Foundations

The adage “garbage in, garbage out” rings especially true. AI is only as good as the content it draws from, so robust content governance, clear ownership, and continuous curation are essential. Knowledge graphs and auto-tagging help provide context and improve accuracy, but human oversight remains vital (McKeown and Ferry, 2025; Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.18).

Bord Bia Example:

Our Knowledge & Market Intelligence team reviews all AI-assisted executive summaries and auto-generated tags before publishing content on our Knowledge Management system. This human oversight ensures our knowledge outputs remain accurate and relevant.

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6. AI and KM: A Strategic Partnership

AI is a tool—not the strategy itself. When applied thoughtfully, it can accelerate knowledge discovery and enhance decision-making, but only if strong KM foundations are in place. The future of KM is not AI-driven, but AI-augmented, with humans firmly in the loop. As Toni Ressaire noted, “The whole purpose of AI is to enable human experience” (McKeown and Ferry, 2025; Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.20).

Bord Bia Example:

We empower our community to use Gen AI responsibly and in line with our Gen AI policy by delivering upskilling programmes underpinned by strong adult learning principles and practical KM tools. Our goal is to enable colleagues to use AI as a mentor, not a replacement.

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7. Surfacing Tacit Knowledge

Capturing tacit knowledge—the know-how that lives in people’s heads—remains one of KM’s greatest challenges. Trust-based relationships, storytelling, mentoring, and reflective practice are key to surfacing this knowledge. The summit’s flipped format encouraged active learning and co-creation, turning attendees into contributors rather than passive listeners (McKeown and Ferry, 2025; Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.22).

Bord Bia Example:

We host knowledge cafés, lessons learned debriefs to help our community share insights and experiences in a meaningful way.

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8. KM’s Future: Resilience, Relevance, and Reflection

The future of KM is about helping organisations thrive in complexity. Rather than building bigger repositories, leading practitioners are embracing agile, test-and-learn approaches—piloting small initiatives, learning from what works, and scaling success. KM plays a vital role in building organisational resilience, supporting onboarding, and enabling collaboration across silos. Creating space for reflection and sensemaking is just as important as speed (McKeown and Ferry, 2025; Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025, p.24).

Bord Bia Example:

Our Copilot Colleague Upskilling Programme was piloted with a small group and, due to its success, is now being scaled across the organisation.

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Thought Starters: Moving from Insight to Action

To help you reflect on the practical “so what?” of these learnings, here are five thought starters for you and your team:

1. Context-Driven Connection

How well do you understand the unique knowledge needs of your community or organisation? Consider a recent decision or project—did you connect the right people with the right knowledge at the right time? What new opportunities could you create by mapping these connections more intentionally?

2. Responsible AI Adoption

What safeguards do you have in place to ensure AI tools are used ethically and effectively in your library or organisation? Are there clear checkpoints for human review, and do your colleagues feel confident in using AI as a mentor rather than a replacement?

3. Embedding KM in Strategy

Is knowledge management visible and valued at the strategic level in your institution or organisation? How might you advocate for executive sponsorship or integrate KM into key decision-making processes?

4. Surfacing Tacit Knowledge

What practical steps could you take to capture and share the unwritten expertise within your team? Are there rituals, forums, or reflective practices you could introduce to make tacit knowledge more visible and actionable?

5. Navigating Complexity with Small Bets

How might you encourage your community or organisation to experiment with small, low-risk KM initiatives to address complex challenges? What mechanisms do you have for learning from these experiments and scaling what works?

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Conclusion

The Knowledge Summit Dublin 2025 was a powerful reminder that KM is, at its core, a human-centred practice. Technology will continue to evolve, but it’s our curiosity, connections, and culture that drive true progress. By joining up the dots between people, process, technology, and culture—and by keeping humans firmly in the loop—we can embed KM into daily practice and help our libraries and organisations thrive in a changing world.

For further details, visit the https://www.knowledgesummitdublin.com/

Bibliography

McKeown, M. and Ferry, C.A., 2025. Knowledge Summit Dublin 2025 Conference Review Presentation. [PowerPoint presentation] 23-24 June 2025.
Knowledge Summit Dublin Organising Committee, 2025. Knowledge Summit Dublin 2025 – Event Summary V1. [pdf] Available at: https://www.knowledgesummitdublin.com/ [Accessed 9 December 2025].
Knowledge Summit Dublin, 2025. Knowledge Summit Dublin Website. [online] Available at: https://www.knowledgesummitdublin.com/ [Accessed 9 December 2025].

Libfocus Link-out for December 2025

2025-12-11T08:51:00.000+00:00

Welcome to the December 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.

Images from this month's link-out article

Shine bright like a diamond: what can library hosting services offer in the academic publishing market?

Cathy Dishman and Rebecca Wojturska compare two diamond open access (OA) publishing services at University of Edinburgh and Liverpool John Moores University.

Why is knowledge getting so expensive?
In this TED talk Jeff Edmunds, Digital Access Coordinator at the Penn State University Libraries, explains why libraries have lost ownership of their digital collections and what can be done to fix that problem.

Face Value: How Living with an Appearance Difference Informs Library Customer Service.
Maeve Kerins, (TUD) explores how living with a visible difference shapes professional practice in a public-facing academic library role.

We Made FETCH Happen: A New Improved Inventory Management System.
Library of Congress’, Chief of the Collections Management Division, Matt Martin, discusses the process of designing and implementing a new inventory management system for offsite storage.

Why have so many people stopped posting on social media?
In this RTE Brainstorm article, Aoife Ryan Christensen examines why time spent on social media platforms has steadily declined since 2022.

The Librarian’s Call: Documenting Is Resistance.
This Common Dreams article by Rodney Freeman Jr. is a call to action for staff in libraries and archives who collect, preserve, and share facts. At a time when historical records are being deliberately erased it's important for us to 'document clearly, share responsibly, preserve redundantly, and hold the line until silence cannot take root.'

For Researchers in the Humanities, Is Open Really Fair?
Lai Ma and Claire Davin critically situate the socio-structural condition of humanities scholars in the open science and research movement, validly arguing that perceptions, practices, and experiences not only differ across disciplines but also pose significant challenges for the individual humanities scholar.

Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians.
Whitney Kramer and Iliana Burgos discuss on The Authority File the rationale for their book 'Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians' (co-edited with Evan Muzzall). The book is a must-get for any academic and research library out there.

Teaching AI as an anti-AI Librarian.
Interesting thoughts from Eleanor Ball on UNI that looks at how to teach AI as a Librarian when you don't particularly embrace it.

What do College students lose when libraries are ignored?
Jane Jiang takes a look at the increasing pressures facing academic libraries in the US and what the implications for students in this Scholarly Kitchen article.

How Maynooth University Library is thinking beyond the Dewey Decimal System to help students

2025-12-03T09:04:00.000+00:00

This guest post is by Ashley Burke who is a Library Assistant based in Engagement and Information Services in Maynooth University Library.

A staff member shelving books in Maynooth University Library. Picture credit: Alan Lawrence, 2020.

For many students, library shelves are just another backdrop to study sessions and essay marathons. But beneath the quiet hum of activity at Maynooth University Library, something quietly radical is happening. Maynooth’s librarians are finding creative, student-focused ways to work around its most outdated aspects - ensuring that knowledge is not only categorised but made genuinely accessible, inclusive, and relevant to today’s academic and cultural landscape.

The Dewey Decimal System, established in 1876, was never designed with today’s diverse student body in mind. Its Western, Christian-centric structure often marginalises non-dominant worldviews—tucking entire cultures, religions, and fields of study into oversimplified or inappropriate categories.

At Maynooth University Library, the response has been to strategically subvert its limitations. Librarians are implementing tools and practices that help students navigate beyond Dewey’s blind spots, offering a more equitable and intuitive user experience.

Curated Displays and Thematic Collections

One of Maynooth’s most visible interventions is its commitment to curated collections both online and displays within the Library that bring underrepresented voices to the fore. The library regularly features thematic displays on topics such as LGBTQ+, the Black and African diaspora, and the Traveller Communities - highlighting works that might otherwise be buried in Dewey’s less-than-intuitive categories.

Oftentimes books that I think should be together are shelved by Dewey number in separate areas which makes them hard to find by general browsing. Geography is one example of this. Geography is mainly kept in the 900s but if you wanted physical Geography e.g. Geomorphology you would need to look in the 500s, while human Geography is in the 300s. By pulling these materials together in dedicated displays and collections, Maynooth ensures that students encounter diverse perspectives without always needing to decipher a complex classification code.

Evolving Dewey and reshelving

Dewey isn’t as static as it may seem from the outside. We are constantly shifting and evolving our use of it. One example I was part of recently was the Musical Score reclassification where the scores were reclassified and relabelled to ensure composers' works were shelved together. This made browsing works by one composer easier for the user. This has been met with positive feedback.

Another project the Library is undertaking soon will be the relabelling and classification of certain Irish law books to the base number 346. At the moment some of the Irish law books are shelved with the UK law books - this will mean a lot of shifting in the law section but will give a better user experience when browsing.

Maynooth University Library is also at the forefront of efforts to reclaim Irish identity within library catalogues. Where Dewey might lump Irish Travellers, Irish history, and literature into broader Nomad, British or Celtic categories, Maynooth University’s librarians are actively tagging and reclassifying content to reflect Irish political, linguistic, and cultural autonomy.

This academic year’s addition of the Faculty of Nursing has seen our Natural Sciences collection grow to accommodate these new Nursing books. For me as a reshelver, it has meant making room to add these books and ensure they are accessible to new students.

While reshelving I can see disparities in legacy cataloguing practices, for example the Anglo-Irish books. As we improve classification processes, as new books come in, these disparities are being ironed out and materials are made more accessible. This in turn means books are being grouped together in a better way ensuring that they can be more easily browsed by Library users.

Teaching Students to better use the System

Crucially, Maynooth isn’t just working around Dewey - it’s empowering students to understand it and leverage its positive aspects. The library offers workshops and orientation sessions that explore how classification systems like Dewey can be best used in their own academic work and how best to navigate the Library. Teaching and Learning Librarians use various LIST sessions to promote the Library and what it can do for students at the beginning of each semester. The Library also offers Finish Strong initiatives in the lead up to exams and semester deadlines.

Staff at the Information desk ensure that they are there to help students access the knowledge they need both online and physically. The front desk staff hours have recently been adjusted to better align with the students’ needs and presence on campus. Social media tools are being heavily utilised to better engage with the student population and help equip students with the knowledge they need to succeed. Covering the desk allows me to keep an ear to the ground to see what students are struggling with and positions me to curate content for social media to assist them. It is always a pleasure bringing students on their Library discovery journey and seeing them go from not knowing how to look up a book, to successfully navigating and using the Library’s many services.

While reshelving the books upstairs I often get questions from students. It is rewarding helping someone learn how the Library is laid out and where to find what they are looking for. It also helps me identify missing or lost books and get them back to the shelves as quickly as we can.

Conclusion: More Than Just Shelves

Maynooth University Library’s approach offers a powerful model for other institutions grappling with legacy systems. By layering inclusive practices, digital innovation, and critical engagement on top of Dewey’s existing framework, the library is building something much more valuable than a traditional classification system: a dynamic, student-first knowledge environment.

At Maynooth University, the library isn’t just a place to find books—it’s a place to rethink how knowledge is organised, accessed, and valued. By finding creative ways around Dewey’s limitations, the library is helping students not just locate information, but understand the systems behind it, and challenge those systems when they fall short.

In doing so, Maynooth is showing that the future of libraries isn’t about rigid categories—it’s about curiosity, inclusivity, and empowerment.

Hibernia College updates and expands its Digital Literacy OER

2025-11-28T08:41:00.000+00:00

This guest post is by Irene O’Dowd, Ann Byrne and Emberly Davey from the Digital Learning Department in Hibernia College.

Screenshots from the Digital Literacy OER (Image: Hibernia College, 2025)

The Digital Literacy OER development team at Hibernia College are delighted to announce the re-launch of their Digital Literacy OER with additional content. The OER was initially launched in late 2023, with three lessons:

Information literacy
Digital wellness and identity
Communication and collaboration

The updated version includes an additional four lessons:

Digital technology proficiency
Solving common digital problems
Creating digital content with AI support
Digital learning and development

During both phases of development, the OER development team consulted several well-recognised digital literacy frameworks, including DigComp 2.2 (2022), Jisc’s Digital Capabilities Framework (2017), and the CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework (2020). These frameworks informed the content of the various lessons, which were also shaped by recent trends such as the increasing pervasiveness of GenAI tools.

The team are delighted to offer the course as a freely available OER, supporting several of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) and encouraging digital citizenship (Council of Europe, 2023) at Hibernia College and beyond.

How to access the OER

The OER was developed using Articulate Rise and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. It is free to reuse and adapt with attribution. It is freely available on Hibernia College’s digital repository, IASC. The course is uploaded to IASC as a zipped folder which includes usage instructions. It can be accessed on IASC or using the QR code below:

QR code to access the Digital Literacy OER (Hibernia College, 2025)

The resource is also listed on OER Commons: https://oercommons.org/courses/digital-literacy-oer

References

CAUL (2020) CAUL Digital dexterity framework. Available at: https://www.caul.edu.au/digital-dexterity-framework (Accessed: 10 November 2025).

Council of Europe (2023) The concept. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/digital-citizenship-education/the-concept#:~:text=Digital%20citizens%20can%20be%20described,step%20with%20evolutions%20in%20society (Accessed: 10 November 2025).

JISC (2017) Building digital capabilities: The six elements defined. Available at: https://digitalcapability.jisc.ac.uk/what-is-digital-capability/individual-digital-capabilities/ (Accessed: 10 November 2025).

Vuorikari, R., Kluzer, S. and Punie,Y. (2022) DigComp 2.2. The digital competence framework for citizens. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/50c53c01-abeb-11ec-83e1-01aa75ed71a1/language-en (Accessed: 10 November 2025).

United Nations (UN) (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/sites/default/files/publications/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf (Accessed: 10 November 2025).

Libfocus Link-out for November 2025

2025-11-26T09:03:00.000+00:00

Welcome to the November 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.

Images from the articles featured in this month's linkout

Manuscript submissions are up! That’s good, right?
Tim Vines on The Scholarly Kitchen argues that journals focusing on increasing article submissions are doing themselves a disservice. From the article: "When ‘number of manuscripts submitted’ is treated as a key performance indicator, any initiative that might deter authors from submitting is deemed too risky."

Fraud, AI slop and huge profits: is science publishing broken?
This Guardian Science Weekly podcast summarises the challenges in academic publishing and of the Open Access movement. Ian Sample tells Madeleine Finlay what has gone so wrong, and Dr Mark Hanson of the University of Exeter proposes some potential solutions.

Internet Archive reaches new 1-trillion page landmark almost 30 years after it started backing up the WWW.
Wayne Williams reports in Techradar that the Internet Archive reaches a new 1-trillion page landmark almost 30 years after it started backing up the web. An astonishing 100,000TB of data, or around 21.3 million DVDs, is available through its Wayback Machine.

The Future of Libraries – 2035.
Thomas Frey looks at what the library of 2035 might be like in this article for Futurist Speaker.

Shaping the Library’s Future.
This Liber Quarterly article by Cécile Swiatek Cassafières and Marion Brunetti focuses on how academic & research libraries should clearly articulate their identity, vision and engage stakeholders.

In praise of librarians in dangerous times.
Lithub has published an excerpt from Sarah Weinman's keynote address at the American Librarian’s Association annual convention. She discusses librarians' roles as keepers of truth and defenders of their patrons' rights to privacy and to uncensored information.

The Children's Booker Prize.
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced that the first Children's Booker Prize will be awarded in February 2027. The shortlist for the award, which celebrates the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to twelve, will be announced in November 2026.

Honour the university library as a creative space with an artist residency.
Darlene Maxwell, Corinne Noble and Alexandra Genova from the Royal College of Art Library, London, discuss the RCA Library's artist residency project. They look at its potential and impact on their collections and space.

‘People have had to move house’: Inside the British Library, two years on from devastating cyber attack.
Staff tell Athena Stavrou of the Independent they’ve faced abuse because of ongoing issues at the library, where dozens of services remain unavailable, and why they have taken strike action.

Agentic AI: Nine essential questions.
In this MIT Sloan Management Review article Laurianne McLaughlin provides answers to key questions about agentic AI. The term “agentic” refers to an AI models with agency, that have the capacity to act independently and purposefully when accomplishing goals.

Join the Library Association of Ireland, Career Development Group Committee.

2025-11-26T08:55:00.003+00:00

Guest post by LAI CDG Group

Are you a library or information professional looking to connect with others, build your network, and help shape professional development opportunities in our field? The Career Development Group (CDG) is welcoming new members this December, and we would love to have you on board.

The CDG is a friendly and welcoming committee made up of enthusiastic professionals from across the LIS sector. Committee members from all over Ireland meet once a month via Zoom to plan activities, share ideas, and collaborate on initiatives that support career growth and community building.

By joining the CDG, you will have the opportunity to:

Network with colleagues from a variety of roles and backgrounds.
Co-organise relevant events and workshops that benefit the wider LIS community.
Gain experience in committee work in a supportive, low-pressure environment.
Contribute your voice and ideas to our ongoing projects and planning.

Whether you are early in your career, an MLIS student, or a tenured LIS professional looking to get more involved, CDG is a great place to connect, learn and grow, while having fun doing it!
Interested in joining? Please fill in our New Members Form and attend our online AGM on December 9th when we form our committee. There are three officer positions: Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer. There are also roles in our Communications team which supports the CDG’s outreach and promotions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Your voice matters. No prior experience required, just enthusiasm.

Librarians learning together to enhance their evidence synthesis expertise

2025-11-07T08:59:00.000+00:00

Guest post by Siobhan Bowman, Paul Breen, Stephanie Chen, Breeda Herlihy, Ronan Madden, Ben Williamson of UCC Library.

Introduction
Evidence synthesis or knowledge synthesis are terms used to describe a research methodology where information from multiple sources is brought together to answer a specific question and provide a comprehensive and reliable summary of available evidence. The humble literature review or narrative review is a type of evidence synthesis along with many other types including systematic reviews, scoping reviews, qualitative evidence synthesis, integrative reviews and umbrella reviews. Searching the literature for a review is a fundamental part of undertaking evidence synthesis and this is where librarians can support and enable research.

A number of UCC Library colleagues, including the Library’s Learning & Teaching Team, decided to set up a Community of Practice on evidence synthesis earlier this year. The aim was to build on some existing experience and to develop the expertise to help meet the demand for support from UCC staff and students. One part of this involved undertaking some collaborative learning in the form of a free online course developed by the Evidence Synthesis Institute and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) from the US. The course “Evidence Synthesis for Librarians and Information Specialists” (Kocher, M., Riegelman, A., Kibbee, M., Young, S., Bostrom, M., Marsalis, S., Premji, Z.) is a 15-module course developed by evidence synthesis librarians and subject librarians from various American and Canadian university libraries. Over a period of a few months in a quieter part of the year, we set out a timetable for working through a group of modules on our own and followed each group of modules with a meeting to share insights, clarify complex topics, and relate the course material to our own experiences.

The outline of the course shows how relevant it is to librarians and information specialists and each of us gives an account further below of how we found the process of learning about evidence synthesis together.

Module 1: Introduction to evidence synthesis
Module 2: Exploring different review methodologies
Module 3: Reproducibility: the importance of transparent evidence synthesis methods
Module 4: Evidence synthesis steps and librarians as co-investigators
Module 5: Systematic review guidelines/checklists/reporting standards
Module 6: Introduction to protocols and protocol registration
Module 7: Formulating a research question
Module 8: Frameworks and eligibility criteria
Module 9: Reference interview
Module 10: Selecting databases for evidence synthesis
Module 11: Search strategies
Module 12: Adapting searches across database platforms
Module 13: Grey literature
Module 14: Supplementary search methods
Module 15: Writing the methods section and PRISMA flow diagrams

Siobhan Bowman, Learning Support Librarian
As a newly appointed learning support librarian, this course was perfect for me, providing case scenarios, templates and toolkits that I have brought directly into my work. The interviews with librarians discussing the various levels of tiered support they provide really helped me as I begin to develop my role. The course has been like having a supportive mentor at my side, particularly Module 9 on the reference interview, which proved invaluable in bridging the gap between my emerging role and the expectation to provide 'expert' guidance on evidence synthesis.

While systematic reviews have traditionally been focused in the health sciences, we are increasingly encountering students from across disciplines, from education to engineering, who are being asked to conduct systematic literature reviews for their research projects. The module's practical framework for distinguishing between traditional and evidence synthesis consultations has proven immediately applicable, from undergraduates exploring their first literature review to funded research teams planning systematic reviews. What resonated most was the emphasis on contextual factors: learning to assess what type of review a researcher wants to conduct, giving me the confidence to negotiate our level of involvement and to direct researchers toward suitable methodologies, and resources.

Paul Breen, Mercy University Hospital Librarian
Having recently taken up the position of Mercy University Hospital Librarian, I found this course hugely beneficial. A key component of the services delivered by MUH Library is evidence synthesis support for staff and students on placement in the hospital.

Of all my responsibilities as the new MUH Librarian, continuing the delivery of this service to a high standard was the one which I was most apprehensive about. Working my way through this course’s modules went a long way to easing my concerns. It provided me with an invaluable structured framework for developing and testing my understanding of processes related to systematic reviews and other forms of evidence synthesis. This was aided by regular discussions with my colleagues throughout the process.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that several useful external resources are linked throughout the course. I highly recommend it!

Stephanie Chen, Learning and Teaching Librarian
As someone new to systematic reviews/evidence synthesis, I found the course to be a great introduction to evidence synthesis projects. The content was particularly relevant as it was designed and developed by librarians. As such, it provided a good understanding of how library staff can support or participate in these types of projects.

All of the modules were easy to complete and the interactive elements such as videos and ‘learn by doing’ questions were engaging. Links to external resources meant course content wasn’t overwhelming and the descriptive module titles makes it easy to revisit the course if you need a refresh on specific content.

I enjoyed doing the course as part of a community of practice alongside my colleagues as it allowed opportunities for questions, discussion, and sharing of experiences. I would 100% recommend enrolling in this course and, if possible, completing the course with other library staff.

Breeda Herlihy, Quality and Planning Coordinator
This course was recommended to me by a fellow librarian, and I initially set it aside. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t delayed—it's well-designed and paced. The content is clear and concise, a testament to the expertise of its creators. In a field with lots of guidelines on evidence searching, it takes real skill to distil complex ideas into accessible, digestible learning materials.

Taking the course alongside colleagues as part of our library-based community of practice added a layer of accountability. We scheduled regular meetings to discuss specific modules, which meant we had to complete them in advance. There’s nothing like a deadline to keep you on track! These discussions also proved invaluable—highlighting resources I might have overlooked and offering fresh perspectives on topics I hadn’t considered.

I’d highly recommend this course to any library staff involved in supporting literature searching for systematic reviews or their close relatives, systematised literature reviews. It’s a practical, well-structured resource that will make a real difference to your knowledge and confidence.

Ronan Madden, Learning and Teaching Team Lead
The course was a valuable opportunity for me to build on some existing knowledge and gain a much deeper and more structured understanding of this very important area. Developed by librarians who are experts in evidence synthesis, the course is very comprehensive, including review methodologies, protocols, search strategies, grey literature, and reporting with PRISMA. Working through the modules individually allowed me time to reflect on the material, while the group discussions offered a space to share thoughts, clarify topics, and connect the content to our practice in UCC Library. This blend of self-directed study and group reflection was a great way to build confidence and skills.

Ben Williamson, Learning and Teaching Librarian
I found the course very encouraging and affirming with regard to my current teaching practices. It showed me that I was already covering many important points about search strategy development and use of resources, and also that I had gaps in my knowledge that ought to be addressed. The use and searching of Grey Literature, for example, is something I need to develop more confidence in demonstrating.

One notable takeaway from the course was a potential use of the Boolean operator ‘NOT’ to test the effectiveness of new search terms against an existing seat. I had previously avoided using this operator myself and had actively discouraged others from using it.
While I may not cover all areas of evidence synthesis in my present role, I found the course a useful overview of the wider picture. Librarians and researchers alike can benefit from completing it.

From Dublin to Seoul and Back Again: A Transformative Vision for University Libraries

2025-11-04T09:41:00.001+00:00

Congratulations to Emily Daly from Dublin City University Library, whose blog post was highly commended in the CONUL Training and Development Library Assistant Blog Awards 2025.

A Journey That Changed How I See Libraries
When I took a five-month break to travel in Asia, I thought I was stepping away from library work. But in Seoul, surrounded by books under open skies, my idea of what a library could be began to shift. It was October, the city buzzing after Han Kang’s Nobel Prize win, when I stumbled across the Seoul Outdoor Library. Soon, I realised libraries don’t have to stay behind four walls; they can be woven into daily life. Now, in my role as a Library Assistant in the Public Services and Outreach Directorate at DCU Library, that vision continues to shape how I see our work. Outdoor libraries aren’t a novelty, but rather a powerful way to connect with the community.

Seoul Plaza: ‘Sky Gazing, Book Gazing’
I had planned to visit the Seoul Metropolitan Library, but walking through the adjacent plaza, I stumbled across something unexpected. Thousands of books filled colourful trolleys and boxes. Friends, couples, and families read and relaxed on beanbags, while others played in activity zones woven among the seating. Classical music floated from a nearby stage. Playful and open, it invited not just reading but connection and discovery.

1. Readers sink into stories on pink and blue beanbags outside Seoul Metropolitan Library as evening falls. (Photograph: Author, 2024).

Gwanghwamun Square: ‘Mountain Gazing, Book Gazing’
A short walk away, Gwanghwamun Square unfolded beneath the gates of Gyeongbokgung Palace. Another 5,000 books mingled with food stalls, K-pop shows, and exhibitions. Children raced to pick books while tourists and locals browsed. It was part library, part street festival, in the heart of the city.


2. Gwanghwamun Square becomes a pastel sea of beanbags and books, set against Seoul’s iconic gate and mountains. (Photograph: Author, 2024).

3. A mother and child read under a tent at Gwanghwamun Square while a tired dad sneaks a nap (Photograph: Author, 2024).

Cheonggyecheon Stream: ‘Water Gazing, Book Gazing’

Another short stroll led to Cheonggyecheon Stream, where the mood shifted to a quiet intimacy with red chairs, book boxes, lanterns, and tables lining the waterway. Couples, families, and friends posed for photos, read side by side, and dipped their feet in the water. The gentle stream mingled with soft conversation. Tucked among the titles, I spotted some Irish writers.

4. Seats, tables, and book boxes line Cheonggyecheon Stream, offering calm spaces to read, chat, and unwind. (Photograph: Author, 2024).

5. Couples, families, and friends share intimate moments by the stream. (Photograph: Author, 2024).

A Library Network Woven into the City
What struck me was how seamlessly these library sites blended into public space. Though temporary and seasonal, they felt intentional, designed to meet people where they were. Each had its own mood, yet together they formed a citywide invitation to read in public. At their heart was a quiet trust: books left out for anyone to browse, linger with, and care for. That trust was met with joy and respect. Since 2022, Seoul’s outdoor libraries have welcomed over six million visitors (Park, 2025).

6. Official brochure maps Seoul’s outdoor library network across city spaces. (Source: Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2024).

Beyond the Walls: Reimagining Libraries in the Open
Since returning home, I’ve often wondered how Seoul’s outdoor library model could work in Ireland. At DCU, our Library Strategy (2023–2028) promotes innovative services and diverse spaces which “enrich experiences and enable creativity and connectivity” (DCU Library, 2024), aligning with the university’s broader mission to “transform lives and societies” (Dublin City University, 2025). The opportunity is right in front of us. Our campuses are full of green, open spaces — so why not bring the library out into them? Picture beanbags under trees, book trolleys by the coffee van, outdoor study zones during exams. We already join in events like Culture Night, but they’re occasional. Mobile libraries visit festivals, yet often remain on the fringes. Seoul’s approach is different: a daily, visible presence woven into public life. It showed me that transformation can begin with something simple: books outdoors, visible and inviting. That simplicity sparks curiosity, connection, and spontaneous moments of engagement. Why not open these spaces to the wider community too, turning campuses into living cultural landscapes?

7. Green spaces in front of DCU O’Reilly Library, a canvas for creative outreach. (Source: DCU Communications, 2022).

Conclusion: Envisioning a Living Library Landscape
Seoul’s outdoor libraries weren’t just outreach; they were a shift in thinking. They brought books into public life in a way that felt joyful, visible, and relevant. Back at DCU, I see that same transformative potential. If we step outside the traditional model, literally and figuratively, we can build a library experience that is lived, shared, and felt beyond four walls.

References
DCU Communications (2022) Our Campuses. Dublin City University. Available at: https://www.dcu.ie/commsteam/our-campuses (Accessed: 29 July 2025).

DCU Library (2024) Library Strategy 2023–2028. Dublin: Dublin City University. Available at: https://www.dcu.ie/sites/default/files/inline-files/dcu-library-strategy-2023-2028.pdf (Accessed: 29 July 2025).

Dublin City University (2025) DCU Strategy 2023–2028. Dublin City University. Available at: https://www.dcu.ie/strategy (Accessed: 29 July 2025).

Park, U. (2025) ‘Seoul’s outdoor libraries draw 1 mil. visitors in 3 months, exceeding expectations’, The Korea Times, 3 July. Available at:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20250703/seouls-outdoor-libraries-draw- 1-mil-visitors-in-3-months-exceeding-expectations (Accessed: 29 July 2025).

Seoul Metropolitan Government (no date) Seoul Outdoor Library. Seoul Metropolitan Government. Available at: https://english.seoul.go.kr/seoul-outdoor-library/ (Accessed: 29 July 2025).

Seoul Metropolitan Government (2024) Wow! Seoul Outdoor Library [brochure]. Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Call for submissions for Health Sciences Libraries Journal (HSLJ) - Summer 2026

2025-10-31T08:42:00.003+00:00

Our friends over at the LAI Health Sciences Libraries Group are looking for submissions for the next issue of their journal. Over to them now

Thank you to all those who contributed to the first issue of our journal and for all of the great feedback we received.

The winter 2025 issue is being finalised and will be published at the start of December so we are now seeking submissions for the summer 2026 issue. The deadlines will come around quickly.

HSLJ came into existence through the Health Sciences Libraries Group but is not just for librarians working in health. Research articles will be peer reviewed and the deadline for these is 10th of January 2026. We also welcome practice-based pieces as a means of knowledge sharing and so we can hear about your special expertise. If you are a recently qualified librarian, you might like to write up your dissertation for us and get on the publication ladder. That can make a difference when you are looking for a post. You could also write and tell us about what drew you to librarianship if you have previously been in a different career.

For our Professional Lives features, we welcome contributions on any aspect of working in a library setting, traditional or non-traditional. Tell us about a day in the life of your work. We love to receive historical pieces about interesting librarians or reflections on a life in librarianship. Readers will also want to hear about great CPD you attended or books or podcasts you would recommend. We are not looking for literary criticism, just something you enjoyed and think other colleagues might too.
The 2026 HSLG conference will be celebrating strength in difference and all that that means. The summer 2026 issue of HSLJ will be published in Pride month and in addition to our regular content, will have special features celebrating difference. So articles on any aspect of diversity, neurodiversity, equity, belonging or inclusion will be very welcome. The deadline for all submissions that are not research pieces will be April 1st 2026.

So please put the deadlines in your calendar:

Research submissions – January 10th and all other submissions – April 1st. https://journals.ucc.ie/index.php/hslj/index

Please feel free to email us at hslj.hslg@gmail.com,if you have any questions, concerns or ideas.
The Editorial Team

Finding Peace Among the Periodicals: Reflections on working in an Academic Library

2025-10-28T08:41:00.004+00:00

Congratulations to Holly Meade Kennedy from Maynooth University Library, whose blog post was highly commended in the CONUL Training and Development Library Assistant Blog Awards 2025

The MU campus begins to stir as 8.30 am approaches, and the quiet is broken only by the faint click of my staff card scanning at the library entrance. Steam curls from my cup as I unlock my computer and take the first sip from the water bottle I will inevitably forget exists for the rest of the day. I answer an email from a lecturer and double-tap a post on Instagram from a fellow academic library reminding students they can’t eat in shared spaces. I laugh as I remember the delivery driver who dropped off four pizzas to waiting students one evening during exam time, and how the sight of them amenably sitting on the green across from the library sharing slices in the fading daylight was oddly heartwarming. They had found the perfect loophole - food delivered straight to campus, but technically not eaten in the library. It was a masterclass in student logic: bend the rules just enough to survive, but not quite break them.

(Image is my own) Maynooth University Library

I glance at this week’s to-do list. A meeting on Tuesday about our Athena Swan gender equality initiative. A webinar on Wednesday on ‘The Importance of Bibliodiversity’. Social media content to post about Pride Month on Friday. These are things I care about, and I feel lucky I get to engage with them as part of my professional world. My phone buzzes to tell me the New Yorker has taken their monthly fee in exchange for a digital subscription and I begin to roll my eyes until I remember how much I’ve spent on coffee this month and feel a sense of perspective.

I sip my cappuccino while it’s still hot - to get my money’s worth – and feel a sense of gratitude as I notice the peace that has fallen over my mornings since I took up my role in MU Library. Coming from a background in teaching and media, unsustainable levels of busyness became the norm. I didn’t go to work every day; I continuously existed within it. Assignment corrections late into Saturday evenings were standard and having completed three degrees along the way, I had forgotten what it meant to switch off.

(Image is my own) : Information sign for the MU Nature Connection Trail

But my life came to a halt three years ago with the passing of my dad, and the anxiety that accompanied my grief caused me to reflect on the role that work and study had come to play in my life. I began to reset my view on things when one rainy Tuesday evening my counsellor said “we’re on this earth to be, not to do.” It takes the right person at the right time to say something that strikes you exactly the way you need it to, and from there I began to consciously look at the work I wanted to spend my days doing.

I adore writing, and feel passionately about its therapeutic effects as it allows me to remove the scramble of thoughts in my head and share them with others as a means to connect. I wanted to find a job that would allow me to be creative and have time to write while still existing within the academic space as I am a self-confessed nerd. I attended a Montessori school up to the age of 12, and this alternative way of learning grounded my passion and belief in the transformative power education holds.

(Image is my own) ST Patrick's MU Chapel

As a past student of MU, I cherished the sense of community alive on campus and the beautiful grounds it exists within. So when I saw a job advertised in the university library, I began to think there may be a way for me to merge my passions and skills to achieve a work-life balance us perfectionists have only heard about! I began working here a year ago and within that time I’ve learned the work you do can be important, innovative and plentiful without being all-consuming. I am still learning about balance, but now when the work day is complete, I sign off without guilt.

Amid global threats to peace, equality and democracy, it's timely to reflect on how fortunate we are to work within the Irish academic library field. The quiet environment of the buildings we occupy, the grounds that surround them, the routines librarianship is built upon, the inclusivity of the community, the genuine collegiality of the people who work in the sector – these are all elements that lend themselves to a positive relationship to work, particularly for those of us dealing with anxiety in some way.

Routine, structure, respect and stillness – these can be truly cherished if you’ve lived without them. Like those students with their four pizzas and a plan, I’ve found my own loophole – learning to work and live with both purpose and peace.

Libfocus Link-out for October 2025

2025-10-24T15:24:00.005+01:00

Welcome to the October 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.

Images from the articles featured in this month's linkout

The Myth of Open: Academic Libraries’ Role in Open Movements and Its Contention with Capitalism.
Emma Beck and Tessa Withorn discuss in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Open Initiatives in Academic Libraries, an open-access, peer-reviewed, scholarly publication, the complex role of academic libraries in open-source software (OSS) and open access (OA) movements.

It’s ‘Absolutely Vital’ I Pursue My MLIS Now.
MLIS student Erica Sikma looks at her place as a school library volunteer and what ultimately convinced her to go back to college and earn an MLIS degree for School Library Journal.

Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities.
Niamh Tumelty and Caroline Ball argue on the LSE Impact blog that Open Educational Resources should form a central part of university strategies for public engagement.

Bob Geldof: Why We Gave The Live Aid Archives to the National Library of Ireland.
Bob Geldof speaks to Hotpress on the decision to donate the Live Aid archival collection to the National Library of Ireland, despite other institutional offers.

A tool in the fight against Amazon: independent bookshops to begin selling ebooks.
Ella Creamer's article in The Guardian looks at Bookshop.org. The online store is launching a platform through which independent bookshops in the UK will be able to sell ebooks as an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle offering.

Peer Review in Transition: Helen King and Christopher Leonard on AI and the future of peer review.
A nuanced look by Roohi Ghosh in The Scholarly Kitchen at how peer review might adapt, fracture, or reinvent itself in the AI era.

Uni students are using AI to ‘ask stupid questions’ and get feedback on their work.
Jimena de Mello Heredia reports in The Conversation that found almost half of students (49%) are using AI for feedback to help them improve their university work. Students found both AI feedback and teacher feedback helpful, but some feel safer asking AI “stupid questions”.

The Library's First Responders.
In The Purist, Dimitri Ehrlich reviews film festival favourite 'The Librarians.' The film documents the commitment of school librarians to making literature available despite attempts by public officials and lobby groups to ban 'inappropriate' titles.

Harry Potter and the Memory Gap: How cultural memory edits our shared reading list.
This one is for the book lovers - MD Kenney writes about the cultural trends and tastes that influence which books get passed down through the generations. The marvellous books that get forgotten can be rediscovered in second-hand bookshops, in family collections or through simple word of mouth.

Libraries are palaces for the people. Their ramparts need defending.
Richard Ovenden's Observer article argues that UK public libraries are essential “palaces for the people” — free, open institutions for knowledge and community — and warns that decades of funding cuts and closures are eroding their role, urging renewed public and governmental support to defend their future.

Publishing futures: Working together to deliver radical change in academic publishing.
Cambridge University Press reports on its recent sector-wide, empirical research into the strained state of the current publishing ecosystem. While many of the issues have been raised before, their objective was to understand the challenges in moving towards a more open future for academic publishing.

Mentorship: Creating a fertile ground for character growth and academic advancement at DCU Library

2025-10-21T17:08:00.006+01:00

Congratulations to Lorcan Cahill from Dublin City University Library, whose blog post was highly commended in the CONUL Training and Development Library Assistant Blog Awards 2025

Mentorship involves the guidance of individuals or groups towards a common goal. Mentors are those in a position of influence who adopt an attitude of forward thinking. They achieve this outlook by placing value on an individual or group’s trajectory in life. They understand that confidence breeds competence. Mentors empower others by delegating opportunities for character growth and possess the skill of anticipating the future by setting forth a vision that is grounded in the realities of today.(Burnison. 2012. Chap 6)

At DCU Library, we are aware of the importance of mentoring students and staff. We hold the personal and academic development of our library users in equal measure. (DCU Library Strategy. 3) We endeavour to facilitate an engaging environment that simultaneously encourages people to academically succeed and grow in character. This culture is not born out of passive activity, but rather it is born through high-contact engagement and meaningful relationships with our users.

The front-facing library assistant, who assists in identifying educational resources, is fundamental to mentorship. The initial interaction at the front desk is crucial as it can either positively or negatively impact the individual’s future relationship with the library. Moreover, the library’s greatest asset is its staff, especially those who are front-facing. Library users must feel comfortable asking for help. To seek assistance is to make oneself vulnerable to a lesser-known concept. It is the library assistant’s job to be conscious of that and address the user’s needs. These include explaining the use of an online search catalogue, showcasing the use of an online journal database, providing advice on a reading list, resolving library account queries, or even giving directions to a lecture hall.

Patrick Dennan, DCU Library Assistant at Cregan Library, assisting students at our library reception

Credit: Kyran O’Brien

At Dublin City University, we value a shared mindset ‘to transform lives and societies.’ (DCU Strategy 2023 - 2028) This mindset permeates all positions within the library and is keenly felt at library assistant level as the help desk is where active engagement is most evident. The advantage of a front-facing role is that participation and interaction are inevitable. Similarly, the potential for authenticity and connectivity to flourish is paramount. Authenticity and connectivity, in this context, mean removing excessive individualism and favouring a shared sense of purpose. (Goffee & Jones.2015. Introduction) Once these conditions are evident, an environment is made fertile for not only academic advancement to occur, but for character growth to materialise.

To achieve this climate of personal and academic development, DCU Library remains collegial and collaborative. (DCU Library Strategy 2023 - 2028. 3)We understand our geographical importance of being situated on the northside of Dublin and the close proximity we share to local primary and secondary schools. Mentorship at DCU Library, therefore, is not exclusive to DCU staff and students, but it is extended to the local community. Our outreach initiatives such as Leaving Certificate students availing of a study environment in the lead up to their examinations is illustrative of this. The library also offers Leaving Certificate students an opportunity to avail of free masterclasses in subject areas like English, Irish and Mathematics. Similarly, community engagement is fostered through long-standing campaigns including regular creative writing workshops and competitions, art exhibitions, and inviting members of the community to celebrate cultural heritage on Culture Night.

Dave Rudden introducing a Leaving Certificate masterclass on English, Seamus Heaney Lecture Theatre, DCU St. Patrick’s Campus

Credit: DCU Library

As well as building engagement, mentorship is primarily provided to our students and staff. This provision is made possible by forward thinking. Forward thinking, in the context of an academic library, means drawing upon the real-life experiences of our users and implementing new strategies to improve their overall experience. It means, in other words, leveraging our user experience by enlarging and evaluating the already existing experience of our users.

Woodlock Hall Library, DCU All Hallows Campus (Mahon and O'Neill)

Credit: Kyran O’Brien

Forward thinking occupies the liminal space between the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of an organisation. At DCU Library, we are particularly committed to championing and empowering users with neurodivergent needs. Woodlock Hall Library, which was opened to our users in 2021, was initially designed as a quiet alternative library. It has since become popular with patrons in need of a sensory-friendly study space. Consequently, the quiet study environment is frequently promoted via our social media channels. This is reflective of our commitment to mentor our diverse community by eliminating educational barriers and anticipating their needs. It is also illustrative of our adherence to value our people.

We are aware that by valuing our users, DCU Library, as an organisation, grows in value itself. There is a symbiotic relationship between the library and our patrons. If one augments in value, the other follows. By committing to our purpose of mentoring both the academic success and wellbeing of our users, DCU Library remains inwardly sound and outwardly engaged. Mentorship is extended to our users by offering a study and social environment that encourages collaboration, engagement and participation. Furthermore, our ultimate goal is to equip users with self-confidence. By building confidence, the ground is made all the more rich for our patrons to gain self-awareness and thrive both academically and socially.

Bibliography
PRIMARY MATERIAL
DCU Strategy 2023 – 2028, Dublin City University (accessed 05/06/2025).
DCU Library Strategy: 2023 – 2028, Dublin City University (accessed 05/06/2025),
pp. 1-14.

SECONDARY SOURCES
PUBLISHED WORKS
Burnison, Gary, The Twelve Absolutes of Leadership (New York, 2012, eBook edition).
Goffee, Rob & Jones, Gareth, Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? With a New Preface by the Authors: What It Takes to be an Authentic Leader (Boston, 2015, eBook edition).
O’Neill, Alana Mahon, & Shanahan, Rosemary, ‘All Hallows Campus and Woodlock Hall Library’, LibFocus, 18 July 2024 (accessed 05/06/2025).

INTERNET RESOURCES
Definition of Mentorship, Merriam-Webster Dictionary (accessed 05/06/2025).

LIR Annual Seminar 2025: Communities of Practice

2025-10-17T10:49:00.005+01:00

This guest post is written by Jenny O'Neill on behalf of the LIR Community.

Daniela Bultoc speaking at the LIR annual seminar. Picture credit: HEAnet User Group for Libraries, 2025.

Four Questions to Ask When Forming a Community of Practice

In April 2025, the LIR HEAnet User Group for Libraries held its annual seminar at the HEAnet offices in Dublin. This year’s theme focused on community engagement within the library sector, particularly through communities of practice and social media networks.

One of the keynote speakers was Dr. Daniela Bultoc, who delivered an insightful talk on Communities of Practice in Higher Education. Daniela outlined three key goals for her presentation:

To define what we mean by communities of practice
To understand their benefits in higher education
To identify opportunities for incorporating them into our work

What Are Communities of Practice?

The concept of communities of practice has its roots in the apprenticeship model, where learners would meet and learn from one another. This approach is supported by social learning theory, which suggests that around 70% of what we know is learned through others, through doing, and through experimentation.

In the complex organisational structures of universities, many professionals find themselves working in isolation or as the sole expert in a particular area within their department. Yet, others across the institution may be working on similar challenges. Communities of practice offer a way to break down these silos, enabling us to connect, share, and learn from each other.

Membership and Sustainability

There are several models for community membership. Members may self-select or be nominated based on their expertise. However, it is passion and commitment that truly sustain a community. Crucially, line management support—linked to appraisals, career development, or talent development—is essential.

Daniela made an important point: a community of practice will last only as long as there is interest, passion, and energy. When that fades, it’s perfectly okay for the community to come to a natural end. Flexibility is key to the lifecycle of a community.

Why Libraries?

In libraries, communities of practice can be transformative. They support professional development, encourage innovation, and ultimately enhance library services and student support.

Benefits of Communities of Practice

Daniela’s evaluations revealed compelling benefits:

80% of members said they were generating innovative ideas and solving problems
77% were sharing resources, information, and experience
72% felt a stronger sense of belonging and connection

Other benefits included:

Improved awareness of where and who to go to for information
Better communication across departments
A collective vision of excellence
Service alignment
A stronger sense of professional identity

Ready to Get Started? Ask Yourself These Four Questions

1. Purpose: Why Do We Exist?

Communities of practice aim to produce, extend, and exchange knowledge, connecting people with shared interests. They represent a grassroots model of change. Clarify your shared goals, skills, and expertise, and define what you want to achieve together. A clear and motivating purpose is essential.

2. Members: Who Belongs?

Once goals are clear, it becomes easier for individuals to decide if they belong. Typically, there’s a core group of active members who both learn and share. There may also be wider members with an interest but less expertise, and key stakeholders who contribute occasionally.

Daniela recommends a co-leadership model. Communities can be:

Self-organised/informal – member-driven and less visible
Supported/formal – intentional, strategic, and more visible
The “third space” – autonomous but with strategic support via a Champion

Strategic sponsorship helps align the community’s purpose with organisational goals.

3. Activities: What Are We Going to Do?

Define your collaborative projects and events. Create opportunities for meaningful interaction and focus on solving shared challenges. And celebrate successes!

Activities might include:

Relationship building
Knowledge sharing
Collaborative problem-solving
Learning-focused initiatives
Strategic alignment efforts

4. Process: How Are We Going to Do It?

Establish your meeting rhythm, communication channels, and processes. Start meetings with light, engaging interactions and prioritise psychological safety. Focus on quick wins to maintain momentum and energy.

Useful resources:

Co-creating your communities of practice - Toolkit: https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_829077_smxx.pdf
Devis-Rozental, C., & Clarke, S.R. (Eds.). (2024). Building Communities of Practice in Higher Education: Co-creating, Collaborating and Enriching Working Cultures (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003330554

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A Turn Up From the Books. Unanticipated discoveries from Early Printed Book Cataloguing.

2025-10-16T13:29:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to Sharon Corrigan from Dublin City University Library, whose blog post was highly commended in the CONUL Training and Development Library Assistant Blog Awards 2025.

There tends to be a smattering of surprises each week working in special collections, unexpected connections between the past and present that pop up and elicit a quiet ooh from me along my journey as a library assistant currently working with early printed books (EPBs) at DCU. In these collections each book has been on its own individual saga and it is the uniqueness of both items, (a handwritten dedication inside), and manifestation (the printer’s chosen dedicatee for that edition) that I am endeavouring to capture when cataloguing, together with the usual publication information and descriptions that will lead researchers to find the records in the first place.

Unanticipated considerations have included how long one can spend finding the apt term for a quirky binding or stamp, and how differently cities in Latin sound compared to their modern Anglicised names. Luckily RBMS have an invaluable table of Latin place names providing that all important consistency.

Local history hidden amid foreign texts.
Latin is not my first language, I have picked up a little on the job. I do, however, feel confident in saying that 800+ page tomes on ecclesiastical theory are not ‘light reading’. Inevitably even the most committed cleric needed study breaks. So, secreted in the pages of some EPBs are bookmarks, beautifully preserved, forgotten pages, that give a glimpse of 19th century Dublin. A Dublin, where you might have correspondence with shopkeepers on personalised stationery. These include a linen order from Webb’s wholesalers, Upper Bridge-Street, on the back of which are listed the necessities of the day, a grocery list, including mustard and beer. Hopefully used after ‘the messages’ had been fetched. A receipt for two baskets showcases the wares of the weavers of the Richmond Institution for Instruction of the Blind, on O’Connell Street. Finally a letter of reply to a query about a flute was found bearing a letterhead from M. Gunn & Sons at 61 Grafton Street; now home to the Disney store.

A receipt from James Webb, wholesale & retail linen draper and importer of English flannels, 15 and 16, Upper-Bridge Street, (Joining Corn-Market) dated 21st April 1826.

The reverse of the same receipt on which is a hand written list of groceries signed by a John Taylor.

An order slip for two baskets from the Richmond Institution for Instruction of Industrious Blind, located at 41, Upper Sackville Street,Dublin [Now O’Connell St] dated July 1855.

The letter head from a response to an enquiry for the costing of the repair of a flute showing the letterhead of M. Gunn & Sons, Music & Musical Instrument Warehouse. 61 Grafton Street, Dublin, dated January 2nd [18]71.

Folios don’t fool around, or do they?
What lies within the covers of an EPB? Even the wisest cannot know; at least from the binding alone. Occasionally it has been a desiccated spider leering up at me. When noting books’ heights in the physical description (300) field I also add their format, useful when differentiating books from other printings during the hand press period. Upon checking a suspected folio one day I looked towards the light through a page and could see what Gaskin (1995, p.82) describes as the “chain lines in the paper running up and down the leaves (vertically)... and that the watermark was in the middle of one of the leaves”. These are left imprinted in paper from when it was dried on molds during its making. This particular watermark was very clearly a jester wearing his hat. Having grown up with British art and craft TV shows, an old term they - and therefore I - often used, sprang immediately to mind… that’s a foolscap!

The ‘foolscap sheet’ is still sometimes used in the art and law fields, being the Imperial size of paper in the UK, or folio in Europe, and was once the term for a standard sheet of paper, though it has been replaced mostly by the slightly shorter A4 size now (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p.174). There is a quick guide to identifying formats available from the STCV if you’re interested in checking what format a book in your collection is using the watermark.

Two leaves showing the white outline of the foolscap watermark, a jester in his hat with beads. Both taken from the book whose title page appears on the left Historical collections : of private passages of state, of weighty matters in law, of remarkable proceedings in five parliaments. Beginning the sixteenth year of King James, anno 1618. And ending the fifth year of the King Charls, anno 1629. Published 1659.

The Human Touch in the Sphere of Don’t Touch
EPBs are generally stored in climate controlled, dark places, to preserve them until they are requested so that they can appear heroically on a glowing cushion, or so I tell them as I tuck them away to wait. EPBs can seem remote and intangible. Handling them, performing light cleaning, and basic preservation, enclosing detached material in acid free paper and using a human touch to flatten, straighten, and secure what isn’t too brittle. Gloves are used only rarely, and for specific tasks, as the LOC (2025) recommends clean dry hands except for “photographs and film, metals, ivory”. The dexterity of my fingertips, so far, are giving me an edge over AI. The surprising durability of handmade paper composed from cotton or linen fibres leaves me constantly astonished, even inside bindings that seem battered and bruised there often sits a perfectly sewn text block of bright white paper waiting to impart the words it’s held stable for nearly 500 years.

While there have been many more unexpected surprises during the cataloguing of EPBs at DCU they may have to wait to be shared a little longer in their fuller glory.

Bibliography
Boydell, B. (2021). Gunn, M. (& Sons). Dublin Music Trade. https://dublinmusictrade.ie/node/186

Gaskell, P. (1995). A new introduction to bibliography. St. Paul's Bibliographies, Winchester
Library of Congress. (2025). Frequently Asked Questions: Preservation. Ask a Librarian. https://ask.loc.gov/preservation/faq/337286

Maxwell, R.L. (1997). RBMS/BSC Latin Place Names File. Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Association of College and Research Libraries A Division of the American Library Association. https://rbms.info/lpn/

Rushworth, J. (1629). Historical collections : of private passages of state, of weighty matters in law, of remarkable proceedings in five parliaments. Beginning the sixteenth year of King James, anno 1618. And ending the fifth year of the King Charls. Thomason, G.

National Built Heritage Service. (2013). MRCB, 10-13 Cornmarket, Bridge Street Upper, Dublin 8, DUBLIN. https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50080556/mrcb-10-13-cornmarket-bridge-street- upper-dublin-8-dublin

Pearce-Moses, R. (2005). A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology . The Society of American Archivists. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a1c710fbce17620f861bf47/t/5a35fffe41920241eb892a75/15134883 87901/SAA-Glossary-2005

Vlaamse Erfgoed Bibliotheken. (n.d.). List of Bibliographical Formats. STCV Bibliography of the Hand Press Book. https://manual.stcv.be/p/List_of_Bibliographical_Formats