The fourth SLIP Ireland annual student conference is getting closer – only three days to go! We would like to thank our sponsor, the Dublin Business School Library. It’s thanks to the kind generosity of DBS library that we are able to keep the SLIP Ireland conference going and free for attendees.
A very special thank you to Marie O’Neill.
You can keep up to date with what’s going on in DBS Library here, follow the Library @DBSLibraryTwits and follow the @DBSLibraryMSc while you’re at it.
The fourth SLIP Ireland annual student conference is now only three days away and we would like to thank our silver sponsor, the School of Information and Communication Studies, UCD. Both Clare and Helena are graduates of ICS (then known as SILS) and have had such wonderful support from all there ever since.
A special thank you to Kalpana Shankar, Claire McGuinness, Claire Nolan & Lisa Gaffney.
You can visit the school website here and follow them on Twitter @UCD_iSchool.
Thank you to our new sponsor, UCD Students’ Union! Both Helena and Clare are graduates of UCD and many of our speakers and attendees over the past four years have been UCD students. We are delighted to bring them on board as our sponsor this year.
Special thanks to Education Officer Stephen Crosby.
The fourth SLIP Ireland annual student conference is just five days away and we would like to thank our silver sponsor, the Library Association of Ireland. The LAI have been so supportive of SLIP Ireland and we really appreciate all the help they have given us. Without this assistance the SLIP Ireland conference would simply not be possible.
A special thank you to Lorna Dodd and Niall O’Brien.
Tickets are still available on Eventbrite (they’re free!)
Want to learn more about our speakers? Check out our Lightning Presenter bios here.
10:00 Registration
10:30 Welcome Remarks
10:45 Lightning Presentations
11:35 Break
11:45 Sponsor Presentation
11:50 Academic Panel Discussion
13:00 Lunch (provided)
14:00 Lightning Presentations
14:50 Break
15:00 Sponsor Presentation
15:05 Practitioner Panel Discussion
16:15 Closing Remarks
For abstracts of lightning presentations read more after the jump!
The call for papers for our 4th Annual Student Conference is now open! Our theme this year is “The Information Professional as Author” and, as always, we are open to a broad interpretation. You are free to consider any type of writing or publishing an information professional / librarian / archivist may be a part of. From an academic researcher, to a practitioner writing a project report. You could consider grant proposals or social media authorship, or authorship in different formats such as audio, video as well as the written word. Presentations can be about a project you have completed or are currently working on or can be academic in nature.
All presentations will be 10 minute lightning presentations. You are free to choose the style of your presentation, you may use Powerpoint, Keynote, PDF or Prezi.
Submissions are now open for current students and graduates of the last three years from any library qualification (UCD, DBS, Ulster University, distance learning). Submissions are also welcome from students and graduates of Archival Studies, Archives and Records Management and Digital Humanities.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the conference just send an email to conference@slipireland.com and we’ll be happy to help you.
Good luck, we can’t wait to see what you have got for us this year!
We’re looking for enthusiastic individuals to join our new Working Committee! There are lots of roles on offer and plenty of different ways to get involved.
Our Working Committee will work with Clare & Helena with the day to day running of SLIP Ireland as well as helping to plan and deliver the annual conference in February. If you’re interested in any of the following then please let us know!
If you have an idea on how to get involved that’s not listed here then please let us know, we’d love to hear from you. As this is a volunteer position we don’t expect anyone to contribute more than a few hours per month.
Send a short email to hello@slipireland.com with the subject line “Working Committee” for more info, or fill in the contact form below.
When starting the MLIS in either UCD, DBS, University of Ulster or distance learning, you are not just starting a college course but joining a profession, an industry and a community.
The great benefit of becoming a librarian at graduate level is that we all come from different academic disciplines and often previous careers. Okay, we tend to skew towards the arts and humanities side of things but many successful librarians have very different backgrounds. Sandra Collins, director of NLI has a PhD in nonlinear fluid dynamics.
Embarking on a new career can be a bit daunting and the best thing you can do as a student is to set yourself up for success by joining your community and this stage. It’s also a good idea to do so now as many organisations offer free or reduced student rates to join or free or concession tickets for events. I would encourage you to go to as many events, conferences, seminars as possible to see what people are doing, what organisations are the big names, the breadth of what library work really is.
So, here at SLIP Ireland we’re going to tell you about some of the top groups to join, websites to check out, hashtags to follow on twitter – librarians love twitter.
But be warned, there is a slight epidemic of an unusual malady affecting the library community not just here at home but also abroad – you will definitely encounter it during your studies and probably in this blog. We’re working on a cure. It is of course…
Librarians seems to just love acronyms. It never even occurred to us to call SLIP anything other than an acronym. The library world can be quite jargon-heavy so don’t feel overwhelmed when you hear someone say a string of seemingly meaningless letters and everyone around you is just nodding along like that actually meant something. You will catch on.
The biggest player on the acronym scene is the LAI. They are the professional body representing librarians in Ireland. There are many subgroups, explained below, and as a student you can join for free for two years. The LAI website is under construction at the moment so you can keep up to date on Facebook and Twitter.
These are some of the main groups of the LAI, but there are more. Check in on the new LAI website to see the full list or search around on Twitter.
These are hashtags that are active all year round, many library conferences have specific hashtags – keep an eye on our Twitter account to see when they are coming up.
All of these groups over various things from great informative blogs and websites, online learning platforms to great events, workshops and conferences. Over the year we will be highlighting are promoting various events around Ireland organised by many of these groups. In February 2019 we will be holding our fourth annual student conference. If you’re looking for work in libraries why not take a look at our previous series of blog posts on Job Searching to find out more info about how and where to look for library jobs in Ireland.
Just starting your MLIS? Take a look at our post on 10 Tools to Survive Your MLIS!
If you’re interested in taking part in SLIP Ireland and have a topic in Library & Information Studies you would love to write about for the blog, take a look at our submission guidelines here. Feel free to drop us an email anytime or send us a DM on Twitter or message on Facebook.
If we missed any groups or sites please leave them in the comments below!
Clare Murnane is one of the founders of SLIP Ireland. She graduated with an MLIS from UCD in 2015 and now works in UCD Library. If you would like to write for SLIP you can contact Clare on Twitter @SLIPIreland or by emailing clare@slipireland.com.
Before embarking on the journey to becoming an MLIS graduate, I began my first library placement in Cabra library last summer. Before making the decision to become a librarian I had worked as a substitute teacher in my local Gaelscoil as well as taking on the role as school librarian. I absolutely adored reading with the children, organising the books, and rearranging the room so that the library seemed less like a stuffy storage space and more of a creative space. When I started in the library I noticed how many of the Irish books were scattered amongst the other collections. Since Cabra library is in the vicinity of Gaelscoils I thought an Irish section would be a fantastic resource for the children. With this idea I started to plan how I might start such a project. The staff in Cabra were so supportive, constantly reassuring and encouraging me to use my initiative.
Including my ordinary tasks of the day, I put aside an hour each morning before our doors opened to work on the project. After moving a few shelves around and making some space, I gradually created a cosy and colourful “Cúinne Gaeilge” in the children’s section. I had so much fun decorating the corner with a helping hand from the children themselves who loved taking part in the project. I took inspiration from Pinterest with my “Road Sign Design” and used well-known fairy-tales translated from English to Irish to give the space a bit of familiarity and magic!
One of the main challenges with this project was categorising the reading level of each Irish book and making it easily comprehensible for both children and parents, specifically non-fluent Irish speakers. It took a while to develop this system but in the end I organised the books into five individual categories and colour coded them to distinguish the categories – Picture books (Leabhair pictúir), Translations English – Irish (Aistriúchán Béarla go Gaeilge), Early Readers (Leitheoirí Óg), Fiction (Leabhair Fiscean / finscéal) and Non-fiction (Leabhair neamhfhicsean).
Thankfully, I got to see the positive reaction and feedback from our regular users before finishing up my placement. The children that visited seemed to love the corner as well as their parents and grandparents who complimented our efforts. Our fluent Irish speakers were also delighted to see a dedicated corner for Irish books and asked whether we would do something similar in the adult section. The development of the Irish corner also encouraged the staff to create a “reference corner” for the children, using the same design. The staff thought that individual corners could be organised by themes, creating a set of different and interesting spaces for the children to read or do their homework.
The Cúinne Gaeilge is something very special to me as it allowed me to contribute something unique to the library and at the same time, promote a required resource for the community and local schools. The staff in Cabra were so encouraging and supportive, constantly reassuring me that I was doing a great job and that the corner would be maintained and continued after I left. It was only recently that a librarian from another public library contacted me about how their library had implemented their own “Cúinne Gaeilge” after I had shared my idea on a visit. This was so rewarding to hear as I know just how important Irish books are to students, children, and adult learners. I am hoping that this new, colourful, and welcoming corner will give books “as Gaeilge” a new lease of life and encourage children to take a seat and enjoy the world of Henrí Dána and Fionn Mac Cumhail.
Saoirse De Paor is currently completing my MA in Information and Librarian Studies at University College Dublin. She previously graduated with a BA in Geography, Classics and Nua-Gaeilge from Maynooth University. She has previously worked as a substitute teacher in my local primary Gaelscoil and also as their school librarian. She undertook her eight-week library placement in Cabra Library which allowed her to gain a massive amount of experience working in a public library. The staff at Cabra constantly encouraged her to share my ideas and take the initiative! She also got to visit the staff in Pearse St Library and Ballyfermot Library which provided her with a fantastic insight into the different projects and programmes libraries are currently rolling out.
Only two days until the third annual SLIP Ireland conference! We would like to thank our new bronze sponsor, Altmetric. It’s down to organisations like this supporting us that we are able to provide a platform for students. Look out for some Altmetric swag on Saturday!
A special thank you to Josh Clarke and Jane Burns.
You can find out more about Altmetric here and follow @Altmetric on Twitter.
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